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Best External HDD? - Page 2

post #16 of 28
8/18/09 at 12:34am
for digital media storage, which is what your doing... get a WD Green Series Drive the 2TB/1.5TB/1TB any one would fit your needs, just make sure you get the updated ones and get a enclosure i would suggest: Vantec Nexstar 3/CX, Antec Veris MX-1, there is also another model with a fan that is good...
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post #17 of 28
8/18/09 at 4:31am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for all of the replies guys, I think I'm gonna go with a DIY HDD. Does anyone who owns a TB drive want to say how long they have had theirs?
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post #18 of 28
8/19/09 at 9:22pm
ive had seagates/samsungs for ~2 years now and n/p same with a friend who has the 1TB green WD...
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post #19 of 28
8/21/09 at 2:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rise To The Top View Post
Thanks for all of the replies guys, I think I'm gonna go with a DIY HDD. Does anyone who owns a TB drive want to say how long they have had theirs?
Had a 500GB for a long time now, can't remember an exact value, I've got it in an IcyDock enclosure and it is absolutely 100% top quality.
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post #20 of 28
8/22/09 at 2:28am
I have a drobo too, and this thing is pretty sweet. It uses magical robotic powers to give you complete redundancy without having 2x the storage capacity. for example, if you have 4TB of storage loaded into it, you get 3 TB of usable protected space. Not sure how it works. It does have a fan though, which makes a bit of noise.

Also, I would recomend getting the most expensive drive by whichever manufactuerer you choose. The "enterprise" drives are the ones to go with, because they are made to last. Also, within each manufacturer, the more expensive a drive is, the longer the warranty is, which I have heard is also a good sign, because they don't want to have to replace many drives.

I have heard good and bad things about every brand though, so I have no idea which is best. I have a bunch of WD drives, a Hitachi, and a Seagate I believe. ??
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post #21 of 28
8/22/09 at 4:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by rhythmdevils View Post

Also, I would recomend getting the most expensive drive by whichever manufactuerer you choose. The "enterprise" drives are the ones to go with, because they are made to last. Also, within each manufacturer, the more expensive a drive is, the longer the warranty is, which I have heard is also a good sign, because they don't want to have to replace many drives.
So we should all be driving Rolls Royce or Aston Martins?



And sorry there are no "enterprise SATA drives". Even though "enterprise" FC drives are more reliable, they are not sold for our purposes.

Nice photos BTW
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post #22 of 28
8/22/09 at 5:58am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Planar_head View Post
The best external hard drives are the one with hard drives you put in yourself.

That way, you can get exactly the model, capacity, and even the enclosure you want.

For example:

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives
Newegg.com - VANTEC NST-360SU-BL Aluminum 3.5" eSATA& USB 2.0 External Enclosure - External Enclosures

Put those two together and you get a 2 TB hard drive!
Not always. Some separate enclosures only provide a +12V-only power supply unit, while allowing all of the +5V current used by such an assembled drive to be delivered solely by the USB connection (if the external enclosure is connected to the PC via USB). This setup is NOT RECOMMENDED if you don't have a separate powered USB hub - the onboard USB controller will likely get burnt out by such extremely high +5V current.
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post #23 of 28
8/22/09 at 3:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bixby View Post
So we should all be driving Rolls Royce or Aston Martins?
Yeah!


Quote:
Originally Posted by bixby View Post
And sorry there are no "enterprise SATA drives". Even though "enterprise" FC drives are more reliable, they are not sold for our purposes.

Nice photos BTW
Are the eSATA? What's FC? I don't really know anything about hard drives, I've just asked around cause I have lots to back up. And thanks about the photographs!
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post #24 of 28
8/22/09 at 6:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eagle_Driver View Post
Not always. Some separate enclosures only provide a +12V-only power supply unit, while allowing all of the +5V current used by such an assembled drive to be delivered solely by the USB connection (if the external enclosure is connected to the PC via USB). This setup is NOT RECOMMENDED if you don't have a separate powered USB hub - the onboard USB controller will likely get burnt out by such extremely high +5V current.
I'd like to say "For Example" was in my original post -- I didn't say "build this" without doing any research on your own.
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post #25 of 28
8/22/09 at 7:35pm
Hmmm...I need a large-cap HD for my WD TV HD Media Player...the Drobo looks nice, although a bit pricy.
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post #26 of 28
8/22/09 at 8:11pm

FC Drives

Quote:
Originally Posted by rhythmdevils View Post
Yeah!




Are the eSATA? What's FC? I don't really know anything about hard drives, I've just asked around cause I have lots to back up. And thanks about the photographs!
FC or Fibre Channel drives are used in enterprise raid arrays. They are like SCSI drives in reliability but with a fibre channel interface instead of SCSI. They are meant for 90%+ duty cycle whereas SATA drives are meant for 20-30% duty cycle. Duty cycle does not mean just powered up or spinning; it means reads or writes occurring. So in a 24 hour day an enterprise FC drive can be accessing or writing data for over 21 hours on average.

For SATA drives it would be about 7 plus hours, for example. So lots of use in excess of that figure leads to more frequent failures. Which is why I never sold big companies SATA based arrays for primary data. Even with RAID they do get pissed when a drive fails. Especially when the rebuild times are so long with terabytes of data.

If you want higher reliability than SATA look for SAS or Serial Attached SCSI which will give FC reliability. They are used in Entry level RAID arrays and servers and may be showing up in consumer stuff soon. But they do cost more than SATA.

So if you know you will be reading data from your SATA drive for more than 8 hours a day, you will increase the odds of it failing sooner rather than later and the best way to protect yourself is to have a backup or a redundant disk. After all, low priced SATA disks are a commodity.

Hope this helps.
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post #27 of 28
8/25/09 at 10:09pm
I recently got a 1TB Apple Time Capsule and am loving it. Wireless backup/access to my files is great and they come in 2TB size too. Only problem is they are expensive About 2x what a cheap external hard drive costs.
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post #28 of 28
8/26/09 at 1:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vel View Post
I recently got a 1TB Apple Time Capsule and am loving it. Wireless backup/access to my files is great and they come in 2TB size too. Only problem is they are expensive About 2x what a cheap external hard drive costs.
I'm trying to convince my dad to get a QNAP TS-439, tell me about price @_@
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