Experiences with 1 TB external hard drives?
Since my incident with my external hard drive, I’ve been thinking long and hard about backup for my household. My husband doesn’t seem concerned about this even though he has at least 250 GB of photos we’ve taken with our digital camera. But part of me knows better, so I’ve been looking at external hard drives, as big as I can afford and the 1 TB ones seem affordable. The problem is they also are pretty new and I’m not finding enough review information on the web. So, does anyone out there is libraryland have experience with these? Better yet, is anyone using one with an Apple Airport Extreme? I really want to share this storage with all the computers in the house and it seems like the Airport will do this. So please post comments if you’ve bought one of these and had good, bad or mediocre experiences.
I am in a similar position to you (also a Mac user), but I keep holding out as prices get lower and drive size gets higher. I know I will have to commit sometime. I am mostly going to use it for ITunes broadcasting though, as I have other external drives that are adequate for backup.
However, were I to purchase a 1 tb drive today it would probably be the Western Digital MyBook, which comes in a 1, 1.5 and 2 TB version. From what I’ve seen, it’s one of the better reviewed ones. You may need the World edition for network storage. Also be aware that many of the 1tb drives out there do not seem to offer RAID, but the Western Digital ones do. You probably know that most 1tb drives are actually 2 500gb drives, and with RAID the backup is mirrored onto 2 drives (leaving you half as much storage but twice the security). With the newer MyBooks you can remove one of the 500gb drives and replace it yourself if it fries. Fan noise is also an issue with many larger drives.
I will be interested to hear more about your experiences as I will probably purchase a drive in the next 6 months.
I recently chose to go with a smaller drive, figuring I’ll eventually back things up over two or three drives. And for some possibly illogical reason I don’t trust the bigger drives just yet. A larger drive like 1TB will probably run hot, so enclosure will be crucial.
I bought a 500gb Seagate Barracuda and partitioned it. Barracuda is the only hard drive I would buy. I got a Vantec Nexstar enclosure for it. I like it better than the Cooler Master I got for my husband.
I have a Micronet external hard drive attached to my Mac Mini. It didn’t work with my AirPort Extreme, apparently there’s a short list of approved hard drive manufacturers. I didn’t try to hard b/c the net working wasn’t important to me. I use the hard drive to hold my music collection and to back up my hard drive. Good luck. Here’s a picture of the network:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lfb/432893257/
I have a Micronet external hard drive attached to my Mac Mini. It didn’t work with my AirPort Extreme, apparently there’s a short list of approved hard drive manufacturers. I didn’t try to hard b/c the net working wasn’t important to me. I use the hard drive to hold my music collection and to back up my hard drive. Good luck. Here’s a picture of the network:
(Trying this without the Flickr link)
I just purchased one and love it, its fast, connects to my Mac or PC. As far as fan noise, I have no complaints and when it does spin up its not all that loud, heck my dell laptop makes more fan noise. Having a Maxtor 1TB, the WD is a better choice as it powers on and off (sleep mode) with my Mac. It is slightly larger than the Maxtor but runs much much cooler which is important to long life.
I would recommend getting Network Attached Storage (NAS) with RAID 1 mirroring. You can get a DNS-323 with dual 750GB SATA drives for about $800. The reason is, all hard drives eventually fail. So you need a backup for your backup drive. Losing 250GB is really bad, losing 1000GB is worse. I will have a review of the DNS-323 coming sometime. The Digital MyBook with network and RAID is another good option mentioned above.
I agree with the comment about the network attached storage. There’s another benefit with those, as well: you can generally swap out drives. So as drive sizes increase and prices fall, you can upgrade. You can find NAS boxes (no drives included) for around $100. Drives themselves are pretty cheap.
For all readers, please remember to build in ways to back up your back-ups. I have been a Mac user since 1987, but over the past three years or so I have experienced multiple external hard drive failures. Most have caused only headaches, relieved by warranties, but one recent one cost the loss of valuable archives. Your family and professional photos that are on your back-up HD should be also burned to DVD in at least two copies. Your expensive back-up HD should also be in two copies. One copy of the DVDs and the HD should be moved to an off-site location (your sister’s house is OK). On two occasions my office building (two different buildings) experienced a 5-alarm fire. My data escaped. But a thief stole all my brother’s home eqpt., including all hard drives — left the DVDs. I use three copies. One at the computer, one off-site, and one in a case that transposes with the other two — take it off-site and switch copies, take it to the computer and switch…keeps all three copies very fresh and current.