I usually buy my enclosures/drives separately. It seems you get better warranties on drives this way. The last WD drives I bought have 5 year warranties. I'd stick with them...or seagate, I'm sure everyone on the list has a horror story involving at least one or more vendors regarding hard drives. I also get my drives from a local dealer wholesale so if they do go bad in the first year I have instant exchange, after that it's advance RMA from the drive maker.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707170 I bought one of those recently, except the single drive dock. Works wonderfully and comes with esata and USB. On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 8:24 AM, Julie Kubal <julieku...@yahoo.com> wrote: > I was the OP on this subject, but was out of town for a while so didn't get > a chance to respond. It's been interesting reading everyone's responses. I > think I can safely say that I don't need a RAID, I just need to regularly > back-up my files so I am going to go with two individual drives. > > As I stated, I currently have all Lacie drives, but they are more expensive > than Western Digital. It's tempting just to go with Lacie again due to > familiarity and also tempting to go with a cheaper alternative. Is it the > case that Lacie is basically just an enclosure and that the actual drive can > be any number of different manufacturers? In that case it seems like a waste > to pay more for Lacie. I know that all drives have a risk of failure, so > does the brand really matter at all?Does anyone have specific > recommendations or opinions? > Thanks, > Julie > > On 10 May 2009, at 18:22, Tom Piwowar wrote: > > On last week's show, one of the guys recommended a DROBO for external >>> hard drive storage . I looked into it and I think this might be >>> overkill for what I need, plus the up front cost is too high for me >>> >> >> Those guys are not "the guys." I find those guys quite distressing. >> >> DROBO is a terrible recommendation and demonstrates the person's >> cluelessness. It didn't take you long to figure this out for yourself. I >> hope this recommendation is just due to cluelessness and not an attempt >> to push something they are selling. >> >> I think I just want to have a RAID 1 (mirrored RAID) setup to back-up >>> my photo archive. >>> >> >> Bad idea. This arrangement will protect you against the least likely type >> of problem (drive failure) and will merely replicate the most likely >> types of problems (soft failures) onto both drives. >> >> Is there any advantage to getting this kind of set up rather than two >>> individual 1 TB drives that I set up in a RAID 1 configuration myself >>> like I've done in the past? >>> >> >> Get 2 individual drives, but do not set them up as RAID. Instead run a >> backup program to sync up the two drives periodiclly. This will insulate >> the second drive from some types of soft errors. >> >> Better than syncing is to run TimeMachine, because it will protect you >> against more types of soft failures. For example if you accidently delete >> files or if files become corrupted TimeMachine will let you go back to >> previous versions to replace them. If you go with TimeMachine the backup >> drive should be about twice as large as the primary drive. >> >> Running the backup once a day usually works, but you could run it much >> more often if necessary. TimeMachine runs hourly by default. >> >> Lastly, after many years of reliable use, one of my old Lacie drives >>> has failed. I have the other half of the RAID as backup. I'd like to >>> rebuild the RAID and was wondering if I could just open up the >>> enclosure with the bad drive and replace it. Is that a bad idea or is >>> it pretty straightforward and easy to do? >>> >> >> With most RAIDs you have to match the two drives quite closely. That is >> why old, obsolete drives are often sold at such crazy high prices. It >> might be safer to just copy your files to the new drive and get a fresh >> start. >> >> >> ************************************************************************* >> ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** >> ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** >> ************************************************************************* >> > > > ************************************************************************* > ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** > ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** > ************************************************************************* > ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
