Building an External Drive system

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gregnash

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Ok so I have recently switched back to OSX (well not recently, about a year ago, but started on it way back in the day) and now that I am finally having time to get my photography hobby going, doing video stuff with my GoPro and videos from iTunes I am starting to fill up the 500gb internal drive.

So I have started looking at other solution (not just a Time Machine backup) but other solutions to expand my storage space for things like videos, photos, movies, music, etc for that inevitable day when the OS crashed on me and I have to start from scratch again.

I currently have the 640gb HDD from my old PC I build sitting in a "toaster" external enclosure but I would really like a dual bay type enclosure that I can add a 1tb or 2tb drive to along with the 640gb drive.

So in doing so, should I look at something with Firewire 800 or would USB 2.0 be sufficient for transfer speeds? This would couple with a 2011 iMac 21.5, Core i5 with 4gb of ram.

I was thinking about getting something like this, using the 640 as a "time machine" drive and then getting a 2TB drive to throw in there along with it that will be additional storage (or vice versa).

Thoughts? Any special considerations I should be aware of?
 
im not sure about backups with OSX, but i do know that you will need to figure out how much you will need, and then double it. you ALWAYS want a second copy of everything thats at all important to you, and i think years' worth of photography fits in that category. whether its on your computer and an external or 2 externals, make sure you have everything important doubled. for speed, i would recommend going with usb3/firewire combo dock if you can. one thing to consider is that PCs usually dont have firewire, so if you want to share your stuff with someone else who has a pc then you will have to find another way to do it. if your mac has usb3 then usb3 only is an option too. (sorry i dont know anything about macs.) usb2 speeds are ok for transferring a video at a time or a folder full of pictures, but if youre moving entire libraries of videos or long 1080p videos from your gopro, then you will quickly get frustrated by usb2 speed.
 
Thanks the wife and I had to go to the genius bar regarding something with her macbook so I was able to ask one of the guys that is actually very good and knowledgeable. Basically, he said that I don't really have to worry about much until I want to share the drive over the network with windows computers, from there I have to enable sharing, turn-on smb and everything should be good to go from there. He did recommend going with a Firewire enclosure if at all possible, USB2.0 would be ok but on larger transfers it would start to show the speed limitations.

So with that said, WHEN THE HELL did the price of WD Black drives go up? I can remember when the 2TB WD Blacks came out I could find them easily for right around $100, easily less than $150. Now though, seems that everyone wants $150-$200?

Would I be ok going with one of the 5400rpm Green drives? Or should I be looking elsewhere at like Seagate, Samsung, or Hitachi? Been a while since I have been in the PC building game so my information is a bit lacking.
 
gregnash said:
Thanks the wife and I had to go to the genius bar regarding something with her macbook so I was able to ask one of the guys that is actually very good and knowledgeable. Basically, he said that I don't really have to worry about much until I want to share the drive over the network with windows computers, from there I have to enable sharing, turn-on smb and everything should be good to go from there. He did recommend going with a Firewire enclosure if at all possible, USB2.0 would be ok but on larger transfers it would start to show the speed limitations.

So with that said, WHEN THE HELL did the price of WD Black drives go up? I can remember when the 2TB WD Blacks came out I could find them easily for right around $100, easily less than $150. Now though, seems that everyone wants $150-$200?

Would I be ok going with one of the 5400rpm Green drives? Or should I be looking elsewhere at like Seagate, Samsung, or Hitachi? Been a while since I have been in the PC building game so my information is a bit lacking.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, that would be the great floods of 2011 that literally sunk a goodly chunk of harddrive production lines underwater. Seriously.

That said, for a backup solution, the green drives are fine.
 
yeah all HDD prices are terrible right now. if you can wait at all, try to buy as few now and as many toward the end of this year/beginning of 2013 and drives will be about half the price they are now. the floods more than doubled prices for all spinning disk drives. and go with greens for all your storage drives if you arent running any programs off them. they will run cooler, and save you a lot of money on electricity. :)
 
Ah that is true, I did not think of that. Guess that would make sense.
Ok so the 5400rpm drives should be fine then.
Any other brands I should now look at other then WD (always had good luck with them)?
 
actually i think lately WD has been having problems, i used to go with them always but now i love my samsung F4s. all hard drives fail, its only a matter of when. thats why you need to be prepared and have everything backed up. i cannot stress that enough. try ripping 200 dvds to your comp and then have them all gone one day. then you will understand. :/ there are a few drive models that fail faster/more often that you can research or maybe someone can tell you, but as for maker or "best" drive, its always a crap shoot. some people will tell you they had 10 WDs that have never had a problem and 5 seagates fail in a row, and then someone else will come and tell you the exact opposite. just avoid the (few) really bad models and back everything up and youll be fine. also i recommend going with 3TB drives unless you have a big case that can fit a lot. i can only fit 6 absolute max in my server and im thinking about exchanging all my 2TB drives for 3TB now. :) 4TB drives are still too expensive imo, when prices come back down i think 2TB and 3TB will be your best bet.
 
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