External storage recommendation

TeeJayHoward

Limpness Supreme
Joined
Feb 8, 2005
Messages
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We're going to be selling our house soon and moving in with the in-laws while our new house is built. That means 6-8 months with all my gear in storage. I will be bringing my Mac Pro (trash can) as my only computer for this time period. Unfortunately, it's lacking in storage, and I'd like to take about 7TB worth of data with me for use during this time. Can anyone recommend a quality external storage device?

My requirements:

1) 7+TB usable
2) Quiet
3) Doesn't get hot
4) Doesn't draw large amounts of power
5) Relatively small
6) Relatively cheap ($250-300ish? More if it's worth it.)
7) Usable with a Mac
8) USB3 preferred, Thunderbolt OK, NAS also acceptable
9) Capable of copying 7TB worth of data in under a week
10) Reliable
 
I'd have a look at a Asustor box, usually give you a better bang for the buck than Synology and Qnap.

A better (performance) and more long lasting would be getting a Dell T20 box (179$ as we speak right now) which is very cheap and quite power efficient running FreeNAS.

As far as HDDs goes, go for the HGST Megascale HDDs (may not be ideal however) HGST MegaScale DC 4000.B 4 TB Internal hard drive SATA 6Gb/s 3.5" HMS5C4040BLE640 or Toshiba's 4TB HDDs.

Toshiba 4 TB Internal HDD - 3.5" - X300 - SATA 6Gb/s - 7,200 rpm
 
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Buy a 4-bay Synology and put some WD Reds in.

It'll work great with your Mac, even as a Time Machine volume. It'll do 7tb in less than a week I've done that before.
 
For people looking for something simple, quiet, reliable and that works out of the box, i recommend synology also. Synology Disk Station 4-Bay Diskless Network Attached Storage (DS416j) fits most of what you are looking, there are higher end 4bays with better throughput and more capable, even with better fans, but up to you if its worth the increase of price.
 
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Just get an 8TB external drive? Not sure why everyone is recommending you 4 bay NAS setups when a single drive is all you need.
 
Unless you can find used drives, the disk space alone is going to run you $300-$350. I agree with Blue Fox, as long as network connectivity isn't a requirement, the simplest and cheapest route will be a single external 8TB drive.
 
USB external drives have a grave disadvantage: their USB to SATA board is soldered onto the HDD itself, meaning that the board is an additional source of drive failure. Such mode of failure is less likely to happen in an NAS or even a simple USB SATA box, because the two pieces of hardware are seperate (failure of that part does not necessarily equate loss of data).

It is for this reason alone that I personally prefer externalising an internal HDD rather than buying an external. I believe 6TB is at the price point where it's cheaper to go externalised internal route, and 8TB is just a touch more expensive.

Finally, if this means anything to anyone: USB drives are often 2yr warranty, internals are 3yr, some has 5yr.
 
USB external drives have a grave disadvantage: their USB to SATA board is soldered onto the HDD itself, meaning that the board is an additional source of drive failure. Such mode of failure is less likely to happen in an NAS or even a simple USB SATA box, because the two pieces of hardware are seperate (failure of that part does not necessarily equate loss of data).

It is for this reason alone that I personally prefer externalising an internal HDD rather than buying an external. I believe 6TB is at the price point where it's cheaper to go externalised internal route, and 8TB is just a touch more expensive.

Finally, if this means anything to anyone: USB drives are often 2yr warranty, internals are 3yr, some has 5yr.
Uhh, no, that just isn't true. Nothing is soldered on. People pull disks out of external drives all the time.
 
OK, I stand corrected, I swore there was a photo I saw a while back that showed the USB translator being soldered onto the Drive itself (meaning it wasn't possible to remove it without destroying the drive), so I assumed the industry moved towards that.
 
This happens on 2.5 inch external drives like WDC Elements.
 
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