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Archive 2014 · Storage - what have you had luck with?

  
 
Wes_S
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


Just got my D810 and then realized.... I'm going to need a LOT more storage to handle these potentially massive files. I'll probably start looking for an external hard drive in the 3-4Tb range. Been a while since I've shopped for something like this. I do plan on doing my research via Google, but I was curious as to what you guys have been using that you consider to be reliable. I'm on a budget, so buying one of those costly RAID array systems is out of the question. I have a Back Blaze account, so all of my files are currently being backed up to the cloud. What I need are brand recommendations. For example, at one time I know Western Digital used to make a decent product, but I've heard that their quality is not what it used to be. Is that still true? BTW - I'm running a PC (not a Mac).

Thanks!



Jul 29, 2014 at 09:43 AM
amacal1
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


I just bought a QNAP raid NAS unit. I put x2 mirrored 2TB drives in there on raid 1. I've been very impressed with it, but I'm more impressed with all of the things it can do that I'm not using it for.

I'm satisfied with QNAP, but I think Synology may have more development.



Jul 29, 2014 at 10:26 AM
Alan321
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


At one time or another I've probably had something from all of the big brands die on me. The best bet is probably to not buy the very cheapest. Get a drive that is made to be on all the time, even if you don't actually leave it on all the time - one of those enterprise grade drives. That should work nicely in your PC. If you need something similar for an external backup then you will probably have to buy a suitable empty case and put the drive into it - they're not likely to come pre-packaged in a single USB-3 case like so many of the consumer drives do.

Physically, I think we're down to two or three different HDD manufacturers left in the world whereas there used to dozens. And then, as the floods crisis revealed a few years ago, those few manufacturers got some of the essential components from an even smaller number of manufacturers - mostly from a single underwater factory.

I got a drobo 5d not so long ago. It was practically dead within a fortnight. All the dual-drive redundancy counted for nothing when the container failed. That can happen with any multi-drive solution including on-the-motherboard RAID controllers.

Even SSDs can die. I've had several of them die too.

And of course, you might even have a problem with USB drivers in Windows that affects data reliability on some USB connections.

For performance reasons, I suggest that you buy drives twice as big as you might need and use just half of it. e.g. put a single 2TB partition on a 4TB drive. That first half is faster on average than the second half. The first third is much faster than the last third. The first track is about twice as fast as the last track. If absolutely necessary in future, you can expand that partition.

- Alan



Jul 29, 2014 at 12:23 PM
ggreene
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


I've had very good luck with Hitachi drives but others have not. HD's are like storage cards for camera's. No matter what company you choose you can read horror stories about them on the internet. There is always going to be a low percentage of failures no matter what you buy.

On my Windows7 system I had 2 internal drives that I mirrored to eSATA drives for backup/offsite using Robocopy. On my Mac Pro I do a similar thing with Carbon Copy Cloner. Basically just backs up what is new so it's fast.



Jul 29, 2014 at 08:15 PM
RyanGphoto
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


I LOVE My Synology 1812+ unit.. Its like a Drobo with less problems. I can mix and match drives and sizes etc..

I can have 2 drives fail before I have to worry about anything being lost.

Let me know if you like more info.

Ryan G



Jul 29, 2014 at 09:16 PM
ggOk
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


I learned over years not to use anything over 1TB. instead, I am constantly backing up online. I now use 500GB SSD for faster workflow and tranfer at nights.

/r
Andy



Jul 29, 2014 at 10:39 PM
Lovesong
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


I've burned my fingers with most brands of external HDDs- from the cheap $20 plastic enclosures to an Xserve with a 21TB array.

WD and Seagate still make the more reliable consumer drives. Deskstars were fondly called Deathstars in my previous lab, as they would spontaneously fry every so often. Enterprise-level drives (which you're probably not looking at) are six in one hand, half-a-dozen in the other.

That being said, the other component, which is as critical as the actual drive is the HDD controller. That's where you get most of the difference in performance, reliability, and durability. Alan321 already mentioned the Drobo, and his experiences echo the general consensus on that drive. In my experience, I have had success with G-tech and with LaCie drives. They are fast, seemingly indestructible, and I am yet to have a drive fail on me. For pure plug and play drive (yes, I know you have to reformat the G-Drive to NTFS), I can't recommend them enough.



Jul 29, 2014 at 10:44 PM
Paul Mo
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


I am using a desktop whose mobo has 8 sata headers. It currently 7 HDD's in it for various purposes - Mac boot, Windows boot, Photo drive, Capture A (video capture drive), Scratch, et al, including a backup disk for my main photo drive. So if you are on a desktop you may have more capacity for drives than you know of.

Externally I use a 4-bay Orico USB3 enclosure. It's not capable of raid, I simply back up to it manually using Carbon Copy Cloner and rotate drives through it - storing some under lock and key at work.

I am interested in an elegant NAS but can't yet afford it, nor do I need one just yet.



Jul 30, 2014 at 12:59 AM
eyal.ma
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


I would suggest getting 2 drives at 4TB size, like WD green (low power usage and low cost), black (higher performance and longer warranty), seagate desktop line, and put them inside the computer at raid 1 (mirror), so you get a full copy if one drive fail. They have a good rep regarding reliability.

Also get an external 2-4TB drive which you can do a weekly backups for your data.

This should make it safe enough mostly. Safer means using 2 external drives and backup to them intermediately, so if one backup fail, you still have one more someplace else.

Or adding an external raid 5 array and another external drive for offline backup.



Jul 30, 2014 at 09:27 AM
Camperjim
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


Keeping the growth of the files down to a minimum is the best plan. I used to cull out the worst shots and save the rest. Now I pick the images I want to keep and delete all of the others.

Big drives are no fun. It takes forever to back them up. For routine use I settled on Seagate portable 1.5 Tb drives from Costco. Unfortunately the cost of drives has not come down much in the past several years.



Jul 31, 2014 at 01:50 AM
Keith B.
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


The OWC 'Mercury Elite Al' drives, though they market themselves as a "Mac oriented" supplier, have been the most reliable brand of external enclosure drives I've used.
I'll continue to buy from them.



Aug 03, 2014 at 02:49 AM
OntheRez
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


Doesn't really matter if you use a Mac or a PC - drives and enclosures are essentially the same. Only current exception is that Apple is pushing the Thunderbolt interface which while blazing fast doesn't have much support over on the dark side

From 30+ years of using a wide variety of types (anybody remember Bernoulli?), interfaces: serial, pre-ATA, SCSI, ATA, SATA, eSATA, FW, USB, etc., and likely drives from every maker, I can safely say that some percentage will fail no matter what or why. Someone (can't remember who to credit) once noted that read/write to a hard drive is analogous to flying a Concorde from NYC to Paris 6" above sea level.

I strongly endose CamperJim's remark. You don't need them all. I doubt 5% of my files survive and some percentage of that is kept for sentimental reasons. (I also shoot >10,000 clicks a year.) I keep a fast SSD for immediately holding and work. It backs up to an internal 1TB drive (a WD I believe) nightly, and then to an external eSATA - an OWC Mercury Elite also 1TB. I don't have verifiable data, but I also am skeptical of non-server use of massive 2, 4, 8, TB arrays. Yes, big organizations with real IT people use these and more, but they are redundantly backed up and have hot swap spares always available. I'd hate to lose a 4TB setup as I just don't want to invest the time and money into the whole thing. OWC is highly recommended and while they are Mac oriented virtually any of their products work with any operating system.

I note that you are using Backblaze. They did a somewhat controversial analysis of their drive failure rates An interesting read.

I'd suggest not getting overly concerned about brand and concentrate on interface speed and multiple copies. I'd also echo Allen in noting this isn't the place to buy cheap. If nothing else you get longer warranties.

Robert



Aug 03, 2014 at 09:36 AM
EB-1
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


I have somewhere between 100-150TB of drives and can only echo the main points above. Keep multiple copies at different locations and make sure you have a mechanism of ensuring data integrity. Don't be hung up on brands. I've had failures with just about all current brands and many that no longer exist. Buying bulk OEM drives that are poorly packaged and shipped is a recipe for higher failure rates. I'm not a fan of the pre-built external drives with 3.5" disks; I prefer to configure my own. Train your mind to think that any drive can fail at any time and always be prepared. I keep a few spare drives around for immediate replacement.

EBH



Aug 03, 2014 at 10:11 AM
aubsxc
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


Wes_S wrote:
Just got my D810 and then realized.... I'm going to need a LOT more storage to handle these potentially massive files. I'll probably start looking for an external hard drive in the 3-4Tb range. Been a while since I've shopped for something like this. I do plan on doing my research via Google, but I was curious as to what you guys have been using that you consider to be reliable. I'm on a budget, so buying one of those costly RAID array systems is out of the question. I have a Back Blaze account, so all of my files
...Show more

First, do you have room to expand your storage internally? If so, I would recommend the Western Digital Black desktop drives. I have used a ton of these over the years and have never had issues with one, and my experiences are more or less less mirrored across the community from what I have read. They are expensive but also come with a 5-year warranty which is rare in today's market other than with Enterprise (or near-) line drives which cost much more money. Hitachi and Toshiba also make high quality desktop drives, but I don't think Samsung does any more (I have had good experiences with Samsung also). I would avoid Seagate simply because there has been so much negative press out there over the past few years.

For external storage, are you looking for something that you can hook up to the computer and use as a work drive? Or offline storage? If plan to actively work on the drives and not just use them as storage, you have two options:

1. buy an external enclosure and fill it with your own drive(s), or
2. buy a pre-built external drive with a drive in it.

Obviously, you have more choices with the former in the matter of which hard drive to use. I don't have a lot of experience with external drives because I have more than enough storage in my desktop machines and use a home server for backup. I have used externals made by Western Digital, Seagate and Samsung and not had issues with any of them. I would recommend you find one that uses an eSATA or USB3.0 connector, assuming your computer has these connectors available. Working (and even backing up ) on/to a drive over USB2.0 will be slow and frustrating and limited by the bandwidth of the interface. You might check out the Thunderbolt enclosures as well, but you likely find them to be cost prohibitive.





Aug 03, 2014 at 03:02 PM
tcphoto
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


I have been lucky when it comes to hard drives. I bought into G Technology and am very happy with them over the past eight years. I own five drives, two desktop and three mini enclosures. I have paired them to be redundant on data in case one goes down and another for Apple Time Machine backups. I don't buy the large capacity drive so I don't years of work on a single drive, I prefer to spread it out over multiple drives in case of failure.


Aug 05, 2014 at 01:46 PM
EB-1
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


G Technology must be an enclosure manufacturer or system integrator, etc. AFAIK there are only three main companies that make desktop (3.5" SATA) drives: Western Digital (including Hitachi Global Storage Technology), Seagate (including former Samsung HDD), and Toshiba (including some Hitachi technology).

EBH



Aug 06, 2014 at 09:22 PM
ctgoldwing
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


fwiw I have a couple of comments.

Although I breadboarded my 1st digital computer in 1976, these days its
1-800-call-the-kids. Two of my sons are computer engineers and their recommendations were WD Red drives (4tb ea) and Synology for NAS running raid 5.

The other think I would add is the old saying, "If it isn't backed up off site, its not backed up"

One of my sons & I run scripts that connect our servers at night via vpn and cross backup anything that has changed.



Aug 07, 2014 at 05:14 PM
Lars Johnsson
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


I have a few Drobos. They have worked very good both as storage and backup


Aug 08, 2014 at 01:47 AM
workerdrone
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


I have an external drive cradle that holds desktop internal drives so you can swap them at will. It's from OWC and has esata, firewire 800, and usb connection options.

Bought three 3Tb drives for the bulk of my storage and I clone the one inside my imac (plus the SSD that holds the system files) out to the other two at regular intervals. One of those sits at the bank in a safe deposit box and gets swapped out with one at home, also at regular intervals.

It's not enterprise level but I feel pretty well backed up and it was very reasonable overall for cost. Plus I can use it for my wife's laptop without any confusion - I just use the original 1Tb imac drive for that, better than the nothing she would otherwise have)

I tried cloud backup but personally I just didn't feel good about it and my D800 generates a lot of data



Aug 08, 2014 at 11:56 AM
shutterbug guy
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Storage - what have you had luck with?


I've had decent luck with WD Passports, most recently the 2 tb's. I just buy 2 at a time and mirror the files on both and keep in separate places. Not scientific and probably not the best method but it's cheap, dirty and easy.


Aug 08, 2014 at 12:09 PM





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