[Hidden-tech] Recommendations for 1.5 or 2 TB External Hard Drives for OSX

[Rich Roth]

There have been a number of good comments about backup drives,
with a few including comments about reliability (or lack thereof)
with some of these systems.

This becomes a real issue as the drives get larger -- even with lower cost per Mbyte.
Although there is a solution - the technical term is RAID
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
I like the original meaning: Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks

And many of the drive units have a reliability mode, which is
either Raid-1 (mirroring ) or Raid-5 (fancier words)

if you are a commercial user (meaning you make your living with what you are backing up)
then spend the extra for Raid-5 -- for a more casual user get at least
RAID-1 -- I even do that on our desktop machines.
These are both more expensive then the cheap usb drives,
in the long run it's worth the extra.

We have both Western Digital My world Sharespace
and Synology Diskless System Disk Station,
both are in a few different models.
We were most impressed with the Synology.

And for the more techies, the better ones are both linux using running an ARM processor
so you can do more then just store on it, they run as media centers, and even
web servers.

The bottom line is with RAID setups, a single drive crash will not lose
any data -- even the better cheap drives come with mirroring available, so long
as it is 2 drive unit - just be sure to setup for the reliability mode.

Rich


On 3/14/2011 1:19 PM, Lynn Nichols wrote:
> I'm looking to replace my external backup drive for Mac OSX backup -- 
> can anyone who has recently bought a 1.5 or 2 TB drive for Mac use 
> recommend a particular make or model? I'm leaning towards Seagate or 
> Western Digital but I'd be interested in good experiences with any 
> make/model.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Lynn A. Nichols, Starstruck Design
> Gill, MA • 413-863-7752 • lynn at starstruckdesign.com
> http://www.starstruckdesign.com • http://www.shopwesternmass.com
>

-- 
Rich Roth
Webmaster/Steering Committee Member
Hidden-tech http://www.hidden-tech.net
The Talent you need is right here,
Join and share your skills