Can anyone recommend a reliable external 500Gb hard drive?

[Conquer]

Hello fellow VSL users! I'm an English musician / composer. I recently had an under-guarantee Lacie 500Gb Big Disk Extreme FW drive go down when installing the 10 Vienna Instruments. Lacie UK said that I had to sent the faulty drive back to the dealer rather than directly to them; they are now "waiting for a replacement to arrive", which they also pedantically insist on sending back to the dealer rather than to me, thus dragging out the delay still further. Total estimated time without drive: six weeks.

I'm not impressed with the performance of the drive (which crashed during a perfectly routine installation from DVD, erasing masses of previously-installed data) or Lacie UK's disinterested response to my predicament, and therefore want to buy a new type of 500GB drive for the VI's. Any recommendations? I've heard SATA drives are reliable but know nothing about them.

Thanks for reading this.

Mac G5 / OS 10.4

[mattdean]

I'm a huge fan of Glyph drives. They are dead quiet and totally reliable. They come up to 750Gig.

http://www.glyphtech.com

The GT050 drive has FW400 and a FW 800/400 and eSata version. I have never had a problem with any of the ones I've owned.

I know of some who have had good success with Firmtek eSata drives as well.

http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/index.html

But they are only eSata so you wouldn't be able to share the drive as easily as the Glyph with 4 different connectors.

Of course, they come with a premium, but i found it worth it.

[stevesong]

Conquer:

I've had very good experience with drives from Other World Computing (http://www.macsales.com/) - - which are considerably less expensive than those offered by Glyph. They, like Glyph, have external drives that offer eSATA, FW 880/400 and USB 2.0 connectors on one drive enclosure. The 500GB model is $329.99 (U.S.) If you call them (they have an international toll free number) they will tell you what drive mechanism the drive uses. There are only a few manufacturers of hard drive mechanisms (e.g. Seagate, Mator, Hitachi, Western Digitial), while many companies, including Glyph, Other World Computing and LaCie, make the enclosures and bridge boards (bridgeboards are necessary for Firewire and USB connections.)

SATA means serial ATA. Generally speaking it is faster than Firewire or USB - - which is why internal SATA drives are standard in most recent computers. No bridge board is required, but you will need to install a PCI card in your computer to connect external SATA drives. If you decide to go this route, I would recommend cards made my Firmtek. I have had absolutely no problems with my Firmtek card and they have a reputation for reliability. Also, Firmtek SATA cards are among the only ones that allow you to boot from an external SATA drive as they require no drivers - simple plug and play. My sample libraries are installed on SATA RAID 0 drive array emplying two 500GB Seagate drives mounted in an inexpensive ($80.00) Other World Computing enclosure connected to my G5 by means of a Firmtek SeriTek/1VE4 SATA card installed in a PCIx slot in the G5.

I had two LaCie firewire drives go south shortly after the warranty period was up. There was nothing wrong with drive mechanisms, just with LaCie's bridgeboards. I removed the drives from the LaCie enclosures and put them in enclosures sold by Other World Computing and have had no problems since.

[dpcon]

My 400 gig OWC FW 800 went south after about 8 months. They replaced it quickly but it just goes to show there's not certainty with drives from anywhere. cm mentioned that a lot of Hitachi's have failed. (I'm not sure what the make the drive is in the OWC.)

[Conquer]

Thanks mattdean, stevesong and dpcon for this useful information. Do any other folks out there have any recommendations?

[cm]

just the opposite, a warning:
we noticed that the new maxtor onetouch III series don't mount reliable on macs - must be a controller incompatibility ...
christian

[DM33]

Few more things about Glyph drives you should know is their warranty.

Internal hard drives have 5 year warranties on them with a 24 hour
advanced replacement in the first 12 months.

Their external (FW/USB) drives, model GT050xxx, have 3 years with
advanced replacement in the first 12 months.

Their NetDrives don't have this sort of warranty. They are only for archiving.

They don't advertise this but, if a drive malfunctions but still spins up
they will try to pull any data they can off of it and dump it on a replacement
drive for you for free!

I only have glyph drives in my computer.

[dfhage]

I am very jappy with my G-Tech Raid disks http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-raid.cfm

Regards

Dave Hage

[Jaimo]

Another vote for the G-Raid. It's built like a tank, and I haven't had any issues with mine since getting it 8 months ago.

[stevesong]

I must say that Glyph drives seem phenomenally overpriced. A 500GB Glyph drive sells for $699.97 at Sweetwater Sound. Other World Computing on the other hand offers a 500GB drive with a quad interface (Firewire 800 and 400, USB 2 and eSATA) for $329 - less than half the price of the Glyph drive. Remember Glyph only makes the case and the bridgeboard, not the actual drive mechanism.

In place of either the Glph drive or G-Raid could put together your own RAID out of easy to install components - - a good external SATA card, two Seagate 320GB SATA drives (with 5 year warranties) ($120 each) and a Firmtek dual bay eSATA (this is a new model not the older pre eSATA drive enclosure) hot swap drive enclosure ($200). A 1 Terabyte RAID 0 array with two 500 GB Western Digital RE2 drives (also with 5 year warranties) would be about $160 more. The G-Raid is more expensive and, if it's the model I believe referred to, is not hot-swappable.

BTW putting the drives in the above-mentioned Firmtek housing is a cinch since there are no wires to attach: you simply mount the drives in the removable drive trays and insert the trays into the housing - - they connect directly to the backpane.

[Conquer]

Thanks everyone for all the useful info. I agree Glyph drives are expensive. Do I really need a RAID array, given that the sample data is already backed up (as it were) on the original DVD's? I'm currently leaning towards a single eSATA drive (500GB or more), still open to suggestions though.

[dfhage]

The main advantage of a RAID array in this instance is speed compared with a single drive.

Regards

Dave Hage

[stevesong]

RAID 0 arrays have only one advantage and that is speed. Basically a two drive RAID 0 array is twice as fast as each the single drives. "A RAID 0 (also known as a stripe set or striped volume) splits data evenly across two or more disks with no parity information for redundancy." from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks#RAID_0

Thus RAID 0 is ideal when speed rather than data security is the main concern as it is with sample libraries where one has a backup by virtue of having the original data on DVDs. (RAID level 1 is for security, it is comprised of two disks which are mirrors of each other, its speed is the same as a single disk.)

A two drive RAID 0 array is twice as likely to fail as a single drive simply because it contains two drives - - if one of the drives in the array fails, then all the data in the array is lost. If you use a RAID 0 array for your sample libraries but do not want to go through the lengthy process of installing them again from the DVDs, then you might consider employing a third single drive which duplicates the data on the RAID 0 array. In the event of the failure of one of the disks comprising the RAID 0 array one could then substitute a new disk for the failed disk, recreate the array and copy the data from the backup disk. One of the advantages of this solution is that the backup disk is only rarely turned on, so its chances of failure are significantly less than that of drives that are constantly on and subject to stress.

If one were to go with this third drive solution, I would strongly recommend purchasing a hot-swappable housing. With such a housing one can create backup sets of all data on different drives - - and keep some of the backup drives off site so that even if your studio suffers some catastrophe you will still have all your significant data (and thereby retain your sanity!)

This is a very good alternative to tape backup. Reliable tape backup mechanisms are very expensive (starting at over $1000) and tape (also relatively expensive) is a somewhat ethereal backup medium. Hard drives a relatively inexpensive ($85 for a 250GB mechanism) and hot swap housings are also relatively inexpensive ($120 + $20 for each additional drive tray). This solution is far more reliable and inexpensive than tape backup - at least for a small studio.

[Conquer]

Thanks dfhage and stevesong. Since speed is not the issue here, I'm going to rule out a RAID-based multiple drive system. A single reliable eSATA 500GB+ drive is what I'm after. Any positive recommendations other than Glyph (too expensive?) Should I be looking at buying a separate housing and putting in a Seagate drive?

[stevesong]

I'd recommend getting a hotswap drive enclosure and buying at least one extra tray for it. The reason for this is that installing a drive in such an enclosure is extremely easy and it gives you the capability of using one enclosure with multiple drives - e.g. one drive for your sample library, another for backup of your files. I have an enclosure sold by MacGurus http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sata/BurlyHotswap.php

Despite the name of the vendor, the enclosure is not Mac specific, however it is now listed as "out of stock," so if you are interested to find out when it will become available again, you should contact them. (They have an online inquiry form and are quick to respond). This enclosure costs $121.00. Extra drive trays are $20

A similar enclosure is available from Granite Digital http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg47_hot-swapdrivessystems.htm

However, this enclosure is more expensive ($150) and the drive trays are $30.

A third possibility is the new FirmTek SeriTek/2EN2 enclosure which can hold two drives but can be used with just one drive installed. It costs $200. http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2en2/

This enclosure as the advantage of having the new eSATA connectors on the housing. (The other two drives have the older SATA connector - - a connector not designed for frequent plugging and unplugging - - the rationale being that while you may swap drives in and out of the enclosure you don't need to unplug and plug the cable to the computer very often. Most newer SATA cards have eSATA connectors which means that, if you have a card with eSATA connectors and decide upon the MacGurus and Granite Digital enclosures, you would need a shielded SATA to eSATA cable.)

While the FirmTek SeriTek/2EN2 costs more than the other enclosures it comes with two trays so, for example the Granite Digital enclosure and one extra tray costs only $20 less than the FirmTek SeriTek/2EN2.

I hope this is helpful.

[JWL]

I know this thread is over a month old, but I am wondering why the following information hasn't been addressed here:

1. Upon releasing the Cube, the VSL team made a very distinct recommendation to install the 10 volumes over two drives instead of streaming the entire Cube from one single drive.

2. I've read a lot of posts of people using RAID 0 for the sake of speed, but perhaps the risk of data failure and reinstallation time is not so much of an issue to some users? Granted, one can stop their work for a day or two to reinstall the library from all the DVDs (a time consuming PITA) or have an archive backup drive just to hold the library for file restoration without having to decompress files and monitor the swapping out of multiple DVDs-- let alone the glitches that have occured with some versions of the installer on the DVDs as opposed to the downloadable installer updates.

I know cm and others have mentioned something about both these issues-- as well as having made the very important point of not going cheap for cheap's sake when setting up a drive system for VI.

Of all I've learned from this and other sources, the following is true:

1. Use at least two HDs for the complete Cube-- and several smaller drives are even easier to maintain and perform better, especially when run in parallel and not in a series

2. RAID 0 requires some sort of backup-- one glitch and everything goes to pot

3. What you save on cheap drives will be paid for later with tears

4. FW is okay. SATA, eSATA, and eSATA II are best.

I'm just trying to sort out the facts and to reconcile the HD victories and woes of VI users against the VSL team's recommendations.

[plurye]

JWL -- thanks for the summary. So...

1) What exact drives do you use for VI?

2. If you don't mind, what distinguishes SATA, eSATA, and eSATA II drives from one another?

Thanks,
Peter

[clarkcontrol]

Christian,

My Maxtor onetouch III 300gb works fine on my G4 2x1.25 (as well as the onetouch I and II) so could you please elaborate on this mounting problem? I (knock on wood) have had great experiences with these drives so I am curious about this warning.

Clark

[cm]

clark, we noticed this for the onetouch III on G5 ppc, imac ppc and imac intel - i could double-check it on a G4 1.25. issue has been it *silently disappeared* somewhen during work resp. had to be disconnected and reconnected to mount at all after booting the machine. the onetouch II didn't show this behaviour on this (same) machines.

since apple invented FW (together with adaptec) and the issue with erasing FW-harddrives (after a firmware/OSX update a year or so ago) i'm wondering if there might be some proprietary (undocumented?) features used on macs which some (FW-harddrive-)controllers like and some not.

interestingly (and still without any explanation from my side) there has been a similar issue on windows for ICE-cubes when upgrading to XP SP2 a while ago (drive mounted as device, but didn't show up with drive-letter in the filesystem) ...
christian

[stevesong]

SATA = Serial ATA

SATA II = Serial ATA drives theoretically (very theoretically) capable of a maximum transfer rate of 3GBs vs. the original spec of 1.5GBs

E-SATA a newer type of shielded connector for external SATA enclosures and ports on SATA PCI cards.

The origianl kind of SATA connectors were designed mainly for internally mounted drive where you'd be likely to connect the drive once and disconnect it only after it failed. Thus these connectors were not designed for frequent plugging and unplugging. Since it was fairly to easy to break these connectors, a new standard for sturdier external connectors emerged. That is what E-SATA is.