Best Hard Drive Raid Solution

Just had to spend much $$$ for recovery of data from a 3 TB hard drive....NOW....I want to know the best solution to make sure this does NOT happen again. I would assume it to be a RAID solution but know very little about that other than multiple hard drives capturing the same data as a redundant system. Any recommendations here...at this point, money is not the main concern but secure data..
I am thinking anywhere from a 3 TB to a 8 TB solution...
Thanks in advance,
Maurice

There have been a series of interesting evaluations of 3TB drives published on various Mac and PC hardware sites. Basically, 3TB drives seem to be the more fragile and failure prone. The articles list some brands, too.
The theory and practice of backing up mission critical data have not changed in decades. As Luis says, redundant is not that same as protected. If your RAID is sitting next to your computer and your office is burglarized or destroyed, your backup is gone, too, which is the same as not having one. Your backups must be solid and offsite to be considered legitimate.
However, having a redundant RAID rack for backup is not a bad idea by itself. You just need to have it on your network and in another physical location.
Most video people don't understand the value of backing up until their drive fails. I will also add that today's ability to shoot 4k (for no good reason) results in huge files that make 3TB single platter drives look very attractive.

Similar Messages

  • Best external hard drive/RAID drive for weddings and events

    Hello,
    With all the drive possibilities out there, what would be the best, most reliable, and cost effective external hard drive/RAID drive to purchase for weddings/events and other videos on a single computer system?
    Thanks,
    Jordan

    Brian
    Did read your other posts and agree with them.
    As we all know, it will depend on the amount of footage and resolution as to how much needs to be transported around. Given that its DV or HDV and I'm guessing only a few hours of fottage then there are a few 2 drive esata boxes about which are as portable as some lacie/gtech drives.
    www.caldigit.com/S2VRDuo.asp
    or one of the new GTech drives that have a sata port as well as fw could be good.
    Re the 2 bus issue, I would be delighted to be wrong about it. It is through the Avid tech support that I got this info. Todate, I have not been able to get my avid mojo to work on a Lacie PCMCIA FW card at the same time as I have FW drives attached. This seems to sugest that they are not 2 busses, to an avid at least.
    Thats why, for portable editing, I am moving towards a macbook pro with esata card for storage and fw free for other uses.

  • Best hard drive for raid.

    Hey,
    I know this question may be posted quite frequently, but I can't seem to find a definitive answer.
    I plan on getting one 500gb hd from mac when I buy my pro ( I will use this drive as my boot drive). Then buy three aditional 500gb hard dirves from other world computing. These three hard dirves will all be striped in a RAID 0. Until this point I planned on purchasing three maxtor maxline 500's. But I am not completely sure this will be best for my set up.
    * I plan on using this computer for digital media content, ie. Shake, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, and Color. I also want to eventually be importing and editing HD footage.
    So, whats the best hard drive I can buy three of to stripe together in a RAID 0 in my Mac Pro?
    Thank you in advance for your help.
    powerbook   Mac OS X (10.4.10)   getting mac pro

    You'll get get different people giving you different responses based in their personal preferences. Ultimately though, there are realistically only 3 main contenders when it comes to the 500GB drive which are…
    - Maxtor MaXLine
    - Seagate Barracuda ES
    - Western Digital RE2
    The Maxtor is an extremely proficient all-round drive but does tend to run a little hot. Uncomfortably hot for some though I've found that my MaXLine IIIs, which run at similar temperatures to be just fine. One big downside to this drive is that Maxtor/Seagate no longer manufacture this drive. These drives are the small file access kings in my opinion which makes them fantastic boot/small file scratch drives like for Photoshop.
    The Seagate drives really suck at small file, fast access performance so that make really poor boot/general use drives. However, they excel at large file sustained transfers which should help with your video editing.
    Finally The Western Digital drives are the queitest and coolest of the bunch. Again they're a good all-round performer and are the favourite of many. Having the least experience with these I can't say too much of their performance.

  • Best hard drive setup for Logic Pro?..

    Hi all,
    I'm about to get a Mac Pro, and I was wondering a bit about the best hard drive set up for running Logic Pro.
    1. Should I go with Western Digital Caviar SE ? Noise is a primary issue, I'd like them to be as silent as possible. Could anybody tell me their experiences with this disc?.. I also hear that Samsungs Spinpoint are almost silent. Any truth to this? (I want my discs in sizes of 500Gb.)
    2. Is this a good setup:
    D1: Mac OS, Logic Pro
    D2: Audio for Logic Pro
    D3: Sample libraries, including direct from disc streaming.
    3. I seem to remember from another post that someone wrote that raiding discs could actually decrease performance when working with audio. Is this the case?
    Thanks,
    Curvebender.
    Message was edited by: curvebender
    Message was edited by: curvebender

    curvebender wrote:
    2. Is this a good setup:
    D1: Mac OS, Logic Pro
    D2: Audio for Logic Pro
    D3: Sample libraries, including direct from disc streaming.
    Yes, excellent way to go. One suggestion: on your sample or audio drive, or an external FW, install a basic system + Logic app only. This enables you to have another system to boot from in case of trouble, or you can use it as a test bed for future updates etc. without affecting your primary system. You'd only boot into this drive in case of problems or for testing. I currently have Leopard running on one drive to test it out as I don't want to move to 10.5.x yet.

  • Best hard drive for use with Time Machine

    Hi,
    Has anyone determined what the best external hard drive is for use with Time Machine? Is there a particular one that works exceptionally well with Time Machine, or is it much of a muchness?
    I'm looking for a Firewire 400 & Firewire 800 drive that STAYS ON all the time, and doesn't automatically spin down or spin up like the rubbish WD My Book drives do.

    I can't tell you if it is the "best" hard drive for you to use with TM, but I'm quite happy with the 500 GB Buffalo Technology DriveStation Combo TurboUSB I bought recently. It is quiet, quite inexpensive for the capacity (I paid about $120 for one on sale at Fry's), & completely compatible with OS X & TM.
    Best of all for me, it automatically powers down when my iMac sleeps. It also spins down after a time if the Mac's Energy Saver preference "Put hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" is checked; otherwise it remains spun up until the Mac is put to sleep or switched off.
    It comes with "Turbo" USB & Memeo "AutoBackup" software, neither of which I installed. (The box didn't claim these extras came in a Mac version but both Mac & Windows versions were included on the CD.) Out-of-the-box, I reformatted the drive with the Apple Partition Map scheme & two partitions, a 160 GB one for cloning my internal drive & the rest for TM. The drive works perfectly for both uses & seems quite fast, as one would expect from a 7200 rpm SATA drive.

  • Best Hard Drive Size, Brand, etc.

    I just purchased two Seagate 400gb external firewire hard drives (model#ST3400801CB-RK), one for storing my analog video footage and allowing me to have several imovie projects available at one time, and the second hard drive for backing up my 80gb mac mini and the first 400gb hard drive. I haven't opened the boxes yet, so my question is: do you have a recommendation as to the best hard drives out there for my uses? I don't want to purchase the wrong thing. If you think Seagate is good, I'll keep what I bought and start my movie projects this weekend. Thank you for your time.

    I have all my internal and external disks journaled and haven't noticed any adverse effects from this.
    I do get occasional dropped frames (0-6-10 frames per hour) but I think journaling does not cause them. Some tapes have 0 dropped frames while some tapes have a few so I think the tape and bad spots on the tape play a much bigger role there.
    Sure, it would be very interesting to run a test by importing a few tapes a few times with journaling on and off and then compare the amount of dropped frames. ...but there are so many other variables (the HD's fragmentation and self calibration, network activity, etc) that I haven't bothered to do this...
    Journaling does need a minor overhead but AFAIK this is neglible with modern HDs with big caches and iMovie work which needs 3.6 MB/s (in practice this must be doubled to at least 7 MB/s to take care of occasional hiccups in the system).
    I prefer the slight added robustness at the expense of minimal speed decrease that journaling offers.
    But in the end I think this does not matter much either way. I'd hope some magazine runs a carefully planned test about this.

  • Best hard drive seagate vs. fujitsu

    what's the best hard drive for a Mac Book Pro of late 2008? Seagate or Fujitsu? what kind of noise is ok and what kind is not?
    thanks

    Check out the reviews at newegg.com.

  • Best Hard Drive Brand?

    Hi, I just got the new aluminum Macbook and I want to upgrade my hard drive from 160 GB. I was wondering what the best hard drive brands are out there if anyone knows? Also, will there be any complications with Applecare? I.e. me having to put the old hard drive in if I need to send the computer in (which I heard somewhere) or voiding my warranty? (I figure any problems that arise regarding the hard drive (replacement) would not be covered under Applecare, but anyone know about my first two questions?)

    Okay, thank you all so much for your answers; I appreciate it. I also wanted to know (I've never upgraded my laptop before) what size (2.5 in?) I need to get and what size mb? B/c I've been seeing those listed too, and I don't want to get something that's going to be slower. Thank you so much for your help!

  • What's the best Hard Drive for TM? USB or FIrewire?

    What's the best Hard Drive for TM? USB 2.0 or FIrewire 400 or 800?
    Any recommendations would be great. Need about 1TB.

    Michael Conniff wrote:
    The most recent is 1TB, and cost about the same as the previous one which was 500GB. The first d2 was only a little cheaper and was 60GB!
    Same experience here! They keep the price about the same but you get double the storage, so the price of storage has been going down big time! But now I find myself ******* after Drobo Hey, that editor whacked me for "l u s t i n g" that isn't foul language is it?
    -mj
    Message was edited by: macjack

  • What is the best hard drive replacement for a first generation mac mini 1.25 mhz 40gb hard drive 1gb ram year 2005

    What is the best hard drive replacement for a first generation mac mini 1.25  40 gb hard drive 1 gb ram year 2005?

    You posted this same question 24 hours ago, which has a reply.  Did you have questions on that answer or did you want further discussion? You could reply to that thread, there's no need to start a new thread.

  • What is the Best Hard Drive for a Powerbook Pismo 200 and best size for sto

    I have a Power book G3 Pismo 2000 which came with a 10 GB Hard Drive. It is almost full and I want to upgrade the Hard drive to a bigger and I do not know the best hard drive and what is the maximum space I will need? Can you recommend size and Manufacture?

    I bought a 80GB Toshiba for my Pismo. It seems to work well. I believe the largest drive that will be fully recognized is a 120GB drive.
    Here's a good place to see your options. Go to this web page at OWC and get a listing of your upgrade options for your Mac model.
    http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/index.cfm?StartOver=1&TI=5006
    You can get the product models and specs, and shop around, but OWC has pretty good prices.

  • What's the best hard drive I can put in my mac book 6,1?

    What's the best hard drive I can put in my mac book 6,1? Is there a solid state hard drive available? I've been through two hard drives in the last 3 years, which i primarily blaim on how much I have to move my computer around at work while the drive is spinning.

    Yes there is and SSD for your Mac.  I just ordered an SSD for a MacBook 6,1 from OWC.  http://www.macsales.com/
    Also check Crucial and Kingston.
    I ordered the DIY Upgrade Bundle: Mercury Electa 3G SSD.
    That MacBook is only capable of 3 GB/s so the 6G SSDs are overkill.
    I recently upgraded the memory from 2 GB to 8 GB.  It cut the boot time by a factor of three.  That is only a $100 upgrade.

  • What's the best hard drive for my 2008  24" I Mac

    Hello I have a question about I Mac .
    What's the best hard drive for my 2008  24" I Mac Intel ?
    I use to have a WD3200AAJS but it's dead now , and I would like to upgrade to  a good one does any body know what I can get ?

    http://www.seagate.com/external-hard-drives/portable-hard-drives/wireless/wirele ss-plus/?cmpid=ppc-_-satellite-_-g-_-us-_-ipad_hard_drive-_-p
    http://wd.com/whatsonyourdrive/?utm_campaign=Q2_2012_MBL_UK&utm_medium=Online_Se arch&utm_source=&utm_content=&gclid=CNa9n-_alrcCFUkw4Aod7nkAwg

  • Best Hard Drive?

    What is the best external hard drive to use with my MacBook Pro to use as a capture scratch disk?

    I recommend the CalDigit drives, either the Firewire VR, or even the S2VR Duo (which is eSATA, but they also sell an Express card adapter). I used to be all over G-Raids, but the G-Raid 2 drives lose performance when you daisy chain them, as do laCies.
    Also look at what www.otherworldcomputing.com has to offer. But I still highly recommend the CalDigit drives. I have 3 myself...and two OLDER G-Raids and a G-Drive Q.
    Shane

  • What is the best hard drive cleaner for mac book pro

    I am wanting to clean up my hard drive , any suggestions as to what is the best product for this . I read reviews about ccleaner , which is in the app store but there was some really scary stories ... any suggestions .Thanks

    AppStore software has restrictions on what it can do.
    If you don't like CCleaner for OS X downloaded from their site (not AppStore), then OnyX for OS X at MacUpdate.com has been a long time favorite to clean the caches, log files and what not for privacy and troubleshooting corrupted caches. Followed by a reboot.
    Then a Disk Utility > Erase Free Space with Zero is recommended afterwards to scrub deleted files off the hard drive if that level of privacy cleaning is necessary as deleted files remain on hard drives until overwritten.
    If your having performance problems with your computer then look at this for solutions
    Why is my computer slow?
    If your selling the machine or have to clean it for security reasons
    How do I securely delete data from the machine?

Maybe you are looking for

  • Need help with hot sync

    My palm Zire 72 lost all battery power, and all infor on it went away. I did a hot sync with my  computer a few days ago. When I sync with my palm it usually takes from palm to computer, now I need everything from the computer to the palm. How do I d

  • How do I modify an Image Navigator Image?

    I'd like to modify one of the symbols in the image navigator by adding color to it and use it on a Labview panel. I can easily export or copy the image to a graphics application and add the color or otherwise modify it, but when I put it back into th

  • Transferring number to O2 in the UK

    If you read the info provided by O2 it suggests that existing O2 customers will get a temporary number to use until their existing number is transferred. It says it may take 5 days. However, for new customers it just says it may take 5 days - it give

  • Value type 61 (Down Payments) may not be carried forward in FM area

    Hi Friends, We have implemented Fund management in FY 2011. My requirement is i want carry forword budget down payment to nex fiscal year , plz suggest to configuration step , Process and Impact on Existing system. In FM budget When i  m trying to ca

  • Sony MEX-N5000BT Clock showing 0:00 at noon, how do I change that?

    Everyday at noon, my clock reads 0:00 and I have to change it in the settings. Is there something that I am doing wrong? I don't see an AM / PM setting.  If I click on the menu and turn the ****** counter-clockwise, I get letters and numbers like H5,