External Storage Solutions (but not computer backups)

There are many articles about external hard drives for backups, but what about as a source to store home videos and pictures? For example, I have a MacBook Air 128GB that can’t store much. My backup drive is a Time Capsule 2TB. After extensive research it turns out the using the TC as a backup (using Time Machine) AND as extra storage is not recommended (problems with partitions). As such the 2TB is an overkill for the 128GB "McAir."
So how do I find a 2 identical hard drives of say 1TB each to store home videos (HD) and thousands of pictures? These files do not fit on the notebook so therefore do not get backed up with Time Machine. Currently I have files in a windows laptop, USB flash, Camcorder flash, etc that need proper storage.
I would use 2 so that the second one is a backup of the 1st. What is the best way to go about it? Thanks.

There are plenty of different solutions..
Generally a true NAS.. ie one that has mirrored drives and real backup is the way to go..
Look at Synology two drive NAS.. they are not cheap but the files are stored and you can setup automated backup.
A media computer is also a reasonable solution.. I don't know where you are but the micro HP servers are now hugely popular here.. they are cheap and take 4 drives. You can load it with several different OS from Linux or FreeNAS to full windows or some media distribution.
A Mac Mini can also do this kind of service but you need to use FW (much better than USB) hard disk on it. Use it as a media computer and file store.
Apple seem to be heading cloud.. (where their head is).. but for most people, our internet speeds are not such that loading media into cloud storage is viable.. great for backup.. not so great for anybody outside of high speed fibre service.

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http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEQX2T8.0S/
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Giovanni,
I have the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 (6 TB) external HD array in a Raid 5 configuration (as received from OWC). I have found it to be excellent when connected to my Mac Pro using a PCI SATA card and the SATA output on the Elite-AL Pro Qx2. The speed of the system under Raid 5 easily supports all but uncompressed high definition video, and the system came with Prosoft's Data Backup software which does an excellent job of backing up other external drives installed on my Mac Pro.
I highly recommend the Qx2 and think you will find it is a good single source solution to providing you with reliable and safe storage for your data. With Raid 5 if one of the HD's in the Qx2 fails, you simply remove it and allow the system to rebuild the data when you insert a new HD. Thus unless two HD's fail simultaneously (high unlikely) you are protected against data loss. Note also that your Mac Pro does not have to be left on while the Qx2 is rebuilding.
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Hello,
This forum is for discussions and questions regarding profiles and Microsoft's recognition system on the MSDN and TechNet sites. It is not for products/technologies.
As it's off-topic here, I am moving the question to the
Where is the forum for... forum.
Karl
When you see answers and helpful posts, please click Vote As Helpful, Propose As Answer, and/or Mark As Answer.
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HT3275 Since updating OS to Mountain Lion from leopard, I get the following error message when trying to backup with time machine on external drive. Could not complete backup to media share. The network backup disk does not support the required AFP feat

Since updating OS to Mountain Lion from leopard, I get the following error message when trying to backup with time machine on external drive. "Could not complete backup to media share. The network backup disk does not support the required AFP features." What are AFP features and how do I get Time Machine to backup to my current external backup?

This means that your NAS does not support the required encryption. Update your NAS to the latest firmware or ditch it and buy a Time Capsule (they are the most reliable when using TM).

Devfsadm not showing the external storage disk but able to see from OK

Hi,
I have an external storage disk.
Solaris 9 is running on E220R Sun server. I am able to view this disk from the OK prompt using probe-scsi-all.
I have installed SFS packages for V9 and the patches required also. MPXIO is also enabled on this server. But am not able to view this disk when i scan using devfsadm command from the os.
The HBAs are Qlogic 23xx. The driver used is 4.13.x
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Thanks
- Sarat.

can u paste yr cfgadm -al output
try configuring the controller first , if it is unconfigure
also
luxadm -e port # to both cables are connected
luxadm probe # to see the luns
regards

External Storage Solutions-Western Digital-Professional Photographer Views

I am a photographer shooting around 30000 images (RAW) per year. My current configuration is Alu iMac with Aperture 1.5.6, Photoshop C3 on the internal drive with my library and images on external drives. I have a total of 7 drives, all from Western Digital (4 500 GB MyBook Pro), 2 2TB MyBook Pro Edition II, and 1 750GB MyBook Pro). Two of the 500GB drives are back ups for the two primary 500GB ones, and one of the TB drives is a back up of the primary 1 TB drive. Back ups are done 2-3 times per week. Don’t really want to do RAID because I want to control the timing of the backups and do not want them to be instantaneous.
After completing all the work related to a session, all masters (including the PS files) are exported from the project so all images are referenced in the library.
All of the external drives are on a single FW800 daisy chain.
THE PROBLEM: On occasion (1-4 times per week), when I wake my iMac from a sleep, none of the external drives are responsive and the Finder crashes. This forces me to do a hard shutdown of the iMac, unplug the FW800 cable, turn the power off on the drives (unplug them). Then I plug drives back in, reconnect the FW800 cable to the iMac, and then turn the iMac on again. All the drives boot and are responsive.
The second problem is random “unexpected device removal” usually occurring on wake up but not necessarily.
DEBUGGING: I have emailed with Western Digital technical support extensively to try to better understand the problems and how to solve them. There are comments that are puzzling/worrisome:
One response from Western Digital as a copy/paste
1. We have only successfully daisy chained two drives through a single FireWire port. Anything beyond two drives will work erratically. I recommend you connect your drives one at a time or with one USB and the other FireWire.
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They suggested I reinstall WDButtonManager software downloaded from their website which resulted in the installation of software that was older than the one I had on my system. I have had considerable more difficulty with that new installation. In addition, the Western Digital technical support person said
2.If you "get info" on the WD Button Manager from the package installation should show v1.15. However, we have had no newer version of the button manger so even if you do find one that says v1.30 then the version number is wrong. Nonetheless, I still recommend you drag your drives into the trashcan on the dock before turning off your computer or putting it in sleep mode.
My comment: The concept of manually ejecting the drives before going into sleep mode is not viable. I do conversions/exports/backup that can take a while and cannot wait around until they are completed to manually eject the drives.
Western Digital Technical Support comment back to me:
3. I'm sorry you don't like the suggestion of dragging the drive into the trashcan but Mac computers leave the FireWire connections active during power-off states. This causes the MyBook’s auto on/off functionality to become confused and not power up or detect after resuming from a sleep state. We have no way of disabling the auto on/off functionality on the drive so the only thing you can do is to drag it into the trashcan before turning off your computer or putting it to sleep.
QUESTIONS:
1. How are other photographers solving image storage issues?
2. Whose devices are you using and what has been your experience?
3. Does anyone have a solution or work around for the Western Digital issues?
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Problem: the drives do not power up when I wake up from sleep every time. Sometimes they do, but frequently they don't. This results in the Finder hanging...and requires a complete reboot as I described above.
Western digital drives will power down even with the computer on, if you have not accessed the drive for a while. I believe this process is controlled by the WDBM software (Button Manager). They will also power down when I put to computer to sleep. I am guessing that there is some sort of conflict between these two power down functions or some conflict between the two different power up functions.
I reinstalled an "older, but newer version" of the Button Manager and reset the PRAM on Sunday. Next steps will be to remove the Button Manager software from the /Library/Startup folder and see if that helps. I have a call into the WD to see if anyone there can tell me the function of the WDBM software and how much risk there is to not using it.

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hello all,
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i have the same problem. it seems that Lion uses different filing system and doesn't recognizes the HDD. Try if you can see it in the Disc Utility.( i can)...However, not even Repair does anything.
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Hi
We have just bought an Apple Time Capsule with 3TB of storage, to make backups of our users macbooks. It works fine at the office1 where it is located, but from our other office, time machine backup doesn't work. The offices are connected through a 100Mbit MPLS connection with no firewall - everybody in office1 can see everything at office2, and vice versa. The users at office2 can ping the time capsule, and they can also browse network shares on it.
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Thanks Linc ......you were right on the money. Your help has been awsome. I spent 3 hours last night doing stuff with out any solutions. May I ask you another question if you have the time and patience please. My orriginal setup was 2 windows laptops with XP on them connected with a timecapsule attached to a router. Hence the time capsule made a wireless signal aswell as being an external hard drive. On one of the laptops i have a printer attached to it which was shared so that the other computer could print documents through the network however the computer attached to the printer has to be on. Do you know what i have to do so these new 2 mac book pros can print to that printer? Thanks again for all your previous help. Nick

External Storage Solutions (but not computer backups)

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