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.
My comment: The Apple site states that up to 16 devices can be attached via a single port with a total of 63 devices attached. So apparently Western Digital does not test for compliance with the expectation of number attached drives (A bit of inaccurate/false advertising on their part?)
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?
UPDATE (Dec 5, 2007): I talked today with a second level support and they essentially told me the same thing as the first level support. They told me that it was something wrong with my computer so I asked if they were aware of particular software that causes the problem. The answer was no.

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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Western Digital External Drive and a VERY slow computer. Is my HD failing?

Hello, thank you for looking at my question.
First off, I am NOT very tech-savvy, but I'm willing to research and learn, I'm just afraid to make a mistake and blow up my computer.
I have had my Macbook for 2 years. I have not backed up my hard drive during that time. Bad, I know.
Recently I've noticed my Mac getting slow with the "spinning beach ball" showing up more often and everything getting slower. Usually a reboot will help. Yesterday, for the first time, the reboot took about 8-10 minutes! I figured that wasn't a good sign, so I headed down and picked up an external hard drive (Western Digital Essential model, 1TB) and figured I'd back everything up. I formatted the drive according to the Mac partition model (tech support from WD helped over the phone) and got it going. From 1530 to 0800 this morning, of 52 GB it had only backed up 15.3 GB. The fan was running at high speed the entire afternoon and night. That's about one GB per hour. Is that normal?? Then, it froze and wouldn't respond, or back up at all. Just nothing. I held the power button down and restarted it.
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carroteye wrote:
Hello, thank you for looking at my question.
First off, I am NOT very tech-savvy, but I'm willing to research and learn, I'm just afraid to make a mistake and blow up my computer.
Good! Better to inquire than leap!
I have had my Macbook for 2 years. I have not backed up my hard drive during that time. Bad, I know.
Yup.
That's about one GB per hour. Is that normal?? Then, it froze and wouldn't respond, or back up at all. Just nothing. I held the power button down and restarted it.
No, not normal at all.
At this point, I am concerned that perhaps the hard drive is failing (hence the speed and fan issues) and that maybe I should be taking it in to a repair shop (we don't live anywhere near an Apple store)
Do you think this may be the case? Is there any way to back up my hard drive faster - before it dies? I have two years worth of photos and papers, etc on there, music and such and it would be a tremendous loss if it all crashed.
As slow as that backup was, anything else will be nearly as bad.
There are four common causes of this:
Your startup drive is nearly full (less than a couple of GBs of free space). If that's the case, find something big you can "archive" to CD/DVD or copy to the external HD and delete.
The drive is failing.
Corrupted directores, etc., in the file system
One or more "runaway" processes, usually from incompletely-installed or partially-deleted apps
|
It's a toss-up; try to diagnose what's wrong, or try to get a backup.
The fastest way to back up, with the least "thrashing" of your hard drive, would be to start up from your Leopard Install disc and use the Restore tab to make a copy of your internal HD on the external.
That will copy any file system problems "as is," but if your internal HD is beginning to fail, at least you'll have a full copy of the data (corrupted or not) on the external HD.
Check this to be sure your WD drive will boot your Mac: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?pfaqid=1787 If not, do all the steps below except #4.
Here's what I'd recommend:
1. Start up from your Install disc, per the yellow box in #1 of [Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DU.html]
2. Reformat the external HD, with a single partition, per the blue box there. You'll want the +Mac OS Extended (Journaled)+ Format and either the GUID or +Apple Partition Map+ *Partition Map Scheme* as detailed there.
3. Use the Restore tab to copy your internal HD (almost certainly named +Macintosh HD)+ to the external HD, per #7 in the link above. Note that will copy the name of the internal HD to the external.
4. When that's done, quit Disk Utility, then select +Startup Disk+ from the Utilities menu in the menubar (per the yellow box above). Select the external HD and start up from it.
|
The copy may take a very long time. There will be a progress bar, but they're notoriously inaccurate under the best of circumstances. If it completes, and you can start up from the external, post back and we'll see if we can find the problem, and either fix it or confirm that you need to take it to Apple.

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Problem using a Western Digital external drive

All,
I am using Oracle 11.2.0.1 32-bit Windows on Windows Vista Ultimate, in conjunction with McAfee Antivirus Plus.
I have issues using an external Western Digital Elements USB drive, which has the Flash Recovery Area. Please note my Windows Backups to these drive also fail with the same error 'Can't find sector'
The error stack in Oracle is following, but this can also happen during archiving
Spooling started in log file: diskerror.log
Recovery Manager11.2.0.1.0
RMAN>
Starting backup at 09-06-2011
using target database control file instead of recovery catalog
allocated channel: ORA_DISK_1
channel ORA_DISK_1: SID=81 device type=DISK
channel ORA_DISK_1: starting compressed archived log backup set
channel ORA_DISK_1: specifying archived log(s) in backup set
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2532 RECID=2694 STAMP=753243442
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2533 RECID=2695 STAMP=753265574
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2534 RECID=2696 STAMP=753286016
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2535 RECID=2697 STAMP=753314521
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2536 RECID=2698 STAMP=753315118
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2537 RECID=2699 STAMP=753327717
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2538 RECID=2700 STAMP=753331024
channel ORA_DISK_1: starting piece 1 at 09-06-2011
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-03009: failure of backup command on ORA_DISK_1 channel at 06/09/2011 08:31:51
ORA-19504: failed to create file "H:\ORACLE\FLASH_RECOVERY_AREA\ORCL\BACKUPSET\2011_06_09\O1_MF_ANNNN_TAG20110609T083149_%U_.BKP"
ORA-27044: unable to write the header block of file
OSD-04008: WriteFile()-fout. Kan niet naar bestand schrijven.
O/S-Error: (OS 27) Het station kan de aangevraagde sector niet vinden.
I have already disabled Mcafee Antivirus Plus Real life scanning, this didn't work.
I have yet to isolate this doesn't happen on other drives, but I already relocated the FRA, because a different external drive was too slow.
(and archivelog failed because of this)
I tried looking for error 27 on Technet.Microsoft.com but failed.
What should I do, apart from re-formatting the drive using my own laptop (it came pre-formatted)? I downloaded a WD tool to check the drive, and it came up with nothing.
Sybrand Bakker
Senior Oracle DBA

Hi Sybrand,
I just wish to please check below:
1.As Aman suggested to deinstall anti-virus program
2.free space on external hard disk
3.Path and Permission issue (if any)
4.May be filesystem of the external drive issue
5.May be issue of filesystem size limit.
5(i).FAT32 is 4GB and NTFS is 16 exabytes. FAT16 (mainly DOS) was 2GB, but some instances supported 4GB. A windows server class machine is almost 100% going to be using NTFS. Same issue on SQL Server with a local account trying to do things on an NFS. Use a domain account/NTFS.
Source:http://dbaforums.org/oracle/lofiversion/index.php?t20108.html
6.ORA-27044: unable to write the header block of file
OSD-04008: WriteFile()-fout. Kan niet naar bestand schrijven.
O/S-Error: (OS 27) Het station kan de aangevraagde sector niet vinden.
I just understood the message of ORA-27044; rest line's messages may be of your country's languages; but i think its all something related to RMAN is not able to write the file.
If you please resolve the issue by your own way/findings, i wish to request to please post the solution too.
Regards
Girish Sharma

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Hi guys
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What I want to know: I have my 1TB Time Capsule and I love it for what it does, but it isn't the external hard drive I'm looking for. So what is the best solution for me, respecting the following preferences?
3 TB
wireless and FireWire or USB
not a portable disk
adapter
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Time Capsule 1TB
Mac OS X Lion
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Iomega® Network hard drive Home Media Cloud Edition 2 TB - Link
Western Digital 3TB My Book Studio - Link
Western Digital My Book Studio II harde schijf van 4 TB - Link
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Many thanks!
Bob

Just to add to the mixing pot....
Just re-read the thread and mulled over all the ideas. First off, wasn't the idea to have a means of backing up your data? The key to effective backups is redundancy; acknowledge that hardware will fail but there will always be at least one copy that missed the bullet. The 6TB monster is quite appealing from the cost per GB perspective, but I fear it will become a central and solitary repository for all your life's treasures while you try to fill it up. And if it fails, as all hardware does eventually, I'm going to get my butt chewed in the virtual sense, for having recommended it. Me? I have a slew of external drives I cycle around as I change from OS to OS, Mac to Mac and week to week. 12 at last count, plus 3 HDDs laying in their antistatic bags, waiting hopefully for me to get them their own enclosure.
When you mention working on a huge .psd on an external drive, note that you are crossing a threshold there. Mixing a device used for backups with one used as an external workspace. Just beware of the risks involved; should failure occur while you're working, your backups will die as well.
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Remotely access usb western digital 2tb storage connected to airport

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Much obliged, Keento

The Express doesn't support HDDs.

Yosemite: Western Digital External Drives fully supported?

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There is a similar query here. http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/WD-My-Passport-for-Mac-1TB-an d-OS-X-Yosemite/td-p/811837
Initial reports do not look good
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I just bought a western digital external hard drive dual option media center and combo external storage. It came with a Dantz Retrospect Express backup software. I can't seem to get it to work. It installs ok, but when I try to open up the software it opens and closes with an error message. What am I doing wrong? How do I back up my files, programs, iTunes and Movies? Is there an easy way to do this? I've ask a lot of people and know can seem to give me a straight answer. PLEASE HELP!!

Hi Marc and welcome!
It is possible that the version of Dantz Retrospect does not work with Tiger. You do not need to use that program. In fact, a lot of people feel it is rather clumsy and feature-crippled to the point that it is not really useful.
Is that drive a combo FireWire and USB drive? IF so, there is a phenominal program called SuperDuper that does much, much more than Retrospect. It will clone your hard drive which means it will make an exact copy of every last bit and byte and then make it bootable so you can actually boot your Mac from your external drive in the event of a hardware or software problem. It costs only $27.95, but it is well worth it and highly recommended.
There are other programs that do what SuperDuper does, but I like SD best. Carbon Copy Cloner, and LaCie's SilverKeeper are the others most often mention, but their support is not as good as SD's. Both required updates to work with Tiger while SD worked from Day 1.
Plug the drive in and open your Mac's Disk Utility and partition it if you want. One it is formatted in HFS it will work fine.

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