quote:

Originally posted by Lolo Western Digital here. Their usb models tend to sleep a lot, but I'd rather have that than 5 lacie drives crashed with defective sectors in the last 2 years. No more lacie, no more maxtor for me. Performance isn't what matters the most. Data safety is.

If a drive is constantly going in and out of sleep, it will break quicker. If you wanted a drive with good safety, you would be better off buying a normal hard drive and putting it in a case that responds to proper system power management, not this firmware coded crap.

quote:

Originally posted by echosystm If a drive is constantly going in and out of sleep, it will break quicker. If you wanted a drive with good safety, you would be better off buying a normal hard drive and putting it in a case that responds to proper system power management, not this firmware coded crap.

I've used three different USB/Firewire/eSATA enclosures and none of them have ever gone to sleep on me. I'm not buying particularly expensive ones either. Maybe the enclosures just don't support any power management at all... either way, that seems to be what the OP wants, and it's cheaper, and more reliable, and easier to replace/upgrade.

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quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut I've used three different USB/Firewire/eSATA enclosures and none of them have ever gone to sleep on me. I'm not buying particularly expensive ones either. Maybe the enclosures just don't support any power management at all... either way, that seems to be what the OP wants, and it's cheaper, and more reliable, and easier to replace/upgrade.

+1

I've been hot swapping drives in and out of cheapo enclosures for a while now... never had any issues. Actually, just ordered a 1.5TB drive and enclosure for my Time Machine backups... i get excited about shit like that.

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It's not a problem for me if a drive puts itself to sleep. At least it uses less power when not being used, and it's important when you have more than 6 terabytes storage. I'd like to use as little power as possible when using my computer at times. The fact that it breaks earlier as other solutions do remains a little vague to me.

Of course I'm not using usb drives for critical use such as audio recording, library management, etc... but it's quite good for time machine backups. Can't expect much more than that with usb drives anyway.

Ah, and the Mybook Studio edition from WD doesn't go to sleep mode at all. Only the home edition does.

Enclosures are ok, but I had bad experience with one when I had a huge hd crash a few years ago. I lost 300 gigabytes of data because of a bulky/defective device. I'm sure it happens with all devices though.

Next thing I'll buy is SATA/quad interface docks. They're expensive (80 Euros) though. I have too many internal drives sleeping in a moving box and they need backup.

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quote:

Originally posted by Lolo Next thing I'll buy is SATA/quad interface docks. They're expensive (80 Euros) though. I have too many internal drives sleeping in a moving box and they need backup.

i have a few SATA disks myself which i wanted to put into one case. Any links?

quote:

Originally posted by Lolo It's not a problem for me if a drive puts itself to sleep. At least it uses less power when not being used, and it's important when you have more than 6 terabytes storage. I'd like to use as little power as possible when using my computer at times. The fact that it breaks earlier as other solutions do remains a little vague to me.

Modern drives use hardly any power (5-10 W). And it's absolutely true that more power-cycles will cause an earlier failure. Think about something as simple as a light bulb; when do you see them burn out? It's almost always right after you turn them on. It's even worse with the electric motor in a magnetic disk. When we move to SSDs, this won't matter much, of course.

If you need to conserve power, i.e. if the power is coming from a battery or some alternative source like ********'s crazy solar array, then yes, you want to power off everything when not in use. But if you're just trying to be green, then take into account that it uses a whole lot more energy to repair or replace the drive when it fails than whatever you save by having it go to sleep.

quote:

Enclosures are ok, but I had bad experience with one when I had a huge hd crash a few years ago. I lost 300 gigabytes of data because of a bulky/defective device. I'm sure it happens with all devices though.

Are you sure that was because of the enclosure and not the drive itself?

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2009-06-18 - DJ Annoying @ People Need To Know Where I'll Be
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2048-06-66 - Spastic & Whocares ¶ Although I'm Actually Flattered
9999-45-81 - Tweaker Gimp ☼ I Probably Won't Even Go To This But I Have To Make Sure I Fill Up All The Available Space Here

hardrive failure is really a matter of luck, or bad luck i should say. External forces , short of actual physical shock and really bad power management, will rarely have an impact. Think of it as someone with a gene for schizophrenia that hasn't expressed itself yet. It will eventually break.

The best bet is to use a redundant array for data storage. Only use normal hardrives for data you can afford to loose.

The best bet is to make backups. RAID may help you in certain instances of drive failure, but there are many other ways to lose data.

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My party schedule:
2009-02-21 - DJ Attention @ I'm So Popular
2009-06-18 - DJ Annoying @ People Need To Know Where I'll Be
2012-11-32 - DJ Insufferable ɸ Or At Least the Stalkers I Complain About
2048-06-66 - Spastic & Whocares ¶ Although I'm Actually Flattered
9999-45-81 - Tweaker Gimp ☼ I Probably Won't Even Go To This But I Have To Make Sure I Fill Up All The Available Space Here

I once had 2 drives - die in a span of 2 weeks a while back. Cost a couple thousand to recover the data.

ever since then , i've been absolutely paranoid about backing everything yup. The fear applies not only to hardrives but really anythign related to computers. When ever i'm typing a long message, i always control c when i feel like its getting a little too long.

pretty sure there is a condition for this in the DSM IV manual for mental disorders.

If you need backup software, look no further than to the freeware Cobian Backup. Its extremely easy to use.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cobianbackup

I have it set to backup my project files every sunday, and best of all it happens all in the background, totally unnoticed.

Be safe peeps, you never know when its going to fail.

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Thanks guys for all the detailed info!!!!!

Some very interesting points about drives which often don't get touched, especially relating to audio.

I'm quite surprised to hear bad news stories about LaCie - We rotate about 40 odd LaCie drives for various projects at the studio and invariably we do have a couple which go down every so often but upon investigation find the problem turns to be the firewire bridge has burnt out rather than the disk itself failing.

I had looked in to the enclosure issue but because of my experiences above, I thought it might be better to go for a manufactured solution.....

....but I think I will go for a enclosure + hard drive now, as it failures are going to happen regardless so you just got to cover yourself anyway and might as well do it cheaply. I'm not taking the drive anywhere and it would let me just buy cheaper other drives when one is full and ready to archive.

Not really going to go raid as it's an expensive option, and uneccessary if you do very regular backups.

The spinning up and down decreasing life is true - that's why I'm worried about my current drive as it spins down at least every 15 mins. The lightbulb thing is true. The local firestation where I grew up did some maintenenance and found that the low level emergency lightbulbs were over 100 years old and never been switched off. They had to update the fuse box cutting power to the station and when they powered it up again nearly all of them blew. Yes' there's a certain "don't make them like that anymore" point, but still.....

So, a couple more questions:

does anyone know good enclosure brands/models?

My imac has both a FW400 and FW 800 as well as numerous USB.
I'm leaning towards FW800 enclosure as most audio interfaces I'm considering are 400 and FW has a faster sustained transfer rate than USB 2. Anyone got an opinion on this?

Also, what internal drives should be considered? I've seen/heard great things about the velociraptor drives but was also told that for mac architecture, any 7200prm will be more than enough.

Sata or sata 2?

Thanks!!!

fw800 eh? get a quad interface Drivedock enclosure for internal sata drives. It's great, and is as fast.

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