Storage and Back Up Solutions?

[calvanas]

I am currently using 2- Lacie 400GB FW800 externals and a 200GB Lacie FW800.  I use 400A as my primary and 400B as a direct backup.  The 200 is used as an archiving drive to keep track of waht images need to be burned off.

I am having lots of copying type errors with the Lacie drives and have had to replace the power cords many times.  I am outgrowing the system and if forced to invest in something that will take me farther, that is what I am lookign for.  1TB of space as a primary with anoth to direct backup?  Ideally something modular would be nice???  I have a MacPro with 5GB RAM and it is a dual 3GhZ (quad)machine.  I feel things should operate much quicker with this horsepower as I have very few apps on it.  The 400B drive takes a minute or two to show its contents in the finder which is not right.

Any thoughts???

Cheers
Chris

[BernardLanguillier]

- G-technology G-Speed Es with 4x 500GB drives in Raid 5 for life storage (this product will become available in one month or so),
- Buffalo Terstation Pro 2 TB NAS in Raid 5 for back up.

Cheers,
Bernard

[D. King]

I'm in the process of setting up a Venus T4U made by AMS electronics.   $150 at Fry's. It holds 4 drives up to a total of 3TB.  USB 2 and it's for ATA drives only.  If you go to the AMS website I think you'll find the same rig for SATA.

I try to buy OEM HDDs which are a lot cheaper than the retail drives.  Only difference is that you don't get cables etc. but you don't need those if you're putting them in a case.  

I am currently using 2- Lacie 400GB FW800 externals and a 200GB Lacie FW800.  I use 400A as my primary and 400B as a direct backup.  The 200 is used as an archiving drive to keep track of waht images need to be burned off.

I am having lots of copying type errors with the Lacie drives and have had to replace the power cords many times.  I am outgrowing the system and if forced to invest in something that will take me farther, that is what I am lookign for.  1TB of space as a primary with anoth to direct backup?  Ideally something modular would be nice???  I have a MacPro with 5GB RAM and it is a dual 3GhZ (quad)machine.  I feel things should operate much quicker with this horsepower as I have very few apps on it.  The 400B drive takes a minute or two to show its contents in the finder which is not right.

Any thoughts???

Cheers
Chris
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=125804\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

[PatrikR]

After researching this and buying some very bad systems I have decided to use internal mirror raids in my Mac Pro. I installed 5th drive to the spare CD bay and installed system and all software on it. Now I have 2 1TB drives and 2 500 GB drives inside my mac pro.

I purchased Lacie Raid5 which turned out to be very bad. Also tried the Buffalo Terastation 2 which was about the same quality. Both were extremely slow and unreliable. I returned them both for full refund. They were so unreliable that in no case I would want to trust my files on them. I would rather keep my files on single drives than on those NAS systems.

Also I believe that these systems are so complicated that in drive failure I believe you will be in great pain. People say that RAID 5 is not a back up and they are right. No sense putting money in those traps. Besides it would probably be a controller malfunction rather than a drive failure that would screw up the whole system. Controller/software/firmware errors seems to happen on these boxes all the time. They need to rebuild once in while... Maybe it's feature to make you feel how well your NAS or RAID is working.

My experience with Apple soft raid has been great. I've used it many years with my G5's and newer have had any problems. Besides if one drives goes down the data is on the second. There are no controllers to screw things up like there are on external RAID boxes. It's simple and cheap system. Only problem is limited room inside my Mac.

Also I would wait for the iSCSI devices to appear on market. Wiebetech has one but it's very expensive box about $3000 for diskless configuration.

[nicolaasdb]

I recently bought a NORCO 12 bay enclosure and 12 750 WD HD's.....LaCie drives kept on crashing (within 1 yr of purchase).

New system is a bit loud (fan noise) but I now got instand access to all 12 drives and it works faster then my Firewire 800 drives.

Norco enclosure was only $700 including a card and the drives you can buy for about 190 bucks each.

[GregShapps]

I recently bought a NORCO 12 bay enclosure and 12 750 WD HD's.....LaCie drives kept on crashing (within 1 yr of purchase).

New system is a bit loud (fan noise) but I now got instand access to all 12 drives and it works faster then my Firewire 800 drives.

Norco enclosure was only $700 including a card and the drives you can buy for about 190 bucks each.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=162650\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

My Norco DS-1220 case has been running non stop 24/7 since April - the fans are loud indeed.   But the case is the most amazing bang for the buck - I am actually about to purchase a second case as the first one is just about full.  

Worst thing with any of the SATA cases is the SATA plugs themselves