7 replies to this topic

[TheRealDrew]

Hi all


Need to pick up a bunch of hard drives for some things coming up. Have purchased any recently and looking through various reviews on sites, seems like things are a bit all over the place in terms of who is making what that is decent. Without pointing out a particular brand, it seems that some that I used to rely on often are now not as reliable or as solid as they may have been. (Though some that I have that have "bad" reviews have been solid.) Of course I take it with a grain of salt based on "reviews." Going to be using them for video primarily in RAID 0/1. Looking for 3.5", 2 TB or larger ideally, though 1.5 TB could work.

Not overly concerned with absolute speed (even a good 3G lower RPM is fine), just looking for the current reliable ones that are out there now.

Thanks

[operam]

Regardless of the brands and/or models, hard drive failures are really a question of "when" rather than "if". Given that, I would suggest adding redundancy. RAID 0 is a non-starter, go with at least RAID 1.

[blaisedouros]

Call Otherworld Computing, and get a Raid 5 system from them. Raid 5 is a great combination of speed and reliability; it takes 3 or more disks, and allows any 1 of them to fail without losing your data. However, it also increases the read speed since the data is striped across the three disks, with redundancy.

They have good warranty support, and additional coverage can be purchased.

[TheRealDrew]

Regardless of the brands and/or models, hard drive failures are really a question of "when" rather than "if". Given that, I would suggest adding redundancy. RAID 0 is a non-starter, go with at least RAID 1.

No doubt, have been fortunate through the years overall in small amount of failures, and constantly backing up. Have a variety of RAIDs, mainly use 0, 1 and 5. Issue is which drives nowadays seem to have an overall better reputation. Seems to have been a shift.

Call Otherworld Computing, and get a Raid 5 system from them. Raid 5 is a great combination of speed and reliability; it takes 3 or more disks, and allows any 1 of them to fail without losing your data. However, it also increases the read speed since the data is striped across the three disks, with redundancy.

They have good warranty support, and additional coverage can be purchased.

Yup, have a few of the QX2s, and set up as RAID 5 hooked up via eSATA fairly fast. Was actually also going to try to see which drives they seem to like nowadays.

[in_minsk_we_trust]

For "in the field" dumping of files, I'm still using LaCie rugged drives. They weigh almost nothing and can take a little bit more of a beating than others, although I wouldn't test it too much. Anyway, 3 of the bus-powered 5200RPM drives at 1 or 1.5TB is where I dump the files, then when we get home I can swap them to my 7200RPM drives here for editing.

For local film shoots and the like, the most popular drives right now seem to be the G-Technology G-RAIDs.

[davehicks]

Seagate just bought LaCie. I don't think there is a lot of difference in reliability these days. In my experience all the current drives are high quality. Just make sure you invest in a redundant backup strategy. Raid setups to not qualify as a backup solution, by the way. Raid is to assist with performance, recoverability and uptime, but can add complexity and risk to the safety of your data.

For "in the field" dumping of files, I'm still using LaCie rugged drives. They weigh almost nothing and can take a little bit more of a beating than others, although I wouldn't test it too much. Anyway, 3 of the bus-powered 5200RPM drives at 1 or 1.5TB is where I dump the files, then when we get home I can swap them to my 7200RPM drives here for editing.

For local film shoots and the like, the most popular drives right now seem to be the G-Technology G-RAIDs.

[bvanant]

We have Seagate, Toshiba, Hitachi, WD in a variety of RAID boxes and over the last 7 years, all types of drives have failed. Lately we have been using Samsung drives and so far so good, but they are still quite young.
Bill

[Longimanaus]

I use the 2 TB Lacie rugged for on the road and they take a beating quite well. I use the Lacie 6TB thunderbolt dual disk for home storage. Very fast and you can work on Final Cut from them.

At some point, bulk storage will go solid state and cheap. This will give us a giant leap forward in reliability.