Stand Alone Hard Drives

[Soulstation1]

seriously lookin' into one of these

i don't know much about them

it's seems like a great way to store my E-Music stuff and free up some space and clutter

maybe i might be better off with a dvd burner?

i don't really want any extra dvdr discs of stuff that i've already burned to cdr

thanks

Edited March 6, 2006 by Soulstation1

[Pete B]

I've used a Maxtor 150g for over a year with no problems. I use it exclusively for backups at this point, but I did use it to store my excessive flac files from dimeadozen until I bought a second internal hard drive.

The second internal hard drive gives a bit faster access to data since it doesn't go through the USB, but the external is certainly a viable alternative. More expensive per gig than the internal drive, though.

[Mr. Gone]

I've got a couple of internal hard drives which I connect via an external hard drive enclosure (you can get them for 5,25", 3,5" drives etc.). I think this is the cheapest way to go.

Search for "Icy Box" for example. Note that I haven't looked into this issue in some time so there might be better solutions available now.

[Uncle Skid]

hey, ss1!

one possibililty is something like this: USB Hard Drive Enclosure Kit.

I have one of these, and it works quite well for backups. It's nice because it will work with any standard (IDE) hard drive.

[sidewinder]

I've just bought a Packard-Bell unit - nice and compact, also very quiet. An incredible 400 Gbyte storage capacity on it.

Jeez - I can remember the days when 64K was a big deal..

[Jim Alfredson]

The Maxtors are nice. So are the Seagates. Stay away from Western Digital or anything that uses Western Digital harddrives in the enclosure (such as Acomdata). I believe the Lacie's use Seagate. Those are nice as well.

[BFrank]

I picked up an Iomega 160 external last year. Seems pretty good to me. They seem to run sales pretty frequently.

[tatifan]

I JUST hooked up a 200 GB Maxtor that I picked up today at Office Depot. They have a big rebate on it ($100 after a $50 mail-in). With the USB connection it won't be the quickest, but it works for me. Good place to keep all those emusic downloads, eh?

[DukeCity]

The Maxtors are nice. So are the Seagates. Stay away from Western Digital or anything that uses Western Digital harddrives in the enclosure (such as Acomdata). I believe the Lacie's use Seagate. Those are nice as well.

Jim, do you speak of the Western Digital (Acomdata) drives from personal experience, or from reviews? I only ask because the local high-end studio here uses Acomdata, and they recommended one to me to store files from my sessions there. Should I be worried?!?

[Indestructible!]

Hi Jeff,

S-E-A-G-A-T-E!

Trust me on this one. I've got two 160GB and two 300GB externals, and they have never done anything but work like clockwork. They are nice and compact, and they're stackable to boot!

Cheers,

Shane

[Jim Alfredson]

The Maxtors are nice. So are the Seagates. Stay away from Western Digital or anything that uses Western Digital harddrives in the enclosure (such as Acomdata). I believe the Lacie's use Seagate. Those are nice as well.

Jim, do you speak of the Western Digital (Acomdata) drives from personal experience, or from reviews? I only ask because the local high-end studio here uses Acomdata, and they recommended one to me to store files from my sessions there. Should I be worried?!?

I speak from experience, as I related in this post:

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...ndpost&p=460428

If I were a high-end studio, I'd be using Lacie or G-Raids (in fact, the G-Raids are very very nice). But I'm not a high-end studio... I'm cheap!

[DukeCity]

Thanks, Jim. I haven't fired up that Acomdata drive in a while. Maybe I should check it out, and look for an option for backing up those files.

Glad to hear that you were able to recover your Baker's and (some of your) Green Mill stuff.

[Soulstation1]

zero computer knowledge

could a stand alone HD crash and lose all the music?

[Jim Alfredson]

Yep. The first rule of computers is if you don't have something saved in at least THREE places, you don't have it. Backup, backup, backup. I can't stress it enough.

[Noj]

My company uses LaCie external hard drives, and they have been reliable for the most part. One failed recently, but that's one out of quite a large number.

[king ubu]

I have a 120GB external drive (sorry, can't tell what label, but I think Maxtor) and it crashed with 100GB of music on it (FLACs, so the loss was ca. 120-150 CDs, but most of it irreplaceable). So the best advice would be: get two drives of the same size and make sure to copy all put on one onto the other... not that I do it, but that's because I'm not willing to buy another drive that breaks down... (it was three months old when it happened, I got it replaced within about three weeks, but of course not even an attempt was made at restoring any data... and the box the drive's in was badly scratched by the screwdrivers those idiots used to open it).

[Jim Alfredson]

Using a single harddrive as the only backup option is not very smart, imo. Much better to either use high-density tape, DVDs (dual-layer discs can hold up to 8.5gb these days) which are very inexpensive, a RAID array (ie, multiple harddiscs in a redundant array), or something like the Iomega REV drive, which uses removable discs that hold up to 35gb of info per disc.

Again, if the data is important, then it's worth spending the money to protect. Harddrives are notoriously unstable and will die at a moment's notice. Or sometimes they'll last for years and years and years. You never know, and that's why it's dangerous to trust them.

[king ubu]

Well, I learned the hardway! Now I only use the harddrive for temporary storage of files I have in work... not that I lost anything *really* important, but it still did hurt!