Hard drive storage options?

Hi everyone,


As my library of pictures and video footage keep expanding, I need to find a way to store and back up all of my files. I'm looking to add a bunch of storage to my macbook pro laptop. I don't want to have a bunch of loose external hard drives laying around. What are all of you using for storage? A friend suggested a hard drive bay with 3-4 hard drives but I'm not too familiar with how they work, especially with a mac laptop. Any suggestions?


Also I'd prefer not to spend a ton of money on this as well, yet have it be reliable. Thanks!

I'd recommend a drive with FW800 for higher speed transfers (eSATA is even faster if your MBP has an ExpressCard slot, but you'd need an eSATA card as well - personally, I just use FW800 although I use an ExpressCard CF reader with my MBP). I'm partial to LaCie drives - I have a couple of large d2 drives (with USB2 and FW, one with eSATA too), and I also have a LaCie Rugged with FW800 (and USB) for portable, bus-powered storage.


As I've stated before, rather than one big drive stored in at home next to your computer, I'd recommend getting a second drive to keep elsewhere (work, etc.) so you have everything stored in two separate locations (at least!).


-John

I personally have a 3 HDD's in my Desktop PC and I have an external disk linked to my dad's pc where I back-up from time to time. It's connected via gigabit Lan and USB, so I can get maximum transfers of like 30MB/s


If I would require more room then I do now I would look at a NAS. It's a HDD storage device which is directly added to your network. They are not too expensive(the ones that come without a HDD in it) and you are able to put your own internal HDD's in it(cheap compared to external HDD's). You can then easily access your NAS disks by internet and network. And if you've got a wired gigabit LAN network like I have you could also be able to pull out speeds like 100MB/s. This combination would cost you more than just an external HDD, but it would also get you more. And it's very fast if you have wired networking at home.

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Originally Posted by Cozen

Also I'd prefer not to spend a ton of money on this as well, yet have it be reliable

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A lot of times these NAS devices with multiple disk-bays offer so called RAID capabilities where you could link both drives or have both drives copy each-other to prevent loss of data when 1 disk fails.


Anyway at this time I'm still happy with my own solution, but when more room is needed...NAS is where I'm going. Oh and as an added benefit, a lot of NAS devices offer streaming services, FTP-management and downloadclients... Could be fun if you have a big HD tv and you want to view some of your videos or listen to all your MP3's...You're gonna need a mediaplayer on your tv to acces the NAS, but I'm just saying it's possible [;)]


Jan

I have a mac pro with 4 hard drives, and I back up internaly to the hard drives. I have an external 1.5 tb hard drive I back up to as well. This way I have my stuff on 3 drives and 2 locations.


I used a laptop before and I used 2 external hard drives to back up to. If I were using a macbook I think the external hard drives (even though you dislike that choice) is probably the cheapest route. The RAID system your friend suggestedwill cost you more. If you do not get a external with Firewire or somthing similar, you will find USB is slow. Slow may not matter to you if you are only backing up occasionaly.


I suggest you go to the Apple Store on line, click on the link for STORAGE. It will give you an idea of what is available and compatable. But if you own an Apple you know they might not be the cheapest.

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Originally Posted by HDNitehawk

The RAID system your friend suggestedwill cost you more

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Correct, however you could also start with only one disk and add another one or more(depending on the NAS's internal drive bays) later...


This way the difference in price isn't that bad and the features and futureproof-ness are greater...

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Originally Posted by Sheiky

Correct, however you could also start with only one disk and add another one or more(depending on the NAS's internal drive bays) later...


This way the difference in price isn't that bad and the features and futureproof-ness are greater...

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One of Cozen's requirementsis that it does not cost alot of money. If Cozen has a Macbook Pro, they come with no larger than a 500mb hard drive. My wifes is a low end Macbook and her hardrive is 120mb. Apple has a 2tb external which will hold 4 timesthe computers hard drive,on the website it lists for $169, if Cozen's hard drive is just now overloaded I would suggest looking at how much memory that is needed.


Some of us 2tb might be more storage than we ever use, while others (like me) end up with 4 hard drives on our computer and several externals. I think what Cozen needs to define would be how much storage will be needed over the next few years and whats the budget.


The minimum I would do would be 2 externals. Next step would be the RAID system and 1 external. Double redundancy with files stored in two locations.

I like the idea of having one unit such as a bay that can hold multiple drives. Having 4 externals with all the cables hanging everywhere and having to plug them all in is not appealing. I'm probably looking for 2-4 TB storage right now, and up to 8TB in the future. 5D video takes up a lot of space!!!


With that said, I'm hoping to spend less than $400 for now. A hard drive bay or multi bay NAS sounds good, but I have no idea how it hooks up to a macbook pro and or what brand is reliable. I like the idea of having multiple bays with one of the bays cloning the other for back up.

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Originally Posted by Cozen

I like the idea of having one unit such as a bay that can hold multiple drives. Having 4 externals with all the cables hanging everywhere and having to plug them all in is not appealing. I'm probably looking for 2-4 TB storage right now, and up to 8TB in the future. 5D video takes up a lot of space!!!


With that said, I'm hoping to spend less than $400 for now. A hard drive bay or multi bay NAS sounds good, but I have no idea how it hooks up to a macbook pro and or what brand is reliable. I like the idea of having multiple bays with one of the bays cloning the other for back up.
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Most cost effective route would probably be to build yourself a NAS. While you can purchase them, they can be quite expensive.

I assume you want redundancyif so, RAID1, 5, 6, 10, etc. would all be suitable.

One thing to point out, whether relevant or not, is that RAID is NOT a backup. While RAID levels with redundancy (as with those listed above) do create duplicates of your data, it will not be safe from Viruses, Deletion, or other user error.


You also would need to take into consideration throughput and how important it is to you. There are plenty of storage solutions out there and though you may limited to external units, price plays a major role.


Here is a Dlink4 Bay NAS unit


http://www.dlink.ca/products/?pid=667

You wouldn't happen to have an Airport Extreme as your wireless router, would you? Since you have a MacBook Pro, I thought there might be a chance you would. I ask because you can connect any USB hard drive to an Airport Extreme and it becomes a NAS device, so then you could just transfer files wirelessly to your storage drive. If that drive were a RAID 1 setup, that would be perfect.


One solution you could consider is buying an enclosure and installing hard drives of your brand and size choice. Even if you don't have any experience doing this, it's very easy. Here's one I found on amazon.com that looked interesting:http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NST-400MX-SR-3-5-Inch-External-Enclosure/dp/B001BYJFBY/. This enclosure is capable of RAID 0 (combining both drives as 1 drive, no data backup) or RAID 1 (drives mirror each other so everything is automatically copied). You could attach this to either your MacBook Pro directly or to an Airport Extreme with USB.

I have an Apple Time Capsule as my home wireless router. 1TB internal for automatic hourly backups, 2TB external for photo archives (almost full, no surprise), 1TB for other file archives. 2x1TB offsite archive. I'm hitting a space crunch, so I'm about to find a 4TB solution for photo archives, allowing the 2TB to be repurposed for automatic backups. Lately we seem to burn 0.75-1TB/year.


I have 120GB and 250GB portable hard drives; they don't get much use lately, but the 250 worked fantastic last week on a cruise: I cooked up an 'rsync' command that automatically backed up the LR catalog, original .CR2, and DNG files to the 250. It was about 70GB of originals and roughly the same in DNGs, so I had to get the originals off my MBP.


I suspect very soon I'll pick up a Mac mini and use that as my file storage device. It'll give me flexibility to do more with rsync to conduct my off-site backups.


Every now and then I drool over the XSan products from Apple. Then I see the price tag and hang my head in fear of what storage will soon cost me.