Lol. But seriously, anyone got any recommendations?

I use an external drive to house all my Kontakt libraries, samples libraries, Ableton packs, Studio One packs, audio project, video projects, digital art projects etc and currently have a 4TB that I have virtually filled. Rather than get a 6TB that I will need upgrading again in a few months cos of files and libraries always growing enormously, I am wanting to jump straight up to 8TB (or higher if there are 10TB drives available for 6/8TB prices). Obviously want something 7200rpm too so that it will load samples quick enough for me.

 

Thinking the same. Been looking at this to back up all my libs and projects from the years

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/d2Tb3-10TB

 

I went with 5x6Tb drives late last year due to the lack of information and testing 8Tb drives. Whenever I'm about to buy a new round of mass storage I refer to Backblaze or similar sites..

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q3-2016/

 

From that data, WD RED & ST Barracuda can have high AFRs.

What's not tested there is ST ironwolf.

Apparently nothing but good stories about them (i have their older NAS model)

 

Last edited: Jul 15, 2017

Glyph Blackbox Pro 8TB Rugged Desktop Hard Drive.

 

You mean an overpriced Seagate drive?

 

@Moogerfooger

Interesting - thx for sharing. What company/model do you prefer? I've had success with Lacie over the years, but am curious if there is something better out there.

 

Exactly. Did Bunford mentioned budget restrains here? He asked for 8tb and 7200 rpm external drive. I use Glyph and am a happy customer.

 

I dont advice bigger HDD cause of breakdown possibility. I got four broken HDD, last time i lost 3TB data (that time i had four HDD, i wont think if all files could store in one HDD). They wanted 1000-1500$ for file recovery, i didnt accept, HDD staying here as trash. I used Seagate, WD, Samsung etc. if HDD is 7200rpm i dont believe there is noticable difference between brands but i prefer Seagate cause its little bit cheaper.

 

One recommendation: don´t buy. Several shops in Spain retired them and 10TB drives from their cathalogs. I bought 2 and both of them made crash. Fortunately, before warranty expired. Best option: 6TB NAS internal HDD drives. Never approach to 7200 RPM. Better 2 6TB in RAID 0, for instance.

 

my little experience :

Bought 8Tb LaCie Porsche design the last three years, always in double (I make a backup of each disk I own) and never ever had a problem. A couple of friends have them too, a-ok as well.
LaCie says "for Mac" but it's just an advertising thing, it's 300% for Win.
http://www.lacie.com/personal/porsche-design/porsche-design-desktop-mac/

 

Good info so far! I am ideally looking for something cheap but reliable, and would consider 6TB drives instead for reliability. The ultimate goal is to buy several of them so I can then clone vital data in case of a crash on one of them.

I want to keep them external if possible and use USB3.0. Is there a good, cheap external USB3.0 enclosure out there to house the drive in too?

 

... and when one of your 6TB drives crashes you have no way to recover any of your data. Seriously guys, RAID0 is overhyped, you're doubling the risk of losing your data. Better to just get 2x6TB and use them as two separate drives - it's not a problem. Without RAID0 you still have 12TB of storage, you're just not doubling the speed for the cost of halving the reliability - you double the capacity instead, keeping "standard" speed and reliability.

 

Wouldn't it make sense, to buy a desktop NAS with some smaller drives configured RAID5 ?
These drives with extreme data density I haven't good experiences with (Lacie). They got too hot, had an extreme power consumption (but they heated my room in the wintertime ;)

 

Do we need to speak about the difference between redundancy AND backup ?
Because redundancy (RAID 1 or 5...) is NOT a replacement for backup. And the opposite, too.

RAID 1/5 will protect you against downtime, and you NEED to have a spare HD to get the most of it.
That's why most companies use RAID, to avoid downtime due to backup restoration. And data lost between backups ;)

BUT most ppl just need regular backup. On Windows, i use FreeFileSync for data (versioning activated). Very nice settings, simple and effective.
And Paragon Free for system backup.

So basically, when you buy a bigger drive, you buy another to back it up

PS : if you don't understand my point, imagine a virus or manipulation error delete your data on a RAID. You get NOTHING left without a backup.
Computer tech spoken

 

Have a read of this mate.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/8tb-seagate-hard-drive-reliability-data-looking-good/


Especially the bit about reliability in relation to Western Digital (Which I have always recommended)

£203 quid from here:-
http://www.ebuyer.com/705293-seagat...ferral&utm_source=pricespy&utm_campaign=pcomp

External caddy :- this one from Amazon £15

https://www.amazon.co.uk/CiT-inch-U...0132497&sr=1-4&keywords=usb+3.0+3.5+enclosure

Note the 3.5 inch size (NOT 2.5)

 

Last edited: Jul 15, 2017

No, not really (I once lost the work of months due to a broken disk, that's enough for a lifetime)

I'm the high priest of backup. Constant mirorring two NASes in two different buildings

But I'd like to avoid that it comes to a need for a restore. So I don't use too high capacity drives and instead would prefer lower density drives with RAID5 for speed and reliability. And of course zero downtime.
As far as my personal experience shows, drives tend to die earlier when they have extreme high capacity and high spin rates on heavily used drives. I think, it's because of heat problems within the tiny housings of desktop drives. I had several dead or bad block Lacie Big Disks/Quadras. If I looked on SMART info, I mostly found (too) high temperatures.
So, some years ago I started to use NASes with relatively small (3TB) server grade HDDs instead of single high capacity drives. Placed them in the basement (year round quite stable low temperature) and access them over GBit LAN. Speed is ok. No damaged drives for years so far.
Automatic 7 versions backups of my PCs system disks and delayed sync of data disks over the LAN at nighttime. Automatic sync-on-connect for external drives and laptop. Never lost a byte ever since.
And after a quite long time now, it seems to be more cost efficient, although the starting investment in the NASes was higher obviously..

 

Last edited: Jul 15, 2017