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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Reliable HDDs

Miguel "Macgregor" De Olaso

Miguel "Macgregor" De Olaso

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Have anyone done a search for a reliable HDDs for making copies of CFs on set without the risk of damaging data?

Panasonic has a great brand of laptops:
http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/fully-rugged-computers.asp

So i was looking for something similar that can handle heat, dust and heavy vibrations.
Proabably we can find these kind of things in military/scientific exploration computer brands...
 
I've heard lots of bad things about Lacie. Lots of heat failure. Don't know if they've rectified that yet.

If possible I would stick to the smaller 2.5" laptop HDDs as they're designed for more shock and abuse. (Maxtor Mini, G-Drive Minis, etc etc.) Course you'll take a price increase and performance hit in the process but it might be the difference between the backup surviving or not.

backing up to two drives can solve just about any corruption concerns though.
 
my plan is to back up to two drives then double again with LTO3 tapes. cover my back and hopefully keep a bonding company of my back.
 
i got a hyperdrive Space 250 GB a few days ago, and I´m very happy with this device, it uses 2,5" HDD´s and you can copy and VERIFY CF Cards content to the HDD without a laptop.
 
Seagate has a line of server-grade drives that are supposed to be very good...with a 5 year warranty. I don't have the specs or link at the moment. That's what Caldigit uses in their RAID systems.
As far as I know G-Tech uses Hitachi DeathStars (ok Deskstars) and they are from what I've heard much better than Lacie.
Hope that helps!
 
macgregor said:
Have anyone done a search for a reliable HDDs for making copies of CFs on set without the risk of damaging data?

Panasonic has a great brand of laptops:
http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/fully-rugged-computers.asp

So i was looking for something similar that can handle heat, dust and heavy vibrations.
Proabably we can find these kind of things in military/scientific exploration computer brands...
Click to expand...

You don't say if you want to backup to an external drive or to the laptop. You can get laptops with dual disks that can be configured in RAID 1 for security.

If you want something external there are a few RAID drives available. We have one which has a nice feature of being able to rebuild the array, so at lunch you can take out a drive, send it off to post and add an extra drive to rebuild the array.

We've had a lot of problems with Lacie drives. I heard it was to do with low voltage. I could be wrong.
 
im.thatoneguy said:
I've heard lots of bad things about Lacie. Lots of heat failure. Don't know if they've rectified that yet.
Click to expand...

To be fair, most of the Lacie single drive setups are pretty solid...it's the multidisk enclosures (1tb and up "Big Disk" products) that have a ridiculous failure rate.
 
Brian Broz said:
Seagate has a line of server-grade drives that are supposed to be very good...with a 5 year warranty. I don't have the specs or link at the moment. That's what Caldigit uses in their RAID systems.
As far as I know G-Tech uses Hitachi DeathStars (ok Deskstars) and they are from what I've heard much better than Lacie.
Hope that helps!
Click to expand...

By all accounts these server grade disks don't really give you anything over the standard disks. I've never seen a difference.
 
we use both Lacie Mini Raids and G-tech Mini-Raids on set... bus powered and way less susceptible to shock damage than the big ones.
 
MrDorf said:
To be fair, most of the Lacie single drive setups are pretty solid...it's the multidisk enclosures (1tb and up "Big Disk" products) that have a ridiculous failure rate.
Click to expand...

Exactly my exprience. Though I gotta say, my impression is this:
Whenever a LaCie drive failed, it 'felt' like it was not broken, but more delirous, it couldn't find all drives. The setup is hardwired, to use them all. So when one drive has a longer spin up period due to tolerances (could be microseconds or so), the controller doesn't recognize it, setup incomplete, drive missing, error, host-OS reports: empty drive, wanna initialize ?

Shut down drive, switch on, maybe more than 2 times, even 4th drive spins up eventually and controller is happy, reports full stripe set, volume mounted, there you go.

I exchanged the drives within of a dropped enclosure with 2 WD raid edition drives and never had a better drive. Speedy as hell and rock solid.
Don't use it as a main drive, would never do with that kind of drive/combo, but leaves a good impression for some mirroring or temporary data.
I want to believe because its due to the raid edition drives, I guess they might have smaller [mechanical] tolerances, e.g. spin up times etc.
 
Seth Larney said:
By all accounts these server grade disks don't really give you anything over the standard disks. I've never seen a difference.
Click to expand...

Seen, maybe. No.
But kind of felt, look previous post. And I have built, upgraded and modified lots of Raids. Really.

(And you might be right, there might be no difference at all, but at least it feels better! :tongue: )
 
G-tech G-safe:


"G-SAFE is the ideal storage solution to safeguard digital photo files downloaded from flash memory cards. G-SAFE offers the ultimate in peace of mind by simultaneously writing to two independent hard disk drives providing instant back up of the images as you save them. And unlike single drive backup systems, if a drive failure occurs your images are safe and accessible."

G-Tech-G-SAFE-Big2.gif
 
Brian Broz said:
Seagate has a line of server-grade drives that are supposed to be very good...with a 5 year warranty. I don't have the specs or link at the moment. That's what Caldigit uses in their RAID systems.
As far as I know G-Tech uses Hitachi DeathStars (ok Deskstars) and they are from what I've heard much better than Lacie.
Hope that helps!
Click to expand...

Like Gavin said, server-grade is a bunch of FUD. They just label the same drives with a different SN series and provide a 5 year warranty at a small price premium. The model number and everything else on the units are the same. :umm:

The CalDigit eSATA RAID I just bought a couple weeks ago shipped with Hitachi drives. I took it from Denver to LA and back in a backpack for LART and it's worked flawlessly. Great unit, but their RAID management software is incompatible with OSX Leopard for now. I had to put Tiger on a firewire HDD and boot from that in order to configure the RAID to RAID-1 as it ships configured as RAID-0.
 
And before you get all giddy with excitement that 5 year extended warranty is only for the hardware not the data.

Same failure rates, same construction, same drives, no extra QA, exactly the same with an extended warranty... on the mechanics.
 
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