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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 :)

G-Raid 2TB or LaCie LaCie 2big Quadra 3TB ?

Y

Yannick Hagman

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Which one would you buy for a Raid 1? I've heard some bad things about LaCie-Drives, but maybe that did change in the meantime. There are some failed g-raids as well on bhphotovideo if you read the reviews. So maybe it's just bad luck.
 
G-Technology
 
G-Tech, wouldn't touch LaCie with a trillion foot barge-pole, they have an awful reputation.
I think almost every DIT is using G-Tech drives for portable storage. All the one's Ive met do anyway.
Probably something to do with Ted's magical aura :P
 
G-Raid it is then. :) But now I'm unsure if I should get a G-Raid 2TB or a G-Raid Mini 1TB (which would be portable). I do not need portability, but it's nice to have the portability in case.With Raid 1 it will leave me just 500gb for video though, which isn't much. Or I do have to make it Raid 0, which is risky.
 
Please for the love of GOD do not buy Lacie. I've had multiple drives fail over time. SIMPLY GARBAGE! I have never owned any G-Tech products but I'd rather put my money on them.
 
I have both, the Mini is fantastic for ultra portable use. But the G-Raid is fine and transportable for normal use.
Are these for backups? If so I really like my G-Safe (http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-safe.cfm) its a bit more money but the removable caddy's are a godsend for separated backups. I have 1 chassis and 6 drives so that I can be working on separate project backups really easily.

I wouldn't recommend any of them as a primary video drive as you would need raid 0 for the speed which is not safe.

Whats your intended usage?
 
Keep in mind, all these external hard drives, the actual physical hard drives themselves are all your basic name brand drives. Hitachi, seagate, western digital etc. The drives themselves are nothing special. But I think the inherent problem with Lacie as of late, which is why they sell so cheap are the controller boards in the units themselves. Or there is something up with the drives themselves. whether they be refurbed, or very old overstock and the disk gets sticky and is unable to spin up, I don't know.

But I can vouch and say Lacie doesn't protect it's drives with voltages very well. I had a client who I sent out on set transcodes that spanned 2 lacie drives (clients bought me the drives, even though I asked for g raids and even offered up to build my own externals for them) for their editorial along with the r3d's. They had them daisy chained together in the edit, one drive started clicking... died, and took the other one with it.

Luckily there were more sets of backups that they just re duped and sent back to the edit.


I've had another lacie quadra a client gave me that wouldn't turn on, new from the box.

I have a few older lacie drives, from pre 2008 that are absolutely flawless, but their quality just isn't what it used to be. Go G-Raid, or build your own, or even look into OWC. Lacie is just no good these days.
 
It's intended to edit my short film on it and also act as back up on the same time as long as the film isn't shot (I draw the files on my iMac and then would make a copy on that drive - which I then would use to edit as well), so I would at least have two copies. I also draw the sd-card contents on another macbook every shot.
 
on that budget, i'd just get drive docks, and sled in internal hard drives. since you're working on a imac anyway, you can pick up two docks from OWC with fw800 and every other connection, and find deals on 1-2 tb internal hard disks.

cheaper, not as fast as a raided set but very cost effective and lets you have more backups in your budget.

a single 2-3 tb g raid will eat up most of your budget as is.
 
80 bux for a dock with all connections
another 35 for a dock with simple usb

under 100 dollars for a 2 tb drive. you're already at half the price.


if you it's important to have it raid zero, you can pick up a OWC raid 0 enclosure for 50 bux. and have two 1 tb drivse in there, which you can get for 50 bux a pop too. 150 for a 2 tb raid. another 80 box for a back up solution. again, saving 50%

but if you're happy with the g raid 2 tb and going some other 2 tb backup, there is nothing wrong with that either. g raid's are great drives.
 
Tom.Wong said:
80 bux for a dock with all connections
another 35 for a dock with simple usb
under 100 dollars for a 2 tb drive. you're already at half the price.
Click to expand...

It's 99$ for the 1TB USB Version with a Hitachi deskstar HD. Could be the solution for backups, as I could buy two drives and store one on a different location and swap them every week or so.

if you it's important to have it raid zero, you can pick up a OWC raid 0 enclosure for 50 bux. and have two 1 tb drivse in there, which you can get for 50 bux a pop too. 150 for a 2 tb raid.
Click to expand...

$229.99
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

But no Info on used HD. I know G-tech uses Hitachi.

another 80 box for a back up solution. again, saving 50%
Click to expand...

Which one do you mean? Any alternative to the voyager?
 
i use thermaltake docks, but any 35 dollars dock works all the same. the usb should be fine for backups, I tend to use esata all the time and rarely use fw 800 anymore.

drives at OWC use Hitachi, I've opened them up on several occasions and that's what they've been, it's also their drive of choice on their 4 bay raid enclosures.

they sell JUST the enclosure for 50 dollars no drives too at OWC, if u want to throw in your own. you can get a hitachi or samsung 1 tb drive for under 60 dollars these days. and raid it yourself. that's THE most cost effective solution IMHO. but if you don't want to be bothered with any of that, you are well within your budget just to buy a off the shelf drive and a cheap backup. Either solution isn't a bad idea, just trying to show you options.
 
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MESATATBEK/

this is esata only, i keep forgetting you're on a imac

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW936AL2/

this one is double the price cause of the extra connections, but if you find good deals on quality internal drives, you can still probably save a few bux over ordering from them directly.

best practice, just have a second drive, possibly even a third, I prefer internals cause it's cheap and easy. I'll have a backup of just the master files, and just that. and a second drive just to clone your work drive. I usually use something like superduper so it checksums the back up. the backups should be relatively quick if you didn't ad much to the project, graphics, vfx, audio, and otherwise should take too long to backup.

and then i always backup my project files on a thumb drive too.

or you could set the raid enclosure to raid 1, and just have the drives mirror each other, and pick up 2 tb drives instead of 1 tb drives. you take a hit on speed though, but it's instant data backup.

or you could buy a 4 bay raid and got raid 5. i tend to stick with raids now cause it just gets less cluttered.

lot of different things you can do, there's even more I could suggest, but in a 400 dollar budget there's only a couple of choices in that range.
 
This one is also quite interesting as Raid 1: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/IcyDock/MB662USEB2S/ for USB 2.0 Backup.

Maybe I should edit it on my iMac-Harddisk and look out for such a Raid 1-Solution just for the backup. And get a Raid 0 external drive later.

Only drawback with a Raid 1 is, it sits physical on the same place as the iMac if anything happens..

The dock drive could be a bit noisy.
 
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