Small portable Firewire drive?

[andrewhake]

I would recommend using something like ChronoSync to create a bootable backup of your system hdd. The backup can be controlled with a great amount of detail, and files can be archived on the external for a set period of time when they are deleted from the external.

I use a Lacie Rugged for this specific purpose, although I would probably recommend something with dual FW800 ports like the G-Tech or OWC offerings.

It is also a good idea to have another hdd or something with multiple partitions, one for making a bootable backup, and another with a clean install of the OS for trouble shooting.

Another fantastic but more expensive option would be the CalDigit mini RAIDs.

 

[Wolf]

LaCie Rugged not so good...

LaCie Rugged not so good...

I'm a fan of the Lacie Rugged drives.
You can also get them with eSATA.

Gaak! We had to send two of those back in the last 6 months.

How did you even get to send those back (I presume to LaCie)? I've had no such luck with LaCie, just having their 'support' staff trying to stonewall me...

I do have LaCie Rugged drives that work ok, but overall my experience is that LaCie drives have a higher failure rate than f.ex. G-tech (got a few of those too). And it's also my experience that the LaCie drives effectively have no warranty what so ever.

 

[joshua csehak]

The speed of the drive isn't a bottleneck with firewire 800. I tested all my drives, and to transfer 1 gig, I got a consistent 12 seconds read and write times on my 7200 rpm 1 tb Western Digital "Blue" and "Black" drives, 15/16 seconds on my 5400 rpm 1 tb WD "green" drive, and 18 seconds read/write on my 5400 rpm 2 tb WD "green" drive. All of these are in the 4 internal drive bays of my mac pro. My pair of 320 gig OWC 7200 pocket FW800 drives, however, both clocked in at 20 seconds read, 23 seconds write, which leads me to believe that FW800 is the bottleneck here, not drive speed. [edit: now that I think about it, I suppose it's possible that a given 2.5" HD is slower than a 3.5" of the same rpm and capacity, but I doubt it. Will have to test when I get a 5400 notebook drive.] When I get another pocket drive, it'll be a 5400 for sure. Other than the 7200 rpm being unnecessary, I love the drives. Never had a problem with either, and powering off the FW bus is the best.

As an aside, I feel like 5400 rpm drives are probably more reliable, given that they're not stressed as much. Might have to look into getting some facts on that.

When I need to get a new one, it'll definitely be this one:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MS8U5T1GB8/

 

[joshua csehak]

A note about RAID: definitely think about if you really need RAID before going forward with it. Just as a quick example:

RAID 5:
4-bay drive box/controller: $500
4 drives: $400
space: 3 drives
fault tolerance: 1 drive

RAID 6:
4-bay drive box/controller: $500
4 drives: $400
space: 2 drives
fault tolerance: 2 drives

No RAID, drives 1-3 each have 2 clones:
9 drives: $900
space available: 3 drives
fault tolerance: 2-6 drives

Of course, making 2 clones is a pain in the ass, but a RAID controller as a single point of failure can be a dangerous thing, especially when it's holding several tb worth of data. Best is to have a few different systems in place, perhaps a RAID for storing your current projects, a bunch of 2 tb drives that you can archive footage and renders to, clones of those you can send off-site, and it's probably also not a bad idea to upload small files (like project files) online somewhere. Then if, say, your house/office burns down, you can rebuild with the project files and the off-site footage.

 

[dustin lindgren]

http://www.amazon.com/Glyph-Technologies-Pocket-FireWire-Interfaces/dp/B001U4K56E

These are the ones i roll with. Please let me know your thoughts on this, as I am not very up to date on this subject. I was told that these were very tough and reliable when I bought them a while back. I was also going for the smallest and most hardcore drive. So far so good but I want to get one more. Thanks for any info.

 

[Karel Bata]

Just thought you folks would like to hear an update on my researches into using a SSD hybrid as an external boot-up disk -

I was lucky to discover that another of Jigsaw24's customers was already trying just that, and I got this mail from Andrew there:

I got a reply from the other hybrid-using customer:

"I have now been using it externally since yesterday afternoon. I am using an Icybox firewire enclosure.

Every half an hour or so I seem to be experiencing periods of about 15 - 20 seconds where the application I am using locks up. So far I have had this with Word 2008 and Apple Mail and Safari. The only other application I have used today is BBEdit, which has not locked up, but then I haven't used it much! The hard drive activity light on the Icybox lights up just before it comes back to life again.

It is a cleanly installed OS with all patches and updates run.

The freezes are not a big problem and the application always comes back to life.

On a positive note, launch times are quicker than normal."

The freezes seem to be related to the automatic power management feature that sleeps the drive when 'inactive'. this seems to be a little flaky when used externally and may be something fixed in a future firmware or Mac OS update (I wouldn't count on it).

Regards,

Andrew Jigsaw24​

Oh well...

How's your SSD John? Have you tried running that test again?

 

[mark_p]

I've used Rugged Lacie drives with Zero problems so far. They also don't need external power which is superb when you are on the move. I've daisy chained 3 of them together too again with no problems.