I was interested in purchasing a hard drive disk for long-term storage, since I currently only have a solid-state drive. Does anyone have know of a high-quality drive (1 TB+), that is at most $300? I'd sacrifice less space for a more reliable drive. It is intended for the Mac.

Unless I'm safe-r with a solid-state? Here is what one site had to say (http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10t...failing/2063):

Solid state drives are, for all intents and purposes, just large flash drives, so they have no moving parts. Without moving parts, the life of the drive (as a whole) is naturally going to be longer than it would if the drive included read heads, platters, and bearings. Although these drives will cost more up front, they will save you money in the long run by offering a longer lifespan. That means less likelihood of drive failure, which will cause downtime as data is recovered and transferred.

-- merged --

No one has a mac?

This question appears to have been overlooked. Sorry! .... and I have a Mac. :)

However, this doesn't have much to do with Mac vs Windows vs Linux, etc...

The idea that SSD lasts longer than a spinning disk platter is unproven. Thus far, it's more theory than what's actually happened in practice. Even cautious server admins are sticking to their SAS disk arrays, as opposed to adopting SSD, because of historical solid state issues with fragmentation and periodic bottlenecking.

It's curious how that techrepublic.com blog article is gone now .... hmmm...

Anyway, your idea to get a traditional disk platter is wise.

What connection are you looking for? USB2, eSATA, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 ... something else?

Well either way, if a SSD fails I'm screwed, but if a hard disk drive fails, I have a chance to recover some data. I am looking for a quality drive, not some cheap Western Digital. My Macbook Pro has a Firewire 800 and of course two USB ports.

I was looking at the Time Capsule--it's for backup, but I assume I can use it as a regular storage drive as well? However, some people are critical of its lifespan. I would choose the 2tb , http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD...e-2tb?fnode=5f

Another option is the LaCie 3TB USB, which appears to have some good ratings and better workmanship, http://store.apple.com/us/product/H9...s=s%3DtopRated

What do you use/recommend?

I would not suggest a Time Capsule. It has it's own method of how things work, and it's not really standard. And it it's anything like the other Mac hardware, it's using a Hitachi drive. Those can be hit or miss. I've had fairly good experiences with Hitachi -- better than Western Digital, in fact -- but it's still not a Seagate. Hitachi drives, if nothing else, tend to make noise when reading/writing. Seagate is silent. When you're doing audio work nearby, that's important!

LaCie is just a brand name now. The actual manufacture of the drive varies.

The only way to get a guaranteed flawless drive is to either build it with your own enclosure, or use a drive from a "brand" that is known to consistently use the same quality manufacturer. This is one reason Fantom drives are so suggested by this site, when doing a non-DIY build.

If I were you, I'd buy this drive for $240 shipped: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...A&linkCode=as2

Those are the drives I use for backups. :congrats:

In all, between the super-cool Green drives, and the warm-but-faster non-Green drives, I probably have a dozen of the Fantoms. Several are off-site, storing irreplaceable photos, ISO file backups, and other documents. The Firewire/USB Green drives are my favorite for backups. The non-Green drives (eSATA) are what I have connected to editing laptops and media servers.

In my mind, those are some of the best desktop drives money can buy.

Thank you for the recommendation. Do you have the GreenDrive specifically listed above? Because not many people have bought that version, and my only concern is if a hard drive with more outputs is more likely to have issues with it later on (like combined a dvd/vhs).

I have several of the triple interface models. The drive inside should be the same, but the quad interface enclosures have added Firewire800. This is not at all like a combo DVD/VHS situation. If there's any comparison to be made against video hardware, I'd compare it to a Blu-ray player that can also play AVI, MKV, MP4, etc. It's not doing multiple separate tasks (like VHS and DVD), but has added adjacent tasks.

My Firewire800 port is dedicated to a RAID-1 drive, so I've never needed to buy the quad, and it saves $20 to get a triple. While that may not seem like a lot, it's $100 after buying five drives! And again, I have about a dozen of them.

If I needed what you did, this is what I'd buy without any hesitation. :)

I appreciate the help. I was also thinking of upgrading my Macbook Pro to include more RAM and replace the drive. I would rather add RAM then buy a new computer. I would also keep my current hard drive but my computer runs slowly with no or one application at a time and since I dropped my laptop (while it was closed), I expect that some damage was taken by the hard drive.

As a result, I am looking on Crucial and MacSales, and for hard drives I encountered Seagate, WD, and HGST, which from what I have read is now WD. Is Seagate still the best option out of these three? Since I am buying an external drive as well, this drive would probably be smaller, but at 7200 rpm.

Just don't waste your time installing more than 8GB of RAM. While you can cram more into the computer, it's never really used. Even if you commit a large chunk of RAM to Photoshop, it tends to still operate partially in swap, using only 4GB or so max RAM. So you'll have free RAM left open. No use in buying more unused RAM.

Seagate is still the best internal drive, yes. They're silent (unlike Hitacho), and they're not as prone to fail (unlike Western Digital).

I buy drives and RAM from Amazon.com, Buy.com, Newegg.com, and sometimes TigerDirect.com.
While I'm a fan of OWC (macsales.com), they're generally best for unique items, like RAID enclosures. Their RAM/drive prices are high.

As or 2014, is the Greendrive still the most recommended hard drive for long-term backup? Also, I have read that the drive is pre-formatted for only Mac OS. For those working on both Mac and Windows, is it still best to reformat this drive, or are there better alternatives available?

Yes. Get a Fantom. :)

And get it from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/?_encoding=U...MHXYQZ2PRPPA5O
There's several to choose from.

Most the drives come formatted for Windows as NTFS. You can reformat it if you want, or leave it as is.

Only the Quad is Mac HFS formatted.

For a drive that will be used for both Windows and Mac, leave it as NTFS, and buy Paraong NTSC for Mac software.
Use our coupon code to get 20% OFF: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/deal...-ntfs-mac.html

Thanks, that's why the coupons need more exposure!:D Does Paragon NTFS basically allows one to transfer data from a Mac-formatted drive to a NTFS (and vice-versa)?

What if I instead just reformatted the drive as ex-fat? Or is the Paragon method better?

exFAT is worse -- less compatible, seen some screwy drive loss issues.
The Paragon NTFS method is best, yes.

The new coupons app is coming along nicely. Hoping to see it go live in October sometime. I agree, it needed better exposure.

Thanks--what if I need to store files larger than 4gb? Should I just get a separate Mac drive? Lifehacker recommends ext4:
http://lifehacker.com/how-can-i-redu...ss-o-923595543

256 terabytes is the max file size for NTFS.
256TB -- not GB.

I think it's plenty large. :P

Oops, I was thinking of fat32! :smack:

Then again, some day, 256TB will be a bit small!

Since we're on the topic, I believe Seagate was recommended here for an internal drive over WD. But according to a "study" done earlier this year, Seagate drives had higher failure rates than either WD or Hitachi. The drives with the lowest failure rates were Hitachi Deskstars, starting with Hitachi 3TB Deskstar 7K3000 (HDS723030ALA640) and Deskstar 5K3000 (HDS5C3030ALA630). Of course, I don't know if Seagate's data was skewed due to the Barracuda Green's horrendous failure rate.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/20894...ve-makers.html

When I see obviously skewed studies like this, I wander what the ulterior motive is. The Seagate 1.5tb drives have been known to have problems since they first came out back in 2008 or so. To include them now on a 2014 study is ridiculous, and does nothing more than intentionally make Seagate look bad. When you compare the lifespans of the other drives, Seagate will do better.

Another item that's overlooked is the entire idea of "lifespan" -- when the drive dies. But as Western Digital and Hitachi drives age, they being to make extremely annoying noises. Western Digital drives will whine, while Hitachi drives will "thrash". The Seagate drives generally stay silent until death. So most people will replace WD and Hitachi drives long before the official death date.

As noted, the spin up/down of that company skews the results to begin with. They're honestly stupid for not using enterprise grade (server grade) drives in their setup. The fact that they're pushing desktop drives is more a failure on the part of that IT department more than anything else.

I think the whole "study" should be disregarded. :smack:

Thanks. By the way, is Seagate the manufacturer of Fantom Drives?

I keep reading reports that SSDs are more reliable than HDDs.

http://www.computerworld.com/article...ed.html?page=1

http://www.hardware-revolution.com/b...e-august-2014/

Intel have had an especially low failure rate on their SSDs.
However, is a HDD still recommended given that the data has a chance of being recovered in a failure?

To get me to sleep at night I could also get a LTO Drive--which can last at least 10-15 years.

http://www.backupcentral.com/mr-back...m-storage.html

But is it cheaper to simply buy a fantom or two every few years and have them mirror each other? Of course I would try to avoid purchasing from the same batch or at the same time. I'm surprised KPMedia does not use tape drives.

Since my last post I have read more about M-Discs, which are claimed to last at least 1000 years if kept in a safe location. There are only certain drives which can burn onto M-Discs, but these are not too expensive. The discs themselves, are. I might use this option, as I have a large DVD video archive which should be duplicated.

Another option may be Backblaze's unlimited online backup for $95 for 2 years. If you are concerned about someone stealing your patent application I wouldn't do this, but it seems a viable alternative at face value. Assuming one replaces a Fantom every four years, this choice is about as expensive, but has a lower risk of data loss.

Speaking of which, it was suggested previously that the Fantom drives are the best choice for the price, and Seagate is better than WD. I spoke to someone at Fantom who told me that not only does Seagate manufacture the GreenDrive and other Fantoms, but so does Western Digital, Hitachi, and Toshiba. He said there is no way to know before buying who manufactured my drive. This may explain some of the mixed reviews, unless Fantom mandates higher production standards than for a normal WD drive.

SSD is not more reliable than HDD. That's insane.

The raw hardware is faster, but if the bottleneck is not I/O, then it won't make a bit of difference.

That "Hardware Revolution" site is one of the BS sites that only exist to make money. Facts be damned.

The ComputerWorld article is probably accurate, sort of. It's really brief, and doesn't make clear what's being referenced. For example, server drives are not the same as desktop drives. From the sound of things, the Linux founder was using a consumer desktop drive, but probably should have been using a server-grade drive. The whole thing lacks details.

I'd avoid online backups. (1) Safety of the data is impossible to guarantee, and (2) that'd take forever. Unless you have fiber coming into your house, forget it.

Regarding Fantom, yes, that's exactly it. They're like LaCie. They'll use whatever meets their specs. They want to maintain their reputation. And for many years now, they have. Fantom is to Windows what LaCie is to Mac.

The single biggest reason for data loss on personal computers is drive failure, the easiest way to prevent that is with 2 drives in RAID1 configuration. RAID1 utilizes two drives to mirror each other, in sense it's instant backup. If one drive fails you still have the other one, pop a new drive in and it will rebuilt from the healthy one. On my system I have a SSD for the OS and applications. Drive D is two drives in RAID1 configuraton and for convenience I've moved all of windows personal folders like "My Documents" to that drive.

While that will prevent the most common reason for data failure it's not 100%. Of course there is a slim chance that both drives could be damaged simultaneously. You will want another drive as backup to that.

It also will not prevent data corruption and this is often overlooked. Suppose you are writing your life's story in Word and you have hundreds of pages. You walk away from the computer and Jr. deletes 300 pages in the middle and you don't realize it. You save your work and couple of days later you do your backup routine overwriting your backed up file with the new one.... bye bye 300 pages. It's important to incorporate versioning in your backups.

Last but not least don't forget about catastrophic loss, take it from someone that had a house fire and watched that fire slowly creeping towards his computer room it's not a very good feeling knowing a lot of that data material is all that exists. Fortunately for me everything came out fine.

Granted you need to be practical, obviously storing numerous videos in multiple places is going to get expensive. Those for example don't go on the RAID1 drive. I have a networked drive to access them in the house, all my material is also on DV tape/another drive and those are stored at a relatives home.

Lock your office, use a password, never share a computer with kids. :wink2:

It's only one example and loss of data like that is always a possibility. Your backup scheme should always account for versioning of files.

So if i have a Mac should I go with a LaCie or still with the recommended Fantom?

But what if we assume a high speed connection and that the data would be safe, or at least safer than at our location? Given the thecoalman's story, wouldn't the risk of fire, flood, earthquake, etc. make online storage more secure, at least for those companies which backup their data in multiple locations?

Also, has anyone used the M-discs for backup and known their reliability? Theoretically, their failure rate would be much lower than a hard drive.

LaCie is overpriced. Get the Fantom.

If you do use online storage, then encrypt it on your end. Just be sure that you can decrypt it later, should it actually be needed.

M-disc is not better than other blank DVD-R like Verbatim.

I read a post that said DigitalFaq planned a test of the M-discs. Do you still do?

A anecdotal report last year found positive results:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/torture...1000-year-dvd/

Every bit helps. :wink2:

Have you bought a Fantom drive recently? I only ask because several of the Fantom drives have been receiving more negative reviews in recent months, so perhaps something has changed in the manufacturing process. Particularly the GreenDrives for some reason.

The normal drive did not seem to have as much negative feedback:
http://www.amazon.com/Fantom-Force-E...tom+hard+drive

Also, does anyone have any recommendations for (or warnings against) certain external portable hard drives?

No Western Digitals. :no2:

The WD aluminum Mac drives are nice, but that's it.
The non-Mac and portable drive are built cheaply (100% plastic).

Thanks, I know you are not their biggest fan. Besides the usual choice of Seagate, any thoughts about Toshiba, Buffalo or Verbatim (7-year warranty)?

Toshiba = Samsung (TSST). For hard drives, yuck.
Verbatim? For HDD? Fine for optical media, but not anything else.
Buffalo = rebadger not known to use the best hardware -- it's no Lacie or Fantom!

Thanks, I did not know Samsung was so bad! I have a Verbatim from 2010, also with warranty. Works fine so far, but I'll stick with Seagate..