Do good hard drives exist?

[Jeremy Garchow]

Another vote for OWC. They are great. Good recommend.

[Brandon Smits]

Chris,

I’ve used a ton of different external firewire hard drives, and had endless problems with all of them with one notable exception: Glyph. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/manufacturer/Glyph
Though they use other manufacturers bare drives in their enclosures, their warranty is 3 years on most of their externals, and typically includes Data Recovery which is obviously a huge plus.

What usually fails on external drives(and electronics in general) seems to be the power supply. I’ve personally had no problems with a Glyph after using them in Sweetwater’s studio, IPFW’s Studio, and my own home Studio. Now I have moved away from externals as my stock footage library grew, I use an eSATA RAID5 now(16tb total, 12tb capacity). That being said, I rock a Glyph PortaGig 500gb for a portable solution, it does USB, FW 400 and 800, and will do bus powering.

Glyph Drives are expensive, but you get what you pay for in reliability. Also, Backblaze is a service worth mentioning in which you can back up and encrypt unlimited data from a single computer for $60 a year. Once you lose some critical footage, you’ll never chintz out on quality again. Hope this helps your decision making.

8core Mac Pro Early ’08 Xeon 2.8 14gb RAM
Apogee Ensemble
JBL LSR 4328 Surround Set up
Euphonix Artist Series Mc Control, Mc Mix, Mc Transport
All wired with Mogami Cable

[Ron Pestes]

I have been using the Caldigit VR set up as a RAID 1 for over a year and had no problems. However I have also been using 2 LaCie 1 TB drives for almost two years and had no problems with them either. Maybe I have just been lucky with the LaCie’s. By the way you can get the Caldigit VR with two 1 TB drives for about $400. Check their web site at caldigit.com.

Apple Certified Master Pro FCS 2
Sony EX-3
MacBook Pro

[Steve Eisen]

I have used a variety of drives and enclosures. I do own a large selection of OWC.

I hear complaints of the drives and or enclosures going bad. What actually goes bad is the “Power Supply.” The $20 connection that plugs into the AC. They are cheaply made. I have had a few go bad on me. An OWC a few years ago and just recently a Caldigit Firewire VR. Guess what, they both had the same exact power supply. Both have been replaced with newer power supplies and were covered under warranty.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Andrew Kimery]

Like Walter I’ve had very good experience w/WiebeTech and I’ve also had good experience so far w/the two enclosures I’ve purchased from OWC. Like they say though, if it isn’t saved twice it isn’t saved at all.

-Andrew

3.2GHz 8-core, FCP 6.0.4, 10.5.5
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (6.8.1)

[Chris Tarroza]

Thanks for all the great suggestions guys.

I think what I’m going to do for now is get 2 OWC enclosures and fill it with a 1TB a WD Cavier Black to work off of and a 500GB to back up to.

For backing up, I’m thinking that all you really need to back up are the miniscule project files, my small amount of stock footage, and t the original footage straight off the cards. You don’t really need to back up the captured/transferred footage because you can always just capture/transfer it again, no?

[Jeffrey Ellis]

Just want to add my 2 cents. I have a friend who works at a drive recovery facility. I asked him what he considers the best mechanisms these days. He said without a doubt, Hitachi Enterprise edition SATA’s are the most solid out there. I did indeed get my FW800 enclosures from OWC, and I’ve been extremely happy with the six I have.

[Bob Zelin]

I have not read all the threads, so please excuse me if something like this has already been stated.

Do good hard drives exist – NO. We use only Hitachi Jupiter series enterprise drives, because as of mid 2010, they appear to be the most reliable. Many top manufacturers like Cal Digit, JMR, Maxx Digital, Sonnet, etc. specify only Hitachi enterprise drives in their hi end products, but with that said – do Hitachi Enterprise drives fail – YOU BET THEY FAIL, and they fail all the time in high performance RAID enviornments. When SSD drives drop in price, we will all look back and laugh that we based our careers on spinning platters of metal. We bitch about this all the time – it makes no sense to me that a bare 1TB enterprise Hitachi can be purchased for under $150 these days. Why not charge $500 a piece and triple the quality of the drive, so they don’t fail. Professionals would pay it. But that’s not going to happen.

You have four choices, no matter whose “box” you purchase – Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, and Western Digital (Maxtor is owned by Seagate). Hitachi’s as of mid 2010 are the most reliable, but do they fail – YES THEY DO.

Bob Zelin

[Jeffrey Ellis]

Thanks, Bob, for the excellent additional information. I would also say that Seagate mechanisms in particular have dropped dramatically in quality since their heyday several years ago.

[David Mayer]

Warren,
What is the drive you were referring to?
Thanks,
Dave

iMac 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 8 GB
OS 10.6.2
Final Cut Pro 7.0