External cased drive or bare drive

[Rainer Wirth]

Hi Cody,

I wouldn’t use WD drives. Best drives for this pupose are Hitachi deskstars to me. I would buy an icy box and put in an internal sata drive. Seagate barracudas are good as well. Our back-up system is based on this workflow. Every workstation is equipped with an USB Icy box. We just use Hitachi drives Deskstars and Ultrastars (depends on use).

cheers

Rainer

factstory
Rainer Wirth
phone_0049-177-2156086
Mac pro 8core
Adobe,FCP,Avid
several raid systems

[Jon Schilling]

Cody & Rainer.

I guess that Rainer missed the NAB 2013 show this year, we just got back last night from a great show after a long work week.

We (Proavio) had product at the Blackmagic booth running with Davinci Resolve 4K 3D with our 8Gb Fiber Channel DS316F8

The Hitachi Deskstar Drives that Rainer mentioned are now made by Toshiba.

Hitachi Ultrastar Drives are now made by Western Digital.

Hitachi is NO LONGER in the hard drive business. Both the Toshiba Deskstar drives & the Western Digital Ultrastar Drives are fine & there is NO quality difference between the Western Digital & Toshiba brands then there were when they were branded “Hitachi”.

I would not recommend Seagate Barracuda drives under any circumstances, especially the 1TB drives which fail regularly in our testing under “normal use”.

As to your storage Cody, go with a proven industry storage product that is manufactured for content creation, such as a http://www.proavio.com product.

Just thought I would clear the air on this.

Jonathan Schilling
Vertical Sales Manager
Proavio Storage by Enhance Technology Inc.
12221 Florence Ave.
Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
Dir: 562-777-3498
Main: 562-777-3488 X106
Fax: 562-777-3499
Email: jon@proavio.com

[Rainer Wirth]

Hi Jon,

I didn’t know that. Interesting. When the drives are as good as the “old” hitachis I don’t mind. The barracudas are within some of the LaCie Raids. I don’t know about the 1 TB, but the 2 TB and we’ve got one old raid with 400’s in it, work pretty solig for years now. What I always avoid are eco drives, because they don’t fit with raid systems.

cheers

Rainer

factstory
Rainer Wirth
phone_0049-177-2156086
Mac pro 8core
Adobe,FCP,Avid
several raid systems

[Jon Schilling]

Rainer.

My understanding is that the quality of the Toshiba Deskstar drives & the Western Digital Ultrastar drives are at the same level as when both levels of drives were produced by Hitachi. The specific Seagate Barracuda drives we’ve seen issues with are with the 1TB. “Eco” or “green” drives are not made for RAID use.

Jonathan Schilling
Vertical Sales Manager
Proavio Storage by Enhance Technology Inc.
12221 Florence Ave.
Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
Dir: 562-777-3498
Main: 562-777-3488 X106
Fax: 562-777-3499
Email: jon@proavio.com

[Eric Hansen]

Cody

Like Rainer, i recommend bare hard drives with docks. Right now, and i’m not kidding, I’m looking at 6 different external hard drives from different manufacturers, and no one knows where the power supplies are. the power supplies we do have, have generic OEM markings, so we can’t match them to the drives they go with.

remember these things with hard drives:

1. they’re not meant to sit on a shelf. they’re meant to spin. So make sure you spin them up every 6 months or so, and check their data integrity

2. all hard drives die, and at radially different times. one hard drive brand won’t consistently last longer than another. the 5 year warranty enterprise drives are designed to spin 24/7 for 5 years. but i’ve had some die in less than 3 months. always assume a hard drive will die

3. have at least 2 or 3 copies of the media in different locations.

4. store hard drives vertically, so the arms don’t rest on the spindles.

5. put the bare hard drives in a protective case

as for the argument of which hard drive brand is better, i’ve had them ALL fail. some are better than others, but just assume that all hard drives will fail and have multiple copies of your data. i’ve had the best experience buying hard drives for their intended use – Ultrastars for RAIDs, for example. for putting on a shelf, i just get the cheapest deal on Newegg or Tiger Direct that I can find. you don’t need performance, you just need a holding tank.

e

Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv

[Jon Schilling]

Preaching to the choir Eric. One reason that ALL of our products have the power supplies INSIDE them.

Jonathan Schilling
Vertical Sales Manager
Proavio Storage by Enhance Technology Inc.
12221 Florence Ave.
Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
Dir: 562-777-3498
Main: 562-777-3488 X106
Fax: 562-777-3499
Email: jon@proavio.com

[Eric Hansen]

Hey Jon

I try to only buy external drives with built-in power supplies, but usually I’m not the one doing the buying.

BTW, it was good to meet you at the party at the Hard Rock at NAB.

e

Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv

[Jon Schilling]

Eric,

Yeah, nice meeting you too at the party, just found your card….. I’ll be in touch!

Jonathan Schilling
Vertical Sales Manager
Proavio Storage by Enhance Technology Inc.
12221 Florence Ave.
Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
Dir: 562-777-3498
Main: 562-777-3488 X106
Fax: 562-777-3499
Email: jon@proavio.com