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Disco Scottie · Apr 15, 2007, 01:14 PM

I need to get a big drive for media storage, planning on 1TB. I realize it would cost a little more to buy two separate 500 giggers, but would that be more reliable/safer in the long run? The largest drive I have right now is a 250GB LaCie that has performed very well, so I'm leaning toward sticking with them. Thoughts?

peeb · Apr 15, 2007, 02:25 PM

Well, it depends.
Is it a backup, or is this the only copy? You'll basically want twice as much as you really need, and it would probably be best to look into a raid settup. Are you going to be working on the files on this drive, or is it just storage - if you can describe your settup a little more, and what you want to use it for, we can offer better advice.

rjt1000 · Apr 15, 2007, 03:06 PM

AFAIK, current 1 TB drives are enclosures containing two 500 gb drives using hardware RAID which allows the two disks inside to appear and function as one combined logical disk.

The advantage of striped RAID (hardware or software) is that data is written alternately between the two disks and so the data of a single file winds up half on one disk and half on the other--which allows for faster data transfers ( helpful with large media files). The disadvantage is that if either of the internal disks fail, all of your data is lost.

Another issue is how you will use the disks. If you want to be able to organize files from both disks without having to copy them from one to another, a single logical disk is helpful. (e.g. if you have some of your media on one disk and some on the other and you want to put them into one single folder, one logical disk makes this quick and easy. If you have two logical disks, then you have to copy those from one disk to the other and then delete them from the original location)

BTW, if 750 GB would suffice, there are single 750 GB disks available, which AFAIK is the largest single disks at the current time.

FWIW, I have personally had poor experience with LaCie disks. Two of the three I have had have failed within two years.

Given that, I would suggest including a backup strategy in your purchase plans. Perhaps two 750 gb drives, with one being a backup or clone of the other. Seagate makes 750 gb drives and are confident enough of their products to offer a 5 year warranty. You could check out ready made drives, bare drives and enclosures at Newegg and /or Other World Computing. I can recommend both.

mduell · Apr 15, 2007, 05:11 PM

The 1TB enclosures currently available on the market are just a paid of 500GB drives in RAID0; so they have more than double the chance of losing all your data (if either drive goes you lose everything, and the controllers are more prone to corruption problems than the simpler bridge chips) compared to a single drive.

LaCie is crap, you're much better off building your own. I'll give you the links for the hard drive and a few enclosure options if you're interested.

As the other poster said, if you can get away with 750GB, you can get that today in one drive. If not, 1TB single drives will be on the market soon (Hitachi has already announced one, Seagate should have one very soon).

brassplayersrock² · Apr 15, 2007, 08:20 PM

mduell has a reputation of dissing LaCie on these boards. I, and many others here, have had great success with LaCie. I would personally go with the 750 or the two 500. as mentioned above by Mark, the chances of one drive failing in the 1tb and you losing everything is a chance you would have to take.

(nothing personal Mark, just giving the guy a little background)

alex

mduell · Apr 15, 2007, 10:09 PM

No offense taken. I've seen multiple horrible experiences with the price, performance, and reliability of LaCie's products. Hopefully a few of the other LaCie haters on this forum will pipe up.

I like your new sig.

mfbernstein · Apr 15, 2007, 10:22 PM

Single 1TB drives are becoming available though, if you don't mind waiting a bit.

The upside of dual drives is potentially better performance. The downside is a much higher probability of data loss (in fact, the probability if far more than twice as much). Plan accordingly.

Disco Scottie · Apr 15, 2007, 11:42 PM

Thanks for the replies. This would be mostly for storage, I would probably use one of my two 250GB drives for working on stuff, and then use the big drive for archiving. I'm beginning to think I'll be more comfortable with smaller individual drives rather than a striped RAID two-in-one. I really need to calculate out how much space I need... if I'm lucky I can go with a single 500 or 750, and get a second one to be the backup to the backup, so to speak. I've learned my lesson about having more than one copy of an important drive. I will always have two of everything from here on out.

I'm still amazed every time I think about my first SCSI drive for my old Atari Falcon. I started doing digital audio in '93, and at the time the Falcon was the machine to have... eight channels of audio with no extra outboard gear. My audio drive was a whole 540 megs, and it cost me $1,000!!! To think I can go buy 500 GIGAbytes for one-fifth of that... crazy.

Disco Scottie · Apr 15, 2007, 11:44 PM

I forgot to include in my last post, my LaCie drive has been ultra-dependable for about two years. I only have it powered up when I'm using it, so I don't know how it would do under constant grinding. But so far, so good.

mduell · Apr 16, 2007, 07:22 AM

Originally Posted by mfbernstein

The upside of dual drives is potentially better performance.

Not by much. The average single drive can easily saturate USB2 or FW400, and almost saturate FW800, with a sequential read or write.

peeb · Apr 16, 2007, 12:33 PM

re the failure risk of striped raid, if it's a backup, I wouldn't worry about that too much. If it's your primary drive, make sure it's backed up.

kamina · Apr 16, 2007, 12:56 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

No offense taken. I've seen multiple horrible experiences with the price, performance, and reliability of LaCie's products. Hopefully a few of the other LaCie haters on this forum will pipe up.

I like your new sig.

I'll back you up

The thing is, La Cie makes very pretty cases, and depending on the drive you get they might work very well. The catch is that you really have no way to know or affect what physical drive is in the casing. Especially the models which came with Maxtor Diamondmax 8 & 9 drives where really prone to dying. I've read a lot about the some of the porches having defective power supplies that killed them.