External Hard drive

[Sean]

Hey Techies, Any opinion on this? My PC is really full and I need to get my stuff off of it and wipe the hard drive. So I was thinking about picking this up. Is it crap? Seems cheap for a lot of space and Western seems like a solid company. :dunno: Thanks!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136324

[Zach929rr]

If its a desktop, I would just get an internal so you don't have to wait 1.5 lightyears for all your shit to transfer over usb 2.0.

If its a laptop, you really don't have any other choices unless your 'top has a firewire connection on it. (Unless you wanted to burn 100+ cd's? :lol:)

[Player 2]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4444097&Sku=H450-8006

[~Barn~]

If it's a desktop computer that is now out of space, you may have a slot for a 2nd hard drive, and can forego the external route.

[SumoWeezle]

:imwithstupid: Hitachi is a far better company then western digitial. much more reliable hardware.

[Sean]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4444097&Sku=H450-8006Nice! Thanks Jon :up:


If its a desktop, I would just get an internal so you don't have to wait 1.5 lightyears for all your shit to transfer over usb 2.0.Is 2.0 really slow for data transfer? I don't think it's that big of a deal, but maybe a factor.


If it's a desktop computer that is now out of space, you may have a slot for a 2nd hard drive, and can forego the external route.I already have one extra internal hard drive in there. And I was thinking that it might be nice to have a mobile hard drive.

[Zach929rr]

Is 2.0 really slow for data transfer? I don't think it's that big of a deal, but maybe a factor.

I wouldn't say really!! slow, but it took my comp about 1 hour to transfer a few thousand songs to the pod. I have never gotten close to the rated 480Mbps.

[Spiderman]

I'm wouldn't recommend Western Digital. I have 2 of their 500GB external drives... I bought the 2nd to replace the 1st, because it seemed to be going bye-bye after less than 2 years (files were becoming unavailable mid-copy & I would have to re-boot it & cross my fingers). :| I haven't looked at it lately, but when I was moving data off of it, it seemed to regain some stability when I freed up large volumes of space. :dunno:

[Kim-n-Dean]

I have the 1TB WD My Book external. I like it because I can keep it in my safe with all my business on it for back up. It transfers on 2.0 at a little over a gig a minute. Never had a problem, but it is not recommended as a portable drive.

[puckstr]

:imwithstupid: Hitachi is a far better company then western digitial. much more reliable hardware.

They all die.
For hard drive failure:
It is not a question of IF
It is a question of WHEN


Live of Die by the BACKUP

[~Barn~]

Every hard drive dies. Not every hard drive truly lives.

[/Braveheart]

[Zach929rr]

LOL

[Sean]

Every hard drive dies. Not every hard drive truly lives.

[/Braveheart]You win the "dorkiest post of the day" award, Barn!

[TurboGizzmo]

The new TB harddrives scare me, to do a bit by bit recovery on a crashed TB drive would take MONTHS! If i bought a TB drive i would have to buy at least two and mirror them....but hey I am the guy with two NAS's one of which is a fiber array with ~14 drives ha!

[Zach929rr]

but hey I am the guy with two NAS's one of which is a fiber array with ~14 drives ha!

Is that where your CP stash is?

:D

[t_jolt]

The new TB harddrives scare me, to do a bit by bit recovery on a crashed TB drive would take MONTHS! If i bought a TB drive i would have to buy at least two and mirror them....but hey I am the guy with two NAS's one of which is a fiber array with ~14 drives ha!

Can i have your job to be able to afford the same? :)

[Kim-n-Dean]

The new TB harddrives scare me, to do a bit by bit recovery on a crashed TB drive would take MONTHS! If i bought a TB drive i would have to buy at least two and mirror them....but hey I am the guy with two NAS's one of which is a fiber array with ~14 drives ha!My back up procedure:
One internal HD for the O.S. A second internal for all the data I create. A third for internal back up. The 1TB external goes in the safe in case my house burns down. And once a month I send CD's to work with Kim so those back ups are off-site. I should be pretty bomb proof, provided I remember to back up...

[~Barn~]

You win the "dorkiest post of the day" award, Barn!

I'll add it in, with the rest of them.

[Sean]

I'm wouldn't recommend Western Digital. Thanks for the feedback Bob. I just picked it b/c it was one of the few I had heard of.


I have the 1TB WD My Book external. I like it because I can keep it in my safe with all my business on it for back up. It transfers on 2.0 at a little over a gig a minute. Never had a problem, but it is not recommended as a portable drive.Yeah, after Jon gve me that link I noticed the 1tb for another $40. Might be worth it to have more space than I can ever use? I don't think I need a really portable one.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4107545&Sku=M122-7832


I'll add it in, with the rest of them.
Nothin but love for ya brutha :up:

[puckstr]

The new TB harddrives scare me, to do a bit by bit recovery on a crashed TB drive would take MONTHS! If i bought a TB drive i would have to buy at least two and mirror them....but hey I am the guy with two NAS's one of which is a fiber array with ~14 drives ha!


The same slow speed recovery was noted when the 1GB drives came out.
Funny how the Bleeding edge cool feeling is so short lived.

[Kim-n-Dean]

Yeah, after Jon gve me that link I noticed the 1tb for another $40. Might be worth it to have more space than I can ever use? I don't think I need a really portable one.I bought the 1TB because the 500Gb were $30 more at the time. Go figure...

[Kim-n-Dean]

The same slow speed recovery was noted when the 1GB drives came out.
Funny how the Bleeding edge cool feeling is so short lived.Wait 'til you format it. Go to dinner or something...

[rforsythe]

I have a couple of the 250GB USB-powered little portable ones for travel which are great, since I don't need to carry a separate power supply around. For home backup purposes I have a bigger faster one, but it's not of the "travels well" variety.

I also don't have much issue with the USB2.0 portable drives being slow. Yes they are slower than my internal drive, but I'm not editing video on the damn things and certainly don't put gigs of crap on them in one smash frequently. Yes copying ten thousand mp3's to one of them took a while, but that was a one time deal so who cares.

[Devaclis]

IMO, I would:

1. get a second internal drive, BACK UP you data to it

2. wipe and reconfig your primary drive

3. RESTORE the data to your primary drive

4. Run a differential backup of the data from your PRIMARY to your SECONDARY on a weekly schedule

WD haters. do you run them in a production environment or at home?

I have been running WD since they started putting HDD's in desktops. I have had failures but no anywhere near as many as I have seen with Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, and Fuji.

I run dual Raptor 10k drives, striped on a heavily used box. NEVER had an issue.

I run them in 238 desktop computers and I have replaced 2 of them in 2.5 years.

I HAVE replaced 6 Maxtors drives, 8 Fuji drives, 19 Segate drives, and 4 Hitachi drives.

Anyone have any stats to back up their WD sucks assumptions other than "I had 1 drive fail and it was a WD"?



Back to the topic at hand. when you rebuild your PRIMARY drive, install your OS and that is it.

1. Turn off your page file (VM)

2. Install all of you other apps (not updates and stuff, jsut the base apps)

3. Restore your data back to the primary drive

4. Run a defrag

5. Turn on your Page file.

This will attempt to keep the page file in a contiguous allocated disk area instead of breaking it up. This will increase your disk eficiancy and allow you to keep your data in one area instead of spread all accross the drive.

Don't take my word for it tho, I just do this for a living.

[TurboGizzmo]

Can i have your job to be able to afford the same? :)

Bought from a debunked media data storage center, I bought it with a Cisco Pix Firewall which i ebay'd for more than the cost of buying all the equipment ;)

I make beans, I just know people. My favorite is the corporate recycle centers.....

Nerd p0rn....top to bottom (scanner, fiber switch, netgear switch, Itanium server, ATABoy SAN, couple of servers holding it up)http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3407/3203892979_7550f79411.jpg

[Ricky]

Just to add my 2 cents:

-WD drives have the highest first 6 month failure rate of any other IDE drive on the market (That's not to say a WD drive can't last 10 years, they just more commonly fail in the first 6 months than any other drive manufacturer)
-If you use an external drive of ANY KIND, don't rely on it, EVER. Don't put all your photos on it and assume they are safe. Assume you WILL lose that drive some day.

[Zach929rr]

Likewise on WD being a solid brand. I have a 500gb I've been beating the shit out of for the past 3+ years and not so much as a hiccup. However, Webman does have a point in that they seem to have a high failure rate out of the factory. That being said, my new 1TB is a WD.

[~Barn~]

IMO, I would:

1. get a second internal drive, BACK UP you data to it

2. wipe and reconfig your primary drive

3. RESTORE the data to your primary drive

4. Run a differential backup of the data from your PRIMARY to your SECONDARY on a weekly schedule

WD haters. do you run them in a production environment or at home?

I have been running WD since they started putting HDD's in desktops. I have had failures but no anywhere near as many as I have seen with Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, and Fuji.

I run dual Raptor 10k drives, striped on a heavily used box. NEVER had an issue.

I run them in 238 desktop computers and I have replaced 2 of them in 2.5 years.

I HAVE replaced 6 Maxtors drives, 8 Fuji drives, 19 Segate drives, and 4 Hitachi drives.

Anyone have any stats to back up their WD sucks assumptions other than "I had 1 drive fail and it was a WD"?



Back to the topic at hand. when you rebuild your PRIMARY drive, install your OS and that is it.

1. Turn off your page file (VM)

2. Install all of you other apps (not updates and stuff, jsut the base apps)

3. Restore your data back to the primary drive

4. Run a defrag

5. Turn on your Page file.

This will attempt to keep the page file in a contiguous allocated disk area instead of breaking it up. This will increase your disk eficiancy and allow you to keep your data in one area instead of spread all accross the drive.

Don't take my word for it tho, I just do this for a living.

Thanks Pilot.

[TurboGizzmo]

There is no one drive i trust....replication via RAID or off site....all drives have the highest failure rate in the first couple months normally thats how most electronic equipment is...I remember at the engineering firm I use to work at a graph much like this....
http://www.standardics.nxp.com/quality/failure_rate/images/curve.gif

[Devaclis]

Barn, I will get my labcoat on and show you a thing or two :)

[rforsythe]

WD haters. do you run them in a production environment or at home?

I have been running WD since they started putting HDD's in desktops. I have had failures but no anywhere near as many as I have seen with Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, and Fuji.

I run dual Raptor 10k drives, striped on a heavily used box. NEVER had an issue.

I run them in 238 desktop computers and I have replaced 2 of them in 2.5 years.

I HAVE replaced 6 Maxtors drives, 8 Fuji drives, 19 Segate drives, and 4 Hitachi drives.

Anyone have any stats to back up their WD sucks assumptions other than "I had 1 drive fail and it was a WD"?

I agree with Dana. Every mfr has failures, however I've had good luck with WD as a whole. Hitachi used to be utter crap, glad it's not so bad now. I have never had more failures than I have with Seagate, so also glad to see my experiences are not isolated. Maxtors have generally run OK for me at home, though I've had some failures using them in 24x7 server environments (granted I wasn't using the high end variants, but seeing if the home versions could keep up - turns out they can't).


Back to the topic at hand. when you rebuild your PRIMARY drive, install your OS and that is it.

1. Turn off your page file (VM)

2. Install all of you other apps (not updates and stuff, jsut the base apps)

3. Restore your data back to the primary drive

4. Run a defrag

5. Turn on your Page file.

This will attempt to keep the page file in a contiguous allocated disk area instead of breaking it up. This will increase your disk eficiancy and allow you to keep your data in one area instead of spread all accross the drive.

Don't take my word for it tho, I just do this for a living.

I also take a slightly different approach, which is to make a separate partition for the page file close to the beginning of the disk. But I also haven't built a windows box in a while either.

[Devaclis]

I cannot not find an unbiased report about WD failures.

There ARE reports about WD's high speed drives like the Raptor and the Velociraptor but the problem is, there are no other drives to compare them to equally so the claims about higher failure rate are unsubstantiated. I am a bit of a WD nut swinger because I have on the job, real world trus of their products. I am not know for putting up with shit that does not make me happy. That is why I use WD.

[Devaclis]

haha Ralph, I actually prefer to install the OS and apps on a super fast RAID 1 15k setup and include the page file there.

THEN I put all the data on it's own drive.

[Ricky]

I cannot not find an unbiased report about WD failures.

There ARE reports about WD's high speed drives like the Raptor and the Velociraptor but the problem is, there are no other drives to compare them to equally so the claims about higher failure rate are unsubstantiated. I am a bit of a WD nut swinger because I have on the job, real world trus of their products. I am not know for putting up with shit that does not make me happy. That is why I use WD.

Strange... You know that Microsoft decided to stop using WD for drives when they built the 360, because of the numerous problems they had with the WD drives in the original xboxes. I used to mod xboxes, and of the WD drives I pulled out, nearly all of them had bearings that were going bad.

I've never had a WD drive that didn't fail on me... have only ever had one Seagate IDE drive fail on me. Seagate SCSI drives fail all the time. The last 3 WD drives my Dad bought, all failed within one year. And what I mean by that is, he bought the drive, it failed, he returned it to WD, they replaced it, he repeated the process two more times within one full year from when he bought the original drive. He went out and bought soemthing else, I think it was a Maxtor, works great!

In a server environment, WD can't compete because they are a consumer drive company. They have higher performance drives, but big companies don't buy WD drives to put in their big servers where they need performance. WD doesn't even make SAS drives... the fastest drive they make is a 10k RPM SATAII drive.

One more thing. Ever notice how WD drives have generally have the lower price tag? IMO, there's a reason for that. You get what you pay for...

Also, the pagefile is overrated. I just simply turn it off (although I run 8GB). HD swap is simply too slow.

[TurboGizzmo]

haha Ralph, I actually prefer to install the OS and apps on a super fast RAID 1 15k setup and include the page file there.

THEN I put all the data on it's own drive.

My favorite advice from a Big Box tech was to move the pagefile to the recovery D:\ "drive" to help speed up the computer....he was just not to keen on the concept of partitions and physical drives....but I let him ramble and didnt hurt his feelers

[Devaclis]

Macintosh was PAID (read cut a deal) to not use WD any more. It was not a reliability issue. they had no other drives, in testing, that they could correlate failure rates with. there is a reason Macintosh will not let you choose what HW you can put in your MAC.

You never had 1 WD that did not fail on you? NEVER had one that dd not fail?
Realize, I am not hammering on you mang, I am just wondering what kind of environment these WD's are in that 100% of them fail. I have never seen this with ANY product, ever. Hell, even sterile couples on the pill and using condoms get pregnant every now and then.

We use only Cheetahs in our servers here. Our HIGH END CAD stations use anything from SATA to Segate 15k drives. this includes WD Raptors. They are pounded on sometimes 24 hours a day for days at a time rendering models. This is changing data, read/writes. Not just file copies. I really do not know how my crappy WD's don't fail all the time.

I am curious as to what drives you use that are stable? LMK as I would love to test them out and see if they work better for us.

[Devaclis]

My favorite advice from a Big Box tech was to move the pagefile to the recovery D:\ "drive" to help speed up the computer....he was just not to keen on the concept of partitions and physical drives....but I let him ramble and didnt hurt his feelers

I like using a USB 1.0 thumb drive for me 64MB page file.

[~Barn~]

http://www.swotti.com/tmp/swotti/cacheC3VWZXIGBMLUDGVUZG8=VGVJAG5VBG9NES1DB25ZB2XLC W==/imgSuper%20Nintendo2.jpg

[Ricky]

My favorite advice from a Big Box tech was to move the pagefile to the recovery D:\ "drive" to help speed up the computer....he was just not to keen on the concept of partitions and physical drives....but I let him ramble and didnt hurt his feelers

The only way this actually increases performance is if the drive is on a separate controller/channel from the raid set. A controller/channel only has a certain amount of available bandwidth...

Most controllers now days are separated. Most often, if a board has 6 sata ports, it's 3 separate channels on the controller If you are running a 3 drive array, the best performance comes out of spreading the drives across all 3 channels. That way a write/read req can be handled 3 at a time.

This goes back to the days of standard IDE burners, and doing on the fly burning (before the days of buffer underrun protection). Often they would fail when connected to the same IDE channel (one drive primary, other slave) but when they are on separate IDE channels, it made on the fly recording possible.

[Devaclis]

Webman, we need to geek out over brews. I will bring a PC-JR with a BASIC cart and a copy of Zork and you bring the Apple IIe with Defender of the Crown or Alien Mind!!

[Ricky]

Macintosh was PAID (read cut a deal) to not use WD any more. It was not a reliability issue. they had no other drives, in testing, that they could correlate failure rates with. there is a reason Macintosh will not let you choose what HW you can put in your MAC.

You never had 1 WD that did not fail on you? NEVER had one that dd not fail?
Realize, I am not hammering on you mang, I am just wondering what kind of environment these WD's are in that 100% of them fail. I have never seen this with ANY product, ever. Hell, even sterile couples on the pill and using condoms get pregnant every now and then.

We use only Cheetahs in our servers here. Our HIGH END CAD stations use anything from SATA to Segate 15k drives. this includes WD Raptors. They are pounded on sometimes 24 hours a day for days at a time rendering models. This is changing data, read/writes. Not just file copies. I really do not know how my crappy WD's don't fail all the time.

I am curious as to what drives you use that are stable? LMK as I would love to test them out and see if they work better for us.

I didn't say macintosh... But had you read the rest of that sentence, you would have known that, because macintosh (actually a brand, not a company) did not make the xbox, :lol:. I didn't know about the mac thing though, that's interesting. Who paid them?? Totally true about there being a reason Apple is so picky about their hardware, but then why they'd switch away so quickly if what they were using, worked so well? It's not like Apple is hurting for business at all...

Let me rephrase... I PERSONALLY have never had a WD drive that did not fail on me, therefore I won't purchase them anymore. As for in the work environment, I still stick to seeing WD drives fail more commonly when newer, than other mfrs. My personal experience with WD drives are their consumer products. Unfortunately I don't have any experience with their higher end drives.

And just to reiterate. I STRESS the first 6 month failure rate is all I'm talking about. I've seen plenty of WD drives in old POS machines that are 6+ years old that still work perfectly. I didn't say all WD drives are crap...

What kind of Seagate 15k drives? I'll assume SAS, since Seagate doesn't make a 10k or 15k SATA drive. And what kind of machines are these guys on that have SAS built into them? I'm not familiar with any desktop machines that have SAS controllers.

What drive mfr does Dell choose for their servers? Not WD. What drive mfr does Dell choose for their lower end desktops? WD most commonly. What drive mfrs do Sun and IBM use on their servers? Certainly not WD, but I honestly don't have a clue what they use anymore.

My point being, again, that WD is a consumer drive company and always has been. The only thing that impresses me about them, is that they have the balls to go into the 10k SATA market. Since it's completely different technology behind the drive, I'd consider one. I've actually heard some good things about them.

Personally, if I buy a drive, it's a Seagate. I just don't ever have many problems with them, except SCSI drives in a server environment. However, I had one of our SAS drives fail while in the machine when we shipped a server to our datacenter in portland from here. I like Maxtor drives too, but jesus christ are they ever LOUD! Though haven't bought any since Seagate took over. Not sure how that will change their drive technology at all.

Oh, and don't worry about the hammering. I enjoy a good technical debate :D

[Ricky]

Webman, we need to geek out over brews. I will bring a PC-JR with a BASIC cart and a copy of Zork and you bring the Apple IIe with Defender of the Crown or Alien Mind!!

I'm a fucking NERD! That is for SURE! :lol:

[Sean]

What did I start here? Thanks for all of the tips guys, I appreciate it :up:

[Kim-n-Dean]

It's, obviously, not part of my back up procedure I mentioned before, but I have always run my swap file on it's own drive. I always keep at least a 6gig drive to run the swap. No partitions, it defeats the purpose. O.S. on one drive, data on another and the swap on one more. Fills up space quick, in a small box, but works like a charm!!

Any type of RAID I've tried slows down the performance on all the read/writes for my programs. AutoCAD, 3D Studio, Argos, ArchiCAD. I know Dana does this all day with CAD software, but that's my experience...

[Ricky]

I had to bring this thread back up to tell a story in relation to my hatred for WD drives.

I've always been a passionate hater of Western Digital hard drives. Why? Because in my experience, they have the highest first 6 months failure rate of any other drive manufacturer out there.

Well, today I decided to go out and purchase a small external hard drive for our unnet server, to start storing audio files on. I figured I'd just get something simple and small, as it's just storage, and not meant for speed. So, I head to Sams club, and I'm going to pick up a 320GB Seagate external for $90. I got there and saw a WD 250GB drive for $58. So, I'm like, ok whatever... I'll buy a WD, especially since I have a plan to back up the data here at home, just in case we have a drive failure.

So, I bring the drive home, open it up, plug it into the computer, and what do I hear? spiiiiiiiiin, SNAP...... spiiiiiiiiin, SNAP. Fucking head is snapping on a motherfucking brand new hard drive.

FUCK WESTERN DIGITAL. I'll never buy one again. I hate them I hate them I hate them. I'm going to go back and swap it out for the Seagate. I knew I should have just bought the Seagate in the first place.

Seriously, what are the odds that I decide to give WD the benefit of the doubt, and they fail me out of the box?

[Filo]

I had to bring this thread back up to tell a story in relation to my hatred for WD drives....

You are just the WD anti Christ. WD has pictures of you in their tech support area saying "This is what the devil looks like". Or maybe it is just your magnetic personality coupled with WDs bigger grain boundaries?

[TurboGizzmo]

Drobo FTW.....ok ok I havent gotten one yet to confirm it, but its a RAID-like system with a no-brainer setup just dont put all WDs in there! hehe