External Harddrives (The Epic Question)

[BrandonS]

Hey. I'm looking for an affordable external harddrive that I can trust to not lose all my studio recordings and stuff. I might have 30gigs right now of studio recordings, and I have plans to record a LOT more stuff. Here's something I've found but the reviews make me feel uneasy about it. What do you guys suggest?

http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-Externa...s_7/102-2476010-2064937?ie=UTF8&s=electronics

thanks!

 

[MKS]

Buy an external enclosure from addonics and buy whatever internal HDD you want. Just avoid Maxtor.

 

[006]

Yep.

~e.a

 

[JBroll]

The external enclosure should run you no more than $20 and you don't ever have to worry about it being set up funny - it'll treat any HD you put in there just like a fucking huge removable drive, so if you just put studio stuff and don't install any programs on there you can switch out all the HDs you want.

Jeff

 

[musickey]

NO MAXTOR!!! They are dog shit, I work as a G.I.S Administrator and we had some Dell Workstations that were equipped with Maxtor HDD's and everyone of them ended up failing!

 

[Carcass29]

Uh Oh...this again...*runs under table...puts on helmet*

 

[BrandonS]

That sounds much more brilliant. I think we have unused harddrives just sitting in boxes in the basement I could use, brand new! The addonic external enclosures I saw on amazon though were expensive, the other brands were in the $20 range. What do you guys suggest?

http://www.amazon.com/s/102-2476010...ds=external enclosure&sourceid=Mozilla-search

 

[MKS]

I only bought an addonics at the time because it was $39.95 on ebay and I read many good reviews on them. That said, I bought two, and one of them has a bad fan but still works.

It can also be used for an external ROM Drive enclosure too! That came in handy one time.

 

[JBroll]

I don't know of many ways to kill enclosures, so I won't comment on that - I just went to All Gen computers and got one, as soon as they're open I'll call and see what they carry (strangely, no brand name on mine).

Jeff

 

[BrandonS]

They've got a price range on those "front page" enclosures anywhere between 19$ and 29$, one was $50 I think. Surely the more expensive ones would be a higher quality, but you can't always judge a product by its price. We've got expensive stuff before on purpose because we wanted it to last and it would last less time than a cheaper brand. So I really have to try to trust the reviews and people's person experience and hope it works out ok. I don't want to spend a lot, too. x_X

 

[SPLASTiK]

If you have an OfficeMax nearby they're having a sale on Western Digital harddrives this week, well good until the 9th. 50% off, instore only.

http://officemax.shoplocal.com/offi...pid=309616&pagenumber=8&listingid=-2094523341

Slickdeals.net said a 320GB was going for $60 after the 50%!

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

What about speed? Are internal ones always going to be faster than external because of USB speed?

 

[_RiseInside_]

there are sata external hd enclosures. Fast as hell. Unfortunately laptops don´t have the plug like desktops

 

[Kenneth R.]

oinkess: western digital. internal or external sata. the rest has already been said..

AVOID USB if you want high speed transfers.

 

[sparkyness]

Yep.....I record everything to my internal SATA and then move completed projects off to one of my external WD's. External USBs are good for portable storage, but not great for real-time recording projects.

 

[MKS]

AVOID USB if you want high speed transfers.

Not USB 2.0. I use that instead of Firewire 1394a.

 

[moose209]

Really go for quality whatever you get. If its important enough to record it's important enough to keep and while you're at get two or perhaps three. Who gives a fuck what other people think of you if you turn up with a back up for your back up, ask them if they ever lose anything, and if the answer is yes the conversation will end pretty soon, and you can carry on your work safe in the knowledge that you have at least three copies of everything you are doing. And seriously how cheap are drives these days - good drives - not maxtor - Firewire 800 remeber if you have different transfer speeds on different cards in your system you will get drop outs and crashes, so if one of your components is a 400 use a 400 for everything or upgrade the component if possible.

 

[BrandonS]

Ah, that might explain why I got a few dropouts using the Line6 Toneport for my guitar tone, it is powered by USB. Hmmm.... I don't think I am really going to be recording to the USB external device, at the moment I was really just worried about backing stuff up from a faltering laptop... I'd be good to get that stuff off the laptop and in here to get mixed and such on the faster computer that can handle big loads. So really I'm basically looking for something that can hold a backup of files I move over, and I could copy those to other computers, mmm....

I don't even know what Firewire is, and yes I use a laptop for the studio!

 

[SPLASTiK]

I've never had any problems recording to Firewire drives... I've had problems with USB in that area though.

 

[MKS]

I've never had any problems recording to Firewire drives... I've had problems with USB in that area though.

I havent had any problems recording audio directly the USB drive but I made sure not to have any other USB devices installed.

Luckily, my enclosure has USB and Firewire.