My Lacie blew this morning

[James Murphy]

Guys - I hate to break it to you, but all hard drives die. To spend money on these boutique brands like lacie and glyph is a huge waste of money. There are literally 4 companies on earth that manufacture drives: seagate, fujitsu, wd, and hitachi. If you've had good or bad luck with a certain brand then you are dealing with statistics. What you need to do is to buy the biggest and cheapest drives you can find, and buy LOTS of them. Give me 2 hard drives from a cheapy brand over a single drive from one of the boutique brands ANY day. All hd's will die. It's a fact. Don't pay more than you have to - it's a waste of money and you are putting your data at risk by keeping all your eggs in 1 basket. I have 4 2tb cheap cavalry drives in a rotation, and i've never lost a single file in my life.

you need learn where you're at and who you're talking to man.. this is not summer camp for special needs kids.

LaCie's are NOT boutique drives.. they are cheap crap to be had at any computer store... well, the cases are cheap crap anyway.

Glyph cases are industrial and they certainly do make a difference, and there are a lot of pro users here who know that Glyphs perform better than other external drives like LaCie or WD or any number of other brands thar market enclosed drives, on many levels.

a drive may be a drive may be a drive, but the enclosure does indeed make a difference,

that is a fact that i will not debate with you. so save it, please. you are new here... get to know the place before you start laying down "knowledge", perhaps.


LaCie enclosures suck

Glyph and OWC are you best bets.

 

[rlcramer]

Mr. Murphy - I hate to burst your bubble, but it's clear to me that you know a lot more about the designers of HD cases then you do about the drives themselves. I would love to know why your beloved glyph drives perform better than any other brand of external HD? Is there some sort of magical pixie dust that is sprinkled on them before they leave the factory? I would love to know the FACTS behind what you are saying. Do these manufacturers use better controllers? Nope. Are the fan's bigger? Maybe - depending on the "other" brand that you use, but there are MANY cheap brands with adequate cooling. Are they more expensive? Yes. But I still haven't heard any facts from you about what makes them better. So far it seems to me like "..all of my audio buddies like them so they must be good." What are these "many levels" that you speak of?

I am far from new here, I just tend to keep my mouth shut because I am outclassed in terms of AE skills compared to most of the talented people on this board like Joey, Ryan, Ola, etc. However, I've worked with more enterprise storage systems in the past week than you have in your life. SAN, NAS, offline, nearline, tape based, disk based, synch, asynch, dedup, you name it, I've done it. And although I would never claim to be able to go toe-to-toe with you when it comes to audio engineering, you clearly have a lot to learn when it comes to data protection, backup and recovery. I just hope that the other people on this board are intelligent enough to weed through your banter about a brand that you happen to have had good luck with, to know that what you are saying is 100% based on opinion. For every person out their who loves glyph, there is another person who thinks they suck. And do you know why? Because of my original point - all hard disks will fail. The people who've experienced failed Glyph drives will hate them. And the people who've not experienced failed Glyph drives will love them. So regardless of the case manufacturer, the more places you put your data, the better off you are. Buying a "better" case is completely meaningless and a waste of money.

Do a little research before you try to debunk what everyone else on this board says. And stick to AE and let the people who know data storage chime in on this one. I don't think I need to know "the place" to speak intelligently about a topic that I've spent the last 15 years of my career working on...

Bobby

 

[SkybluestudiosBEN]

Hey Bobby,

I have talked to NUMEROUS people that have had failed Lacie drives, including my self. My Lacie started taking a shit about a year into it, my Glyph has been performing at top notch for over 2 years, and I have a 2nd one that is performing at top notch as well that ive had for a year. So I believe that there can be a BETTER quality HD. Also if your a PRO TOOLS user, Pro tools is VERY specific in what HD it uses. You can not just use ANY external HD with Pro Tools. So If your an AE and using PRO TOOLS, I believe Glyph is one of the safest/best options.

 

[::XeS::]

But when you say that the Lacie drive fails, you mean that the drive stop working or you mean a problem with the case's electric parts?

 

[James Murphy]

Mr. Murphy - I hate to burst your bubble, ...blah blah blah.... Buying a "better" case is completely meaningless and a waste of money.

Do a little research before you try to debunk what everyone else on this board says. And stick to AE and let the people who know data storage chime in on this one. I don't think I need to know "the place" to speak intelligently about a topic that I've spent the last 15 years of my career working on...

Bobby

bobby.. i coudn't care less about 90% of what you just said. because i never said the drives were better, i specified that i was talking about the cases the drives are in.. i was, in fact, very careful to do just that. and anyway, i don't need to be as knowledgeable as you about storage systems to observe empirical evidence over time and draw educated conclusions based on my own experiences... never-mind to follow basic recommendations from other pros i respect, or that of the company that makes my recording platform.

and don't worry about "bursting my bubble".. i don't live in one... i live in a day-to-day, year-to-year reality where i put external drives through hell.. the only two externals i have remaining that made it to seven years old are the two in the glyph enclosures i own, and the only one that made it to 5 is the one in my OWC enclosure. every single other fucking drive enclosure i've ever used has either failed (the PS or some other component), and every empty enclosure i have ever bought has had one or more drives die in it during that time. FTR, though it's not necessarily of much relevance to this discussion, the drives in my Glyph and OWC enclosures are the ones that originally came in them when i ordered them... still working fine so far, though these days i'm much more vigilant about backing them up.

it's no big revelation that drives die, or that enclosures eventually bite it as well... no, the big deal here is what i did say and what i did not say, and your trouble in sorting those two things out.

i am sick to my fucking back teeth with every one the guys like you that occasionally pop up on here and try to make the blanket claim that "every single kind of product in category "X", by every company in the world, ever made.. is EXACTLY THE SAME.. or some other such ludicrous claim. it's so patently fallacious that a child could see through it.

no, they are not the same... i have been an AE for 15, nearly 16 years now... and in that time i have gotten through a LOT of hard drives, and in the last decade a fuck-load of externally enclosed drives and their enclosures as well, i'll tell you that much.

to repeat, YET AGAIN, i am talking about the enclosures.. and no, Herr Smart-Ass, build quality is not "pixie dust"... it's build quality. GLyph has it, and OWC has it... they aren't the only ones that do, but as sure as the fact that bears shit in the woods is the fact that NOT EVERY SINGLE COMPANY THAT ENCLOSES DRIVES DOES SO EQUALLY.

asshat.

for the record, most of the time an external drives fails on me, it's been a LaCie (Big Disk, F.A. Porsche, and D2 Bigger Disk models), or an Iomega... and USUALLY the drive itself is fine and i just pull it out of the case... it's the components of the case that fail.

Seven years on and my Glyph enclosures are still doing fine.... this in not a coincidence.. it's common as hell.. i do know other AE's... you know that, right? ... and video editors... and graphic artists...

neither my experience, nor the imparted experiences of my peers, can qualify me to make any claims about the actual drives themsevles, since they all seem about the same to me... and i've only ever had a handful of them that were in external enclosures ever actually die on me while in the enclosure... but i certainly can extrapolate a common trend about enclosure quality... it's a subject i've been dealing with for a decade now, maybe longer... i wish i still had all those dead cases, so i could pile them up and take a pticure.

your statement about the enclosure quality being completely meaningless and a waste of money... well, maybe that would be true... if you're writing code, saving/editing jpegs, making spreadsheets, hoarding casserole recipes, or keeping the books balanced, etc... but high resolution, multi-channel digital audio is very demanding on a drive, for various reasons... heat dissipation ratings being a just one of them... so the build quality of the enclosure SURE AS FUCKING HELL does matter, my friend.

so.... and to borrow some of the phrases you threw my way.. "i just hope that the other people on this board are intelligent enough to weed through your banter about" how drives work for you in your office or shop environment, doing the work you do on them, "to know that what you are saying is 100% based on" your lack of experience running large recording sessions for hours on end, day-in and day-out.

and seriously, "what everyone else on this board says"??? you'd better read a little closer pal... you have just "debunked" yourself, if anything.

sorry Bobby.. this is a case where your knowledge and experience painted you in a corner and then bit you on the ass... and made you cocky enough to completely discount mine. you are just dead wrong on this one.

case and point, a simple Google search: Glyph vs LaCie. quite a contrast, eh?

(if those links don't work for anyone that's interested, just google "glyph enclosure problems" and then "lacie enclosure problems")

But when you say that the Lacie drive fails, you mean that the drive stop working or you mean a problem with the case's electric parts?

yes, that's usually the scenario... often you can just open the case, take the drive out, mount it in another enclosure (you can buy empty firewire enclosures online), and the drive itself will work fine. not always, but often.

 

[rlcramer]

James - I don't want to belabour this point with arguments / name calling and to stray too far off topic, because it's obvious to me that you are set in your ways, and no matter what I say I'm not going to change your mind. And in the end - the safety of YOUR data doesn't mean anything to me. But what I was really trying to get across to ::XeS:: is that he would be much better off designing some type of backup plan with multiple disks, because it is a fact that the more places you put your data, the less prone it is to loss. I work for an investment bank, and my job is to make sure that every ounce of data within the bank's walls is protected, available, and recoverable in multiple sites in REALTIME. It is only a matter of time before every piece of data on my network is at risk for loss, which is why we design AND TEST replication strategies and recovery plans, and why we test our our ability to recover data OFTEN, to make sure that our recovery plans work, in practice, as well as we hoped they would when they were designed.

That being said - I know everything is relative, but when you talk to me and you say that recording a few audio tracks to a single disk is to "put a drive through hell" you sound completely ill-informed and ignorant. In my world, hell is loading multiple pb data warehouses in a couple of hours, or supporting multi-tb exchange data stores or sql servers for thousands of users around the world. These are systems that require dozens, sometimes HUNDREDS of disk spindles in raid arrays on shared fibre channel storage to do what they need to do. It's all relative. Do the drives in these enclosures fail? Yes - all the time. Do the "enclosures" that they sit in cost more than your house? Yes. Do I expect that any of the drives in these systems will last anywhere near 5 years? Nope - I'd be foolish if I did. And do I blame the enclosure when the drives die? NOPE. An EMC disk enclosure has multiple redundant fans, power supplies, battery backups, etc. and drives STILL fail - ALL THE TIME. I get paid to assume that at any given moment ANY piece of hardware on my company's infrastructure will fail, and I have designed storage systems to survive these types of failures, and I've designed backup plans to recover from them in the event that something above and beyond a single component failure occurs.

Do I sound foolish talking about enterprise storage on an AE message board? Maybe. Is my home backup strategy a little over-the-top in the eyes of most AEs? Maybe. But my data is very important to me, because if I lose any data where I work I will be out of a job, and if I lose any data at home, I have the potential of losing my life in photos, videos, music, casserole recipes, etc.

So to go back to my original point - no one will EVER convince me that spending $500 on a 2tb Glyph USB drive makes sense. In reality - the intelligent thing to do is to buy a fast, appropriately-spaced, local storage device (i.e. internal drive) and spend the rest of that $500 on multiple disks for backup. Store one in a safe to protect yourself from a fire or theft. Set one up as a Time Machine for convenience. And store another one off site. The odds of losing your internal and 3 externals at the same time are pretty slim (but not impossible). So if you want to be safe, and to be able to calmly deal with the loss of a disk, that is what you need to do.

Smart money would never spend $500 on a single disk because Avid and your buddies tell you to do so. The components of a Glyph hard drive probably cost 1/4 of what you are paying. You are buying marketing, and to some degree a warranty. But there are certain brands that market to certain vertical markets, and for that reason, people think that they are better. Ask a photographer "Who makes the best disks?" They'll tell you G-Tech. Why? Because G-tech markets their products heavily towards photographers. Yet inside their cases, you will find the same disks that everyone else uses in a snazzy case. Glyph tends to market to AEs, which is why some AEs will buy Glyph disks. And please don't tell me that Glyph disks are designed specifically for AE purposes, because in reality - data is data. You buy a disk or set of disks that can handle your specific read/write requirements, and if you can get through your recording sessions to a single disk without worrying about RAID arrays or multiple spindles, then your requirements are decidedly lower than what you are trying to portray here.

My apologies to everyone else in this thread for my ridiculously long post. I'll go back to keeping my mouth shut on these boards in my usual read-only mode. But to everyone else aside from James - please don't buy into the hype. Don't spend more than you have to on expensive disks, and NEVER assume that by spending more money on a single drive that you are any more protected than if you spent less on a cheaper product with the same guts. Protect your data as well as you can, because in this world where such a huge percentage of our lives are digital, without a working backup, you'll eventually be left with nothing.

Bobby

 

[P-E]

Thanks a lot Bobby, I'll be informed in the future, REALLY great post.

 

[updog]

My apologies to everyone else in this thread for my ridiculously long post. I'll go back to keeping my mouth shut on these boards in my usual read-only mode

Don't worry about it, I read all of it - and learnt a thing or two.

I was actually thinking... Anyone know if FireWire-equipped memory sticks exist? The speeds are pretty terrible in USB memory sticks, but they keep getting higher in capacities and lower in prices. It might be a good idea to get one for the most important projects and so on... Flash memory doesn't involve moving parts, after all, so they won't break like HDDs..

 

[kev]

Haha nice thread. Sorry to hear about the OP, my personal hard drive paranoia has me about 6 TB of storage at home. I've never bothered with anything fancy, a couple of fast drives from samsung or seagate and maybe an ssd or two these days for some OS file system speed. Firewire sticks did exist for a short period I think, i've never seen them on sale though.

 

[SkybluestudiosBEN]

I'll go back to keeping my mouth shut on these boards in my usual read-only mode. But to everyone else aside from James - please don't buy into the hype. Don't spend more than you have to on expensive disks, and NEVER assume that by spending more money on a single drive that you are any more protected than if you spent less on a cheaper product with the same guts. Protect your data as well as you can, because in this world where such a huge percentage of our lives are digital, without a working backup, you'll eventually be left with nothing.

Bobby

Lets remember what this topic was....."MY LACIE BLEW THIS MORNING" im sure if he would of bought a glyph, we would not of even had this post. I dont give a fuck if the same components are in the drives, all I care about is having a drive that will work in perfect condition for as long as possible. And unfortunately BETTER BRANDS LAST LONGER! So I think its wrong that your trying to convince people that they can go buy a HD from target and it will work with professionally recording Audio.

 

[updog]

Firewire sticks did exist for a short period I think, i've never seen them on sale though.

Yeah, I did a little Google search and it seems they should have come out in like 3 years ago, so I guess there was a flaw in the concept or something.

It's likely that they wouldn't have gained enough foothold in the market to start manufacturing on a larger scale. It seems FireWire is also disappearing from computers aimed at casual users.

I guess they're waiting for the USB magical number three.

 

[updog]

And unfortunately BETTER BRANDS LAST LONGER! So I think its wrong that your trying to convince people that they can go buy a HD from target and it will work with professionally recording Audio.

Keep in mind that you should have 7200 rpm FireWire HDDs for professionally recording audio. And I've never seen a cheap hard drive with those features.

In fact, the WD MyBook Studio Editions I have were of the cheaper sort at the time - less than half of the price of a Glyph - but it turns out the casing is pretty well made and that makes them reliable as fuck

 

[jipchen]

Besides, my Glyph is about 100 times faster than my LaCie and a WD MyBook. And cooler. And less noisy. And it gets replaced within 24 hours. And if it dies, your lost data will be recovered.. and not deleted like the LaCie service does!
If you send in a LaCie Harddrive they first inform you that they will delete all your data during the procedure, theres nothing you can do against this practise.
I use the Glyph for tracking but not for storing, that would be way to expensive.. I doublebackup everything since the LaCie died first.

 

[updog]

Besides, my Glyph is about 100 times faster than my LaCie and a WD MyBook

Are they otherwise of similar specs? There's no point in hyping speed if it's only because your Lacie and WDs are USB or 5400rpm, etc.

 

[James Murphy]

>>>a fuck-load of absolute bollocks, garnished with some facts from an unrelated use or hard drives<<

P-E, and others, listen to this nonsense at your peril... the advice to use a local drive and have multiple back-up strategies is sound advice, but it is the only thing he's said that convinces me that this guy actually even does what he says he does for a living...

... however, the bits about all enclosures being equal will get you in hot water sooner than later if you have a need to use an external fire-wire drive (or USB 2.0, though i don't advise USB for serious audio work) for ongoing, serious audio work. no you'd be wise to listen to people who record bands for a living, and not to those who back up databases as a career .

ric, or whatever you name is... you obviously know fuck all about recording.. and you are clearly talking straight out of your ass regarding external enclosures.. and you keep changing what i said.

whether you like it or not, multi-track digital audio recording .. as in recording an entire drum set... hours and days on end, project after project... wears the fuck out of the read/write head/arm/etc as it keeps up with the task at hand, which IS far more demanding than reading some text files... and heat is generated... i am so fucking disgusted with you right now i can barely stand it. you remind me of .. i don't even know what... like a flooring salesman, insisting to the foreman of a warehouse facility that he can just use the same flooring that his mom has in her kitchen for his warehouse.. where forklifts and other equipment will be traveling over it all day... "oh, it's all the same, don't worry about it... you'd be wasting money to use cement". yes that's not a perfect, one-to-one analogy, but it serves the basic point; build quality matters! especially in ANYTHING that sees industrial use.. be it a warehouse floor, or an audio drive. In this case the drives are pretty much the same, it's the enclosures that are in question.

the drives are pretty much the same, provided they are fast enough for digital audio... but the enclosures, and there are many reasons why we sometimes use them in professional audio, are FUCKING WELL NOT the same... and you are an irresponsible FUCKTARD to come in here and fill these poor kids minds with some UTTER BOLLOCKS.... and they will realize it the first time their cheap iomega/lacie/WD Book/etc... shits the bed on them before they can get a session backed up fully.

and yes, you DO sound foolish.. because we ALL back-up you twit.. the discussion was not about back-up strategies... it was about build quality of various external drive enclosures.. seems to be as though you are starting to see the ridiculousness of your stance on that and are now trying to pad it with other points that were not part of the discussion. i keep double or triple back ups of important sessions at all times... and when the session is done i archive it on DVD rom as well... i've never failed to be able to recall a project, and i'm asked to often enough, for things like making backing tracks for live shows, Rock Band/Guitar Hero stems, etc.... but that has nothing to do with whether or not Company A makes better enclosures than Company B.

so go peddle your nonsense on HCAF or somewhere else.

 

[P-E]

I think there's just a big misunderstanding here turning into unnecessary fighting.

Seems like one's talking specifically about LaCie drive enclosure failures...
while the other one's specifically talking about the drive inside being able to fail at any moment, both being right.

This discussion would be way more pertinent to me if I knew if the enclosure or the drive itself was at fault, seems to me that it's the enclosure, which is how LaCie could be at fault, but then again drives fail all the time, so I guess I'll just stay out of this one.

 

[~BURNY~]

I lost all my porn once.


Thought I'd chime in...

 

[~BURNY~]

On a serious note, I use multiple backup disks.

 

[::XeS::]

At the end of the story today I bought a new D2 Quadra because I need an external drive for the next days (drums recording session) and a Glyph should be arrived too late. I immediately noticed a lack of build quality compared to my old D2 Quadra, expecially touching the power button...it's really untight...
Anyway I think I'll save for a Glyph to use as my session disk.
Now...what do you think is the best solution to backup data? I wanna use Time Machine to backup my system drive but can I use the same drive to backup (manually) all my sessions?
Because if it's not possible, the situation will be:
Mac -> Session HD -> Time Machine drive -> Session backup -> Session backup 2
It's really time consuming to backup every evening all these things Contrariwise, if I can use the Time Machine hd for the system backup and also for other non-automatic backups without problems, all I will need is another drive to backup the whole Time Machine drive...

 

[plague_rider]

....shit Burny... you get it all back??

asshat.

*sniggering like buzzed fool i am*