OT - External Drive

TomG wrote on 5/24/2010, 7:22 AM

I'm just an amateur but now have enough audio/video files on my machine to need a good backup scheme.

I feel like a lot of you use the Acronis backup software and the comments are mainly good.

What about a good external drive? Anyone use the WD 1TB My Book drive? It doesn't seem too bad for the money ($99) but wasn't too thrilled about some of the buyer's comments at Newegg,

Any comments from the pros?

TomG

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 5/24/2010, 8:56 AM

I had nothing with trouble with my WD My Book until I took the drive out of its enclosure and put it one with fans. The USB connection was unreliable, too. Now it is running OK and I use it as a multimedia drive..

I would never again get another My Book for video editing.

Firewire is better than USB. Nobody questions that.

I have a Seagate external firewire that works well for editing. There were some problems with Seagate drives sold last fall, and a lot of people got turned off.

Others have their own preferences, and I'm sure they will be glad to share them.

jdv group wrote on 5/24/2010, 10:30 AM

Similar experience with my WD 1TB external drive. Works ok for photos etc but not for video. I have been using a Lacie 1TB for over a year now and works without any flaws for my video editing using VP8.c
Prices are dropping all the time, check Amazon.
cheers!

TheHappyFriar wrote on 5/24/2010, 10:42 AM

I have a 500gb WD my book. I have nothing but good things to say about it. I take it when I travel-edit & put the video on it. Yeah, it's slower then my SATA drives (USB2) but it's better then nothing.

I normally keep all my projects, music, photos & other misc. stuff on it & my video on my SATA.

Birk Binnard wrote on 5/24/2010, 11:48 AM

I have a 1 TB Mybook which I use for backups and rendering. It is one of the early models that came with USB, SATA, and FireWire connectors. I had it connected wtih an SATA cable to my system when I was running Vista-64 and it worked great. But when I switched to Win7-64 the Mybook could no longer be seen.

After several calls to the mfg. tech support folks I found out that the drive won't work with Win7 when connected with SATA. So I bought a Fire Wire cable and have been using that. I can't say as I notice any difference in speed or performance.

I was told that the current 1TB MyBooks will support SATA with Win7-64.

TomG wrote on 5/25/2010, 1:08 PM

Thanks for the replies. I guess that with just about almost all tech stuff there is something good and something bad about everything. Sound like this one is split 2 to 2 as well.

Since my previous life was an IT Audit manager, backup and recovery was a really important part of my job so I'm trying to do it right with my personal stuff.

So just to make sure, I might go with the WD & Seagate solutions and store copies on both!!!

TomG

Alvin Smith wrote on 5/25/2010, 1:16 PM

SEAGATE 7200.12 1TB
.. or ..
Samsung Spinpoint F3 .. 1TB (7200RPM)

Both these drives employ 500GB Platter Tech and perpendicular (hi density) recording ... I would make one of these two drives your *NEW* main internal media streaming drive, and relegate your old drive to an external (USB2) adapter cable (or full enclosure), for backup.

BOTH drives are under $90 ... The seagate was on sale for $74.99, last week.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148433&Tpk=7200.12%201tb

= Alvin Smith =