(Disclaimer: The Amazon links in this blog post are affiliate links, so I can make a few extra coins to help pay for a fraction of the cost to host this website. #CommissionsEarned)
My setup
I have nine hard drives running. Three are main external hard drives:
- One for work
- One for photos/movies
- One for music/laptop backups
Each of these drives has a backup drive sitting next to it. And I have a second backup sitting at another location just in case something happens to my apartment. So that means I have nine hard drives.
Dead AC adapters
This past week, I had two AC adapters die. Both the AC adapters are from the Icy Dock MB559UEA-1S.
You’d think it would be easy to buy a replacement AC adapter, but it’s not. People just don’t sell them, and if they do, you aren’t assured that they will properly fit into your drive. So now instead of buying a whole new hard drive which costs about $100, I can buy a new enclosure for $25.
Dead hard drives
Thankfully I’ve never had a hard drive completely die on me. As I said, I have my drives double-backed up just in case. But a couple of weeks ago, my photo hard drive did stop working. DiskWarrior was able to fix the directory, and all the files were still there.
When DiskWarrior fixed the drive, I wanted to make sure that all the files were still there. I wanted to compare the files on the fixed drive with my backup drive. But I could not find a tool that would adequately compare files on two drives. Amazing. That’s a blog post for another day.
I did have a hard drive arrive DOA (Dead on Arrival). I ordered an Iomega Prestige 1.5 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive 34474
from Newegg.com. The sucker didn’t work. It was an experiment on my part to try buying an all-in-one drive. But it cost me. To return the item, I had to pay for shipping and a RESHELVING FEE. It cost me $30 to return the busted drive that never worked. I love newegg.com for their reviews, but I will never buy from them again.
Good hard drive enclosure with Firewire
The ICY Dock mentioned above has Firewire 400, but I would not recommend it, because I’ve had two AC adapters from that model die. I do have three of Vantec NexStar 3 NST-360UFS-BK
.
I’ve been very pleased with these enclosures. No problems. But Firewire 400? Macs aren’t made with that anymore. It’s tempting to get Vantec NexStar 3 NST-360FBSU-BK
.
Firewire 800 would be nice. Double the speed. But in a few years USB 3.0 is gonna be around, so why spend all the money on Firewire 800 now?
Spudart’s guide to hard drives:
1. My external hard drive storage recommendations
2. Best external hard drive options for mac users
3. My experiences with hard drives
I just checked my spam folder and have some bounces from your email server… this is a test comment to see if it’s still b0rked.
You should be able to match your AC adapter to a similar product at Radio Shack or even Amazon. A replacement would only cost $5-$15. Takes some research, but could be worth it. Do you run software or hardware RAID to backup? I think I’m mostly Western Digital. I might have a Seagate thrown in there. I use Firewire 400/800 because you can daisy chain them with little loss to performance, and I don’t need a hub. Mac Mini: Firewire 400 -> Enclosure: Firewire 800 -> Enclosure: Firewire 800 -> Enclosure. I use the Vantec NexStar MX (http://amzn.com/B001QFFYKO) with two drives equaling 1tb RAID 0; an Acomdata with a 750gb, and a La Cie with a 1.5tb. My offsite storage is Flickr/Google/friends (music)/cloud storage. How do you handle offsite storage? What types of data do you use it for? Have you thought of paying $$$ for hardware RAID (1, 4, 5, or 6) for onsite backup?
Radio Shack didn’t have much choice in adapters. The only ones they had were the types with multiple tips that were around in the $50 and up range. My eyeballs nearly fell out of my head when they said that’s all they had. I went to the one on Lawrence by Damen. I never looked into RAIDs. I’ve read that the green drives have a hard time with RAIDs. I use software. Specifically <a href=”http://www.shirt-pocket.com/superduper/superduperdescription.html”>SuperDuper/a>. I like it. Although I don’t backup nearly enough. SuperDuper can do scheduling. But I always turn my computer off at the end of the day at work. And I turn the computer off at night and turn the surge protectors off. I suppose I could just schedule it for like Tuesday nights and leave the stuff on every Tuesday. That would be more frequent backups than what i’m doing now. I was tempted to get the Firewire enclosures again this time. Yes. I like how you can daisy-chain. But I’ve found when I turn off a drive in the middle of the daisy-chain, the ones after that one don’t connect. I’m not sure if that is supposed to happen, but it does for me. Plus with USB 3.0 coming soon, i’m gonna be buying new enclosures soon anyways. So i just got the $25 enclosure with USB 2.0. And wow, they look NICE. One of these days when i get all my drives set up again, i’m gonna take a photo of my setup. Here’s what I have now: — 750 GB at home for photos/movies — 750 GB at home for the backup of photos/movies — 750 GB at work for the backup of photo/movies — 2TB at home for music/laptop disc image — 2TB at home for backup of the music/lapto disc image — 2TB at work for backup of the music/laptop disc image — 1TB at work for my working files — 1TB at work for the backup of my working files — 1TB at home for the backup of my working files The on-site backup, i shoudl be doing that weekly. The off-site backup, i don’t have them set up in the offsite location yet. The plan is to get the backup onto those drives every few months.
Nice setup. If I run across a replacement AC adapter I’ll let you know… although I guess it doesn’t matter since you’ll switch to USB 3 when it’s available for Mac (buying a new computer?). Wait… how do you fit your photos on 750GB? Granted, the S5 spits out 20+ MB per RAW file, but your camera can’t be that much less can it? My setup: — 750 GB photos (2005-2008): FULL — 1.5 TB photos (2009-present): 20% — 1 TB music/videos 10%
I know you don’t have a Wal-mart around there… yet… but I’ve had to buy a couple of the multi-tip mult-voltage transformers that can supply up to 1amp at 12v. I think they were like $13.99
I don’t like RAID set-ups. The benefit is that you have that redundancy happen automatically on-the-fly. However, if the bridge or any hardware in the RAID outside the hard drives fail, then there’s a strong possibility that the data on your drives are completely useless unless you have another RAID system built to the same spec. I’d rather much sacrifice time in backing up than take the risk of going with a RAID. I’ve seen too many RAIDs crap out from my days as a tech guy years ago to trust this flawed system.
There are many different raid levels. RAID 1 is just data mirroring. So if your controller fails, you can take either of the drives and have your full set of data. Controller failure should be rare (should…) but in that event, any standard controller should be able to be swapped in. For backups though, RAID is not the answer. A local backup in case of hardware failure, and an off-site backup in case of physical catastrophe is the way to go. Using rsync to make incremental backups of your data to a webserver/backup host is the easiest way to protect yourself with minimal headaches… except if you’re backing up a huge media/image collection. (I use duplicati to backup my entire work computer. The incremental backup runs daily and takes at most a few minutes)
All this RAID stuff is confusing. I need a pretty diagram. And links to specific products to buy and what type of products to buy. I heard that green drives don’t work in RAID, cuz the green drives spin down. RAID sounds like a PAIN.
It’s funny just as i make a post about hard drives last week, I nearly had my photo hard drive AND backup die. I’ve been having issues with my photo hard drive, DiskWarrior saved it twice already, so I copied all the files over to the backup. I was still waiting for the 2nd backup drive to arrive in the mail. I thought I was good with the one backup. But then the primary drive died. Disk Warrior could not save it. Then the backup also would not load. Starting to get worried a bit inside, I didn’t want to mess around any further with the backup. The past week, I’ve focused on the primary photo drive. The problem was that DiskWarrior was telling me: ————- DiskWarrior has successfully built a new directory for the disk named “Unknown Disk.” The new directory cannot replace the original directory because of a disk malfunction. A disk malfunction is a failure of or damage to any mechanical component of the disk device, or any component connected to it. The malfunction will likely worsen. Therefore, recovering your files from the DiskWarrior Preview as quickly as possible is essential. It is highly recommended that you backup all of your data from the preview disk. —————- So there was this “preview” disk on my desktop. DiskWarrior is telling me that my disk is too effed up, and i need to copy my data from the preview disk to another drive. OK. Simple enough. But everytime I would go to copy the files over, I would get the following error: “The Finder cannot complete the operation because some data in could not be read or written. (Error code -36)” I had been using DiskWarrior with a non-admin user on my MacBook, so I figure I’ll try logging in as the admin and run DiskWarrior, and copy the files. I got the same error. Flustered, I paid $125 for the crappy product Stellar Phoenix. I tried using the data recovery with that tool last night. A window comes up with like, 500 squares. The first square was colored grey to indicate it was busy working on the first sector. I let it run for 20 hours, and there was no progress. None.
I called Stellar Phoenix help line, and someone actually answered. He told me that it could take some time for it to get past the first vector and then it will go really fast. And I asked, “I’ve been waiting for 20 hours now, how much longer do i need to wait? Another day, another week?” He replied that I should wait a few hours and if nothing happens, then call back. Well, duh. Nothing is going to happen in a few hours. So I cancelled the Stellar Phoenix progress. Here’s what worked: I found a trick if you hold down the option key in DiskWarrior, it will change the “rebuild” button into a “rebuild…” button with ellipses. That will then enable you to “scavenge” your drive. The whole process took about five minutes. No joke. My drive is now back, and i’m backing it up to another drive.