Hello All, I have a question for the group about which stand-alone Firewire external hard drive I should consider. I use a Lacie drive now for my Logic Media & software synth media but I hear from many different people that the Lacie drives ain't "all that". They seem to go down quite often according to various music & TV post production professionals I know... I researched "Firewire Drives" through LUG and found threads on RAID arrays which isn't for me. I don't need an array, just a single drive... Can anyone recommend a reputable brand hard-drive (something in the 200 Gig range?) Thanks for the info! charlie

Everyone is going to give you a different opinion. Having gone through a ton of drives, I will ONLY use Rocstors now. The only drive I have ever had that has been flawless. And I can't deal with external power supplies. If A drive has one of those external power boxes, i won't touch it. I along with manyothers have had lots of problems with LaCie drives. They used to be great, not so much anymore. Just my opinion. On Nov 4, 2006, at 7:46 AM, charlie eisenhardt wrote: > Message posted by charlie eisenhardt <c_eisenhardt@yahoo.com>: > > Hello All, > I have a question for the group about which stand-alone Firewire > external > hard drive I should consider. I use a Lacie drive now for my Logic > Media & > software synth media but I hear from many different people that the > Lacie > drives ain't "all that". They seem to go down quite often according to > various music & TV post production professionals I know... I > researched > "Firewire Drives" through LUG and found threads on RAID arrays > which isn't > for me. I don't need an array, just a single drive... Can anyone > recommend a > reputable brand hard-drive (something in the 200 Gig range?) > > Thanks for the info! > charlie

--- In logic-users@yahoogroups.com, "charlie eisenhardt" <forums@...> wrote: > I have a question for the group about which stand-alone Firewire external > hard drive I should consider. ... Can anyone recommend a > reputable brand hard-drive (something in the 200 Gig range?) > > Thanks for the info! We use Avastor. Gareth

On Nov 5, 2006, at 11:34 AM, Colin Miller wrote: > Everyone is going to give you a different opinion. Having gone > through a ton of drives, I will ONLY use Rocstors now. The only drive > I have ever had that has been flawless. And I can't deal with > external power supplies. If A drive has one of those external power > boxes, i won't touch it. I think for this conversation we need to clarify the terms a little. There is the drive and then there is the enclosure. And then there are packages that you buy that include both. I thing the Rocstor you are talking about is the latter. The thing that breaks and screws you is the hard drive which is inside the enclosure so if Rocstor drive enclosure packages have been serving you well then a key bit of data would be what kind of drives they are putting inside their enclosures. Otherwise to answer the more basic question of the original poster, I hear that currently seagates are the higher quality option.

For me it's more often the enclosure mechanism that fails, not the drives themselves. And since different manufacturers change internal mechanism, you cannot just associate one with the box it comes in. What you can judge though it the reliability that the manufacturer puts into their package by consistently using good parts. LaCie for example, used to use really good stuff, but has gotten cheap lately, hence so many people having problems with them. In my personal experience, the only ones that have been consistently the best are Rocstor and avestar. Glyph can be fine, but who wants to waste money so glyph can sell you their fancy paint job and logo? They mostly buy other peoples stuff and fancy it up for extra money. My only problem with Avstar is not quality, but I think they now use an external power supply. I have some of the older ones that have internal power supply and those are wonderful. And maybe they still make them, but I haven't bothered checking since the rocstors are so good. The external power supply issue is simply a personal preference. It's too cumbersome and difficult to carry around, they get lost, they make swapping out drives more difficult (good use for a trip rack though). I don't know what internal mechanism the rocstors use, and I don't plan on finding out because it would probably bias my opinion. I prefer to just go by the track record I have had with the manufacturers putting the drives together. And of course that's going to vary from person to person.

On Nov 6, 2006, at 8:50 AM, Colin Miller wrote: > For me it's more often the enclosure mechanism that fails, not the > drives themselves. That is a good thing IMO. The drive has got what is valuable to me on it. The enclosure is nothing. (but of course the expense of replacing it). My solution to storage of late has been to stop using enclosures altogether and start using adapters like this: http://www.cooldrives.com/ustoidesaadc.html And this this (I am really sorry I cannot find anything like this one outside of Japan) http://www.cooldrives.com/ustoidesaadc.html Basically they are little adapters that you just slap directly onto the back of a naked drive. I have about 15 hard drives so it does not make sense for to buy enclosures for all of them and a taking them in and out of enclosures each time I want to access is a pain in the ass so I figured out a mounting system and just use the little adapters to hook up the drive I happen to need. The firewire ones are faster but the USB 2 ones are common as dirt and dirt cheap and still very fast. For mounting I just take a 1 meter L shaped bar of aluminum, drill some holes for mounting, spaced at 2.6 cm intervals along the whole thing and then just screw all my drives directly onto it. Since there are no fans this arrangement ends up being considerably quieter than a lot of drive enclosures As I was concerned about cooling I bought a little infrared thermometer to check out status of the drives. The hottest drive on my little rack at the moment is 40º C (104 fahrenheit). Which is considerably cooler than the temperature of the drives inside my G5. I am quite satisfied with this arrangement actually.

--- In logic-users@yahoogroups.com, dennis gunn <dennis@...> wrote: > My solution to storage of late has been to stop using enclosures > altogether and start using adapters like this: > http://www.cooldrives.com/ustoidesaadc.html > And this this (I am really sorry I cannot find anything like this > one outside of Japan) > http://www.cooldrives.com/ustoidesaadc.html > Basically they are little adapters that you just slap directly onto > the back of a naked drive. www.weibetech.com do a range of stuff like this too. John Pitcairn ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - LC Xmu Logic/Mackie Control emulation & management, LC Xview software LC/MC display, Logic environments & stuff... Opus Locus - http://www.opuslocus.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -