>I'm looking for opinions on the reliability of brands of external >hard drives, the moderate-sized multi-MB stationary ones that are >designed for storage and backups.
I have been using hard drives for backup for over 10 years with results that are much better than when I was using tape. The hard drives require less maintenance and are more reliable. >Specifically, I have a 320 MB La Cie Firewire/USB2 drive (one of the >cute little ones designed by Porsche) and a Crossfire brand drive of >similar capacity that weighs twice as much... I started doing this with 20 GB La Cie Firewire/USB2 drives back when they were quite expensive. Three of them to use in rotation cost about as much as a good quality tape drive ($1200). Those drives were very reliable and worked until they ran out of capacity. I swapped the drives out of the cases and used those until they filled up too. I then moved the drives to a less demanding task. I do not like the "designed by Porsche" La Cie drives. They run hot and I think that reduces their reliability. I have a client who has a bunch of them and they fail regularly. This client was having weekly kernel panics that I eventually traced to some of these drives. My favorite external drive series at the moment is Fantom (by MicroNet). This company has specialized in disk drives for 20 years. I have talked to the owner and saw he knows the technology and sweats the details. The Fantom line is a very good value. I just specified a bunch of 500GB external Firewire/USB2 drives for a client at $140 each with a $40 rebate. I find that price amazing. All drives should be checked regularly. I use a utility that tests SMART satus every few minutes and will issue a warning if that fails. I also run a disk utility about once a month. I check the backup logs almost every day. Rotating several drives also increases your security. ************************************************************************ * ==> QUICK LIST-COMMAND REFERENCE - Put the following commands in <== * ==> the body of an email & send 'em to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <== * Join the list: SUBSCRIBE COMPUTERGUYS-L Your Name * Too much mail? Try Daily Digests command: SET COMPUTERGUYS-L DIGEST * Tired of the List? Unsubscribe command: SIGNOFF COMPUTERGUYS-L * New address? From OLD address send: CHANGE COMPUTERGUYS-L YourNewAddress * Need more help? Send mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************************ * List archive at www.mail-archive.com/computerguys-l@listserv.aol.com/ * RSS at www.mail-archive.com/computerguys-l@listserv.aol.com/maillist.xml * Messages bearing the header "X-No-Archive: yes" will not be archived ************************************************************************
