At 3:25 AM +0000 11/28/2011, [email protected] wrote:
I was watching Black Friday ads for an external 2tb drive for back
ups. Offcie Max had a Seagate GoFlex 2tb for $75. But I was too late
to get one. Then I started researching the Seagates online for
prices. In my search, I came across terrible reviews for the
Seagates. I remembered that there was a discussion on this list
about them and it wasn't in their favor! So Seagate drives are off
my list.
1. So, what brand would any of you suggest for an external drive?
Separate in your mind the drive mechanism & box, from the provided software.
WRT drive mechanisms, Seagate and Hitachi are perhaps the best, year
in and year out, IMO. In my experience, they have the lowest failure
rates. Western Digital laptop size drives are very good. But I do
NOT recommend WD's LP (standard size) drives in any way.
As to the software... therein lies the problems. On your Mac you
already have Disk Utility. And, depending on your OS version, etc,
you have tools like Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner and or
SuperDuper. That's it. That's all you need. (well, maybe add
DiskWarrior to handle the rare instance when a file system gets
really farked). *Ignore* the craplets that come with/on the drive.
Such craplets are provided because the consumer (aka windoze lemming)
market expects them. They're not things to be used by real users.
AND when you get a new drive, *before* you put your data on it, zero
it! Use Disk Utility to write zeros over the whole thing. This will
ensure that the drive is fully functional. It will map out any bad
blocks that have grown during its mistreatment, er a shipment and
warehouse cooking. One pass is good enough.
2. I also have been looking at online backup sites, in addition to a
physical back up. Carbonite looks good to me, but I am not familiar
with the pros and cons of online. I would value your opinion.
Offsite storage of your backups are a great idea. But IMO, putting
your data in the hands of an unknown 3rd party, with
who-knows-how-much vetting of employees, that refuses to disclose
their actual set-up, and claims NO liability for your data's
integrity, and has had large outages & data loss, is .... not a good
idea.
A better idea is to have several external HDs, and rotate them off
site now and then. The 'ole sock-drawer method.
...An example of yet-another Carbonite failure: A guy on one of the
mac irc channels I haunt was just saying *today* that he's been
working since last Wednesday to restore some large files that were
lost because of a local HD failure. Since Wednesday! 6 DAYS! And
he's making no progress!
Aside: We've had a few threads on the LEM lists about Dropbox
recently. It should be noted that Dropbox is a cloud synchronization
service, NOT a backup service. It's great for sync'ing files between
machines, and quick small backups (especially while traveling!).
At 8:47 PM -0800 11/27/2011, JohnCarmonne wrote:
Too slow for large drives.
John makes a very valid point. Assumin you've bought enough capacity
on the service, the initial backup is limited to your upstream speed.
(hoping that your ISP doesn't shut you down for blowing their upload
caps). Subsequent incrementals won't be too bad. Restorations will
only happen at your downstream speed, +/- your ISP's downstream caps.
If you lose a whole drive, can you afford the days that will take?
- Dan.
--
- Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth.
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