[Helpdesk] Backups

[Robert Barnes]

   I would appreciate Jonas qualifying his remarks about LaCie mainly to
this extent:  -  Are the drives you've removed from LaCie enclosures  
from
the "porche" models? the "mini" models? - etc etc.... and if ANY of them
were from the D2 Extreme line....

   I too have replace the "case" of drives and have them "live again" -
it has always been EZQuest, Porche, and other cases - not D2 Extreme.

   Enlighten us please Jonas.   I do NOT recommend LaCie or any other
   company for ALL their products - just the D2 Extreme in this case.

   -Rob


On Jun 16, 2006, at 11:21 AM, Jonas Skardis wrote:

> The one that I frequently recommend, is Maxtor, with their "one touch
> backup" line. As always, I recommend Newegg for the drive.
> (newegg's maxtor store)
> http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Brand.asp?Brand=1304
> (newegg's external hard drive store)
> http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Subcategory.asp?Subcategory=414
> Prices range from $210 for a 300gig to $690 for a 1tb drive. The  
> only other
> thing that I think is critical, is to get the retrospect backup  
> software,
> and use it religiously.
>
> There is a fair amount of confusion about retrospect as some people  
> deem it
> to be too complicated, however, I can attest to the fact, that when  
> used
> properly, it has the most reliable backup strategy, and can be  
> among the
> easiest to retrieve data from.
>
> I should also mention, that nearly any drive out there will work,  
> Western
> digital, seagate (the new owners of maxtor), Hitachi, LaCie, even  
> Toshiba.
> The one thing is that *every* hard drive is an extremely fragile  
> piece of
> equipment, with a platter that spins at at anywhere from 4200 to  
> 10,000
> revolutions per minutes depending on the drive that you select. To  
> add to
> that a tiny armature floats less than a hairs width above the  
> surface, and
> as such, even a slight drop can irreparably damage a drive. The  
> key, if you
> want to avoid losing data, is to have lots of backups. There truly is
> strength in redundancy.
>
> One word of caution, I'm more than a little pessimistic about  
> LaCie's  hard
> drive offerings, as I have encountered an extraordinary amount of  
> failures
> with LaCie's cases and chipsets included in the drives. In fact,  
> the common
> fix for a failed LaCie drive, is to simply take it out of the LaCie  
> case,
> and put it in third party case. In fact, almost 100% of external  
> drives are
> simply a trumped up case that a reseller puts a plain vanilla drive  
> in.
> Thusly, you don't get too much for your money by buying a higher  
> end drive,
> over a lower end drive.
>
> One last thing, is that when you buy a drive, you need to verify  
> that it is
> properly formatted for your mac, otherwise, you may be making an  
> incomplete
> backup to your drive that you will have trouble restoring from.
>
> -Jonas P. Skardis
> Mac Consulting (and hard drive boo boo repair)
> 577-2151
>
>
>> So what is the hard drive of choice these days be it internal or  
>> external?
>> LaCie, Western Digital. . .? I guess Toshiba is not on the list?
>>
>> Vint Miller
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Helpdesk mailing list
> Helpdesk at santafemug.org
> http://lists.santafemug.org/mailman/listinfo/helpdesk