External HDD recomendations

Redzedfour

Lifer
Land of the Prince Bishops
I think my Iomega 1TB HDD is about to give up the ghost as it seems to be making a lot of clicking noises if so are there some makes that are better than others.
Any advice would be much appreciated :thumbsup:
 
NAS - Network Attached Storage. Basically a hard drive on your home network / wi-fiaccessible by all your computers. Handy - be interested in what is recommended here, as I want some external storage but haven't a clue what to buy. Was also thinking it should be fire proof... :?
 
NAS = network attached storage - you can use them to back up all your machines, act as a central store for iTunes library, security camera features etc etc. google one of the above and you will see what they offer. You can also configure multiple disks AKA RAID so if one disk goes you don't lose everything.
 
EDIT - ah, multiple cross-posts and I lose!

Ditto to that. NAS = network attached storage. The main advantages of NAS unit are that they support redundant/resilient storage configurations (so if you lose a disk you don't lose your data), they are accessible from anywhere on your home LAN and usually provide a whole host of add-on features such as iTunes/multimedia server, remote access, disk encryption, BitTorrent client etc. They are more expensive than a basic external hard drive, but it's a worthwhile investment if you care about the data you are storing.

I pi55ed about with external hard drives for years before switching to NAS. Currently have a QNAP TS-212 at home and we use Synology DS413s at work. Both are excellent.
 
Bing said:
NAS - Network Attached Storage. Basically a hard drive on your home network / wi-fiaccessible by all your computers. Handy - be interested in what is recommended here, as I want some external storage but haven't a clue what to buy. Was also thinking it should be fire proof... :?

I know people who have qnap and synology - both very good and swap places at the top of reviews
 
MrPT said:
Ditto to that. NAS = network attached storage. The main advantages of NAS unit are that they support redundant/resilient storage configurations (so if you lose a disk you don't lose your data), they are accessible from anywhere on your home LAN and usually provide a whole host of add-on features such as iTunes/multimedia server, remote access, disk encryption, BitTorrent client etc. They are more expensive than a basic external hard drive, but it's a worthwhile investment if you care about the data you are storing.

I pi55ed about with external hard drives for years before switching to NAS. Currently have a QNAP TS-212 at home and we use Synology DS413s at work. Both are excellent.

Seen this one on Amazon and the price seems ok compared to the prices that PC World are asking for some Ext HDD,what puzzles me is it doesn't state a capacity or am i missing something :?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/QNAP-TS-212-Digital-Diskless-Multimedia/dp/B004LOANJ4
 
That's just for the enclosure.
Use the pull down option thingy to select which size hard drive you want. Where it says "Size name - Enclosure"


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jimbo1958 said:
That's just for the enclosure.
Use the pull down option thingy to select which size hard drive you want. Where it says "Size name - Enclosure"


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Thanks jimbo
 
i just bought the "my passport" - a portable 1tb hard drive, i was very impressed as it took power from the laptop rather than a separate power supply like most others - not dear and about the size of a mobile phone
 
Western Digital drives I always thought were meant to be the best, I've got a WD my passport somewhere and always worked great and pretty fast

I have an Apple time capsule on the network now though as it works seemlessly with my macbook so would be stupid not to 8)
 
gallaghb said:
Western Digital drives I always thought were meant to be the best, I've got a WD my passport somewhere and always worked great and pretty fast

I have an Apple time capsule on the network now though as it works seemlessly with my macbook so would be stupid not to 8)

Ditto with the time capsule. After battling with Windows for a living I like to come home to something that just works. My HDD went in my iMac last year and restoring from the capsule was a doddle.
 
I have a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo that I used to use with Time Machine on my Mac. However, every-time I upgraded the firmware on the ReadyNAS it caused me problems, so I don't use it any more.

I've just bought a WD My Passport 1TB external USB drive (£65 PC World) and plugged it into my Airport Extreme via the USB port. Assume other wireless routers can do the same.

We have a Sonos music system, and I had my iTunes on the upstairs iMac, but we hardly ever use that as we have a MBP downstairs, and as we are having an electricity cut down (trying to turn off stuff not in use) it seemed a waste to have the iMac on all the time, even in standby mode.

So I've moved all the music onto the portable drive and shared it out via the AE. Also moved all our data onto the portable drive so it is accessible from either the iMac or MBP regardless of them being on or off.

Its not as good as a time machine backup, but I am also keeping copies on the hard drive of the iMac and plan to manually copy the "working" files from the portable drive to the iMac about once a month. They don't get changed that often, so it will hopefully work for me. Its mainly new music files and photo's, so I can manually back them up as and when.

This way I will have no redundancy on the portable drive, but will have a 2nd copy elsewhere.
 
another :thumbsup: here for the seamless activity of a time capsule. A little overpriced but it has got an apple logo on the front!
 
Going off topic, but can time capsule automatically back up and external drive connected to it? i.e. the time capsule unit with a 2 or 3TB drive inside backing up the external usb drive attached to it? Or does it need to run via a computer?

Can you use some of the internal drive in the time capsule as useable space, therefore removing the need for an external drive? However, that still wouldn't solve the backup issue, cos then it would all be on 1 drive.
 
No - to back up a pn external drive it has to be connected to the computer using time machine. It will then back up the external drive to the tc.

You can connect an external hdd to the tc which will then act as a network storage drive. http://www.brighthub.com/computing/mac-platform/articles/48709.aspx

Or you can partition the internal drive and use part as the time machine drive and part as the networked drive.
 
So for my situation (want the same data available from more than 1 computer, but either computer could be switched off) my only options are either a NAS to give some redundancy, or a portable drive in the way I have described, but rely on manual backup. I think when I replace the AE I might get a TC to remove the portable drive and partition the internal drive, but still need to do manual backups. Thank-you for the help.

To bring it back on topic then, I guess the OP needs to think about their attitude towards data redundancy - how important are the files to be stored and how likely are they to remember (or be bothered) to manually backup...or would an automated system be better.
 
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