How to choose an external hard drive for a dedicated music set-up.

[Brett a]

I'm going to begin the inevitable switch from CD to PC audio. Although I don't see decommissioning my well-loved Rotel RCD 1070 CDP any time soon, I'd like to get my feet wet with the technology of today.

I have a good friend who is in IT as well as an audio hobbyist who can set me up with an old laptop running Linux as a dedicated music server. I just need to buy an external HD.

I see you can buy a Verbatim SmartDisk 1TB External hard drive for about $150.

http://www.google.com/products/cata...8&cid=7808675321495872737&sa=title#ps-sellers

This is about half the price of 1 TB drives from other companies, and about the same as most other 500 Gig drives. This Verbatim deal boarders on too good to be true? Is it?

 

[tentoze]

New Egg has even cheaper ones than $150. Storage is dirt cheap these days.

 

[cfranz]

Another option is one with a SATA connection. However, that one (the Verbatim) looks perfectly serviceable. That said... All drive fail at some point or other. Backup your stuff. I believe that several external drives have a duplexing (or mirroring) option (two drives with identical data). Unfortunately, I think they only work with Windows....

 

[riverrat]

I've had good luck with Western Digital My Book drives. I have three of them.

And I'll give a strong second to the suggestion to make sure you back your music files up. This becomes more and more important as you build your library up, and if and when you sell off your CDs. Some people go so far as to store a backup off site, in the event your house is robbed or burns down!

 

[ablethevoice]

I've had good luck with Western Digital My Book drives. I have three of them.

And I'll give a strong second to the suggestion to make sure you back your music files up. This becomes more and more important as you build your library up, and if and when you sell off your CDs. Some people go so far as to store a backup off site, in the event your house is robbed or burns down!

That's what I use: The MyBook 1TB external USB drive. Got it for $119 - well, $129 with the 2 year extended warranty from wallyworld. So far, works OK.

 

[vegabass25]

I use a western digital in an accomdata case. I have it plugged into my xbox via USB. and my xbox is connected via optical cable to my amp. Yet cd's still sound better from my CD player..... Anyway WD makes great drivers

 

[Brett a]

Thanks for the recommendations so far. I think once I get serious and feel like I have something to lose, I'll set up a mirror system.

 

[whoaru99]

Thanks for the recommendations so far. I think once I get serious and feel like I have something to lose, I'll set up a mirror system.

If portability is a concern, remember that most (all?) external drives of the 3.5" variety use an external power supply of the wall wart style.

If you get the smaller 2.5" drives they typically run directly from the USB port and don't require an external power supply.

Also, while mirroring does provide a measure of hardware redundancy, it's not a substitute for backup because it provides no protection from malware/viruses, inadvertent deletion, corruption of files, etc.

 

[KLH9]

I may get smacked for this but I use a Zune 120 as my primary "portable" digital source. For desktop storage/archive I use both a LaCie NAS (1.5 TB raid 10) and a USB 1 TB raid 1 along with storing on my hot swap raid 5 arrays.

I keep a selection of my favorite tunes on a 16gb USB flash drive (my car stereos have USB input so this is nice and easy)

I know this is redundant backup well past anal retentive but I have never lost anything.... EVER.....

 

[riverrat]

...Also, while mirroring does provide a measure of hardware redundancy, it's not a substitute for backup because it provides no protection from malware/viruses, inadvertent deletion, corruption of files, etc.

Agreed. I use some cheap software (there's a free trial version too) called AllwaySync that was recommended to me here. It is a simple and fast way to backup your music files, and keep the backups current as you add more music. Highly recommended.

 

[juniorJBL]

Get this http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Product.aspx?S=1268&ID=1731

Add internal HDD I prefer Seagate but WD does not offer Enterprise drives and I run an IT department so I am a bit partial. Also you will find these types of drives have 5 year warranties. This way you can add more drives as you need them.

As everyone else has said here BACKUP,BACKUP,BACKUP!!!!!:yes:

Look at this software for backup it will do Linux as well as Windows. It does not say for linux but it does work I have done it. There will be lots of free stuff out there under GNU license as well.

http://store.storagecraft.com/acb/stores/1/ShadowProtect-Desktop-Edition-33-P55C0.aspx

Or the bundle for 3 machines. Very good software:yes:

 

[whoaru99]

Look at this software for backup it will do Linux as well as Windows. It does not say for linux but it does work I have done it. There will be lots of free stuff out there under GNU license as well.

http://store.storagecraft.com/acb/stores/1/ShadowProtect-Desktop-Edition-33-P55C0.aspx

Or the bundle for 3 machines. Very good software:yes:

I use, and also recommend, ShadowProtect Desktop. I have it on my work computer and on my home computer.

It's not the cheapest stuff around, but it's easy to use, fast compared to some others I tried, and the backups restore very easily and reliably.

Actually, I just image the whole drive, I don't mess with directory or file level backups.

 

[vinyldavid]

I have a LaCie 2Big Triple that I use as my main data drive....it gets moved around a LOT and has never had a problem...

 

[qboneus]

Get this http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Product.aspx?S=1268&ID=1731

Add internal HDD I prefer Seagate but WD does not offer Enterprise drives and I run an IT department so I am a bit partial. Also you will find these types of drives have 5 year warranties. This way you can add more drives as you need them.

As everyone else has said here BACKUP,BACKUP,BACKUP!!!!!:yes:

Look at this software for backup it will do Linux as well as Windows. It does not say for linux but it does work I have done it. There will be lots of free stuff out there under GNU license as well.

http://store.storagecraft.com/acb/stores/1/ShadowProtect-Desktop-Edition-33-P55C0.aspx

Or the bundle for 3 machines. Very good software:yes:

I have been using Hitachi Cinemastar HSC721010KLA330's and have found them to be the best hard drive yet for durability and reliability.
Hitachi doesn't go as far as to say they are ENTERPRISE level but they ARE rated to run 24/7/365.
You can find them for a whole lot less than this link, like probably half of the price of the vendor i linked to's listed price.
http://www.memory4less.com/m4l_itemdetail.asp?itemid=27319263

I like you, work in IT and have experienced a LOT of HD failures from a huge variety of manufacturers.
I certainly hope anyone who reads this thread takes away this one thing; BACKUP IS ESSENTIAL!
tal

 

[riverrat]

Thank you IT gurus for weighing in.

That docking station is an interesting product...

juniorJBL, qboneus (and anyone else with a knowledgeable opinion) what advantages are there to using a hard-drive that is designed to be mounted in a drive bay? Whether mounted in a PC as designed, or with a docking station? Seems like with the docking station it would be much more prone to damage than something like a WD My Book or Seagate equivalent external drive.

What am I missing here?

 

[whoaru99]

I think the point was that you stick a HDD in the docking station, back up to the HDD, then pull it from the docking station and store the backup HDD in a safe place. Could be wrong though...

 

[riverrat]

I think the point was that you stick a HDD in the docking station, back up to the HDD, then pull it from the docking station and store the backup HDD in a safe place. Could be wrong though...

Makes sense, but I still don't understand why this would be preferable to doing the same thing with an external drive. I thought the external drives were basically the same as the kind designed to be mounted in drive bay but with a protective case.

If that is wrong, and there is some difference I'm not aware of that makes a high quality internal drive such as the Hitachi referred to is significantly more reliable, then I can see why it might be worth using one and a docking station. Otherwise I don't see any upside to risking damage by having all the workings exposed...

 

[juniorJBL]

It certainly does involve more care to use a internal drive. Mine sits on my desk with a drive in it all the time but I store the others in a safe place. The one in my dock is for music and my backups are out of harms way. I also use my dock to image all of our HDD's so I do not have to sit at the computer for hours on end installing software.

The externals are basically the same but the drive inside will differ in model # so as you cant get them use them in a machine and get the same 5 year warranty. externals tend to have a year or two for a warranty.

whoaru99:
I also like the IBM/Hitachi drives and would consider them to be an enterprise drive. Very good drives IMO. I use mainly SAS for all of our drives in servers running raid arrays. Most of our servers are Virtual as well running under Hyper-V. Seagate is what my wholesaler gets for me and they have been good to me.

All:

When you go to bed.......... Backup!:yes:

 

[KLH9]

If that is wrong, and there is some difference I'm not aware of that makes a high quality internal drive such as the Hitachi referred to is significantly more reliable, then I can see why it might be worth using one and a docking station. Otherwise I don't see any upside to risking damage by having all the workings exposed...

If you want reliability in a hard drive get one that is enterprise rated not desktop rated. I have some enterprise rated drives that have been running non stop 24/7 online since 2001 in my oldest web server. It no longer does anything important because of its age but it is still serving stats, ftp, nntp and a few other non critical "odd jobs" and not a burp out of these 2 drives that have never been turned off (they are running in a raid 1 array).

At the cheep cost of drives today (even enterprise level drives) there is no need to compromise with your data.

BUT.......

No matter how reliable you "think" your storage is, you MUST backup.... THEN backup your backup.

.

 

[juniorJBL]

BUT.......

No matter how reliable you "think" your storage is, you MUST backup.... THEN backup your backup.

.

And then your backup of your backup!!
and so on and so on and so on..................