[the_syco]

Originally Posted by bradlente

I'm pretty sure 1 was my own doing as I booted it up on a low voltage and its clicking like a madhouse now.

Take the harddrive out, put it in a freezer bag, and leave it in the freezer for 48 hours or so. Take it out, wipe of the moisture, and plug it back into the external caddy. You should get 30 minutes to take any important files off it. When it starts clicking again, back into the freezer bag it goes. Usually allows you to get most of the important documents and files off it. I find O&O DiskRecovery works well most of the time.

Originally Posted by bradlente

Even if they can be repaired I can't trust them

I wouldn't bother repairing them (didn't know you could, for the click of death).

Originally Posted by bradlente

seagate

Since Maxtor and Seagate merged, I won't touch either with a bargepole; got burnt by Maxtors drives three times, so now avoid them.

I've used Western Digital drives for the past number of years, as I have found them reliable so far.

Popping a few internal drives into your current caddies is probably the cheapest way to go.

[SonasRec]

Anyone out there with realworld experience of using solid state drives in their mac? Reliability, performance........ Worth the extra cost?

[bradlente]

Originally Posted by the_syco

Take the harddrive out, put it in a freezer bag, and leave it in the freezer for 48 hours or so. Take it out, wipe of the moisture, and plug it back into the external caddy. You should get 30 minutes to take any important files off it. When it starts clicking again, back into the freezer bag it goes. Usually allows you to get most of the important documents and files off it. I find O&O DiskRecovery works well most of the time.


I wouldn't bother repairing them (didn't know you could, for the click of death).


Since Maxtor and Seagate merged, I won't touch either with a bargepole; got burnt by Maxtors drives three times, so now avoid them.

I've used Western Digital drives for the past number of years, as I have found them reliable so far.

Popping a few internal drives into your current caddies is probably the cheapest way to go.

I've looked at the box(like a non-moron would)and it says I've a 3 year warranty on this drive.The one I started using in February that I only got a year ago.It's also,coincidentally,A WD drive.Can't have any qualms about the product itself though as I ****ed it up.

The Seagate drive however,I am disappointed with.I'll have to get more info on what drives to avoid from now on.Although I'm probably the majority of the problem

I'm safe in regards to data.The WD drive is a drive 75% full of samples I bought with a friend at a cut price(That I found on here)and he has his own HD for those.So I'll be backing those up firstly.The rest is pretty much stuff I don't need but will miss.

It's made me think about my PC with a lot of the data I have there also.About 50% of it was backed up on the seagate so that's gna need another full back up straight away too.

It's a good time for this to have happened I suppose.There's a couple of hundred gigs I haven't got backed up right now that's constantly growing,And to lose it would be gank.

Hopefully I can get this warranty sorted anyway,Losing a few gigs of data won't hurt as much if I don't have to shell out 200 quid for a new drive.

[studiorat]

Originally Posted by madtheory

Yes, it has saved my ass several times. It needs a lot of space to work well, and it's not really suited to archiving sessions. I'm about to do that on an entirely separate 2TB drive so I'll have that plus the Time Machine drive. Then save some more money and get another 2TB offsite...

It's probably a stupid question. But why isn't it?

[madtheory]

If one was to rely solely on Time Machine, you'd need stupid amounts of HD space, and you wouldn't be sure which was the "final" version of a project. Why? Because it backs your entire drive at hourly intervals going back as far as storage space allows. That's everything on the target drive, including apps, system etc. Bit of a mess if you just want to backup projects I think.

When I've finished a project, I set aside some time to go through most of the audio files and delete what is not needed- such as mixes the client did not approve, PT Session File backup folders etc. Then I make two copies, one off site. The problem I'm having now is that DVDs are not big enough, and are slow to work with.

[PaulBrewer]

I agree with Mad .

I see Time Machine as keeping an eye on my system (even thought it is more) and actively copy sessions as they're completed to another drive.

So in effect that's 2 backups , one in Time Machine and one on a Backup Drive plus the original session which probably remains on the Audio Drive for quite a while after completion.

I have, after all, been stung !

[studiorat]

I see. I've never bothered with Time Machine. I just presumed it worked like Retrospect or something. Does it not do incremental back-up where it just backs up the difference each time?

How about Carbon Copy Cloner set to do incremental daily back-ups to a NAS? Would that work?

[madtheory]

Originally Posted by studiorat

Does it not do incremental back-up where it just backs up the difference each time?

Ya it does, and that's really cool, but you still end up with something that's unmanageable as an archive. I don't use CCC, I imagine it would be even more unwieldy compared to Time Machine's entirely automatic functionality. As a general safety backup thing, Time Machine doesn't use up any of your time, and I find it to be very reliable.

[studiorat]

Originally Posted by madtheory

Ya it does, and that's really cool, but you still end up with something that's unmanageable as an archive. I don't use CCC, I imagine it would be even more unwieldy compared to Time Machine's entirely automatic functionality. As a general safety backup thing, Time Machine doesn't use up any of your time, and I find it to be very reliable.

What makes it unmanageable?

I'm looking for a solution to back up 6 machines daily onto maybe 2 or 3 TB on a network.

[Neurojazz]

Originally Posted by studiorat

What makes it unmanageable?

I'm looking for a solution to back up 6 machines daily onto maybe 2 or 3 TB on a network.

http://code.google.com/p/syncit/

[woodsdenis]

Originally Posted by madtheory

Ya it does, and that's really cool, but you still end up with something that's unmanageable as an archive. I don't use CCC, I imagine it would be even more unwieldy compared to Time Machine's entirely automatic functionality. As a general safety backup thing, Time Machine doesn't use up any of your time, and I find it to be very reliable.

I use CCC all the time and you can customize it to do really anything you want as far as backups are concerned. I think the issue with time machine is the huge amount of disc space it uses. I also use disk images, so you can easily move whole sets of data in on go. Try CCC, its free!!!!

[SonasRec]

Thanks for the heads up on ccc. Gonna try it this week.

Asked in an earlier thread for any good Irish sources for drives. Dabs.ie was recommended. Turns out they're in the uk, just clever enough to have a .ie address & free delivery.

Got 3 wd caviar black 1TB's. Was worried that they might be noisy.......they are !

[Neurojazz]

Originally Posted by SonasRec

Anyone out there with realworld experience of using solid state drives in their mac? Reliability, performance........ Worth the extra cost?

Performance is great, but there is a problem with them. You must only use them for 'static' information - the cells that record the information have a finite number of writes so must not be used for project drives unless you can backup/replace often.

Typically you'd have your system / OS on that drive with your apps/audio devices where that information only changes occasionally and have your projects on other drives.

[madtheory]

Originally Posted by SonasRec

Asked in an earlier thread for any good Irish sources for drives. Dabs.ie was recommended. Turns out they're in the uk, just clever enough to have a .ie address & free delivery.

Got a silent 2TB WD for €145.60 including postage from these guys:
http://stores.ebay.ie/xeniaonline

[waveform]

Originally Posted by Neurojazz

Performance is great, but there is a problem with them. You must only use them for 'static' information - the cells that record the information have a finite number of writes so must not be used for project drives unless you can backup/replace often.

Typically you'd have your system / OS on that drive with your apps/audio devices where that information only changes occasionally and have your projects on other drives.

But having your OS on the SSD would mean constant write access, especially if you haven't the page file disabled.

And then there's the matter of the various Temp folders in Windows.

Internet Browsing + Installing / Updating applications means lots of temporary files being written + deleted.

Both the OS and Apps would also write to log files and the registry, although that wouldn't be as hectic.


The only possible advantage would be if cells used for free space are static.

But my guess is that SSD drives, keep refreshing all the cells on the disk and there is no "static cells"?

And possibly try to write to all the cells evenly? I guess it depends on the firmware of the SSD also.

I remember watching a video about SSD drives on youtube, made by a guy who does contract work in data recovery for forensics.

He mentioned that each manufacturer uses their own way of writing to SSDs, and there's no standard, which is a huge problem for people like him.

Using portable apps on the HDD for Internet browsing, downloading, extracting (anything which heavily uses temp files)
would be a good way of reducing the stress on the SSD.

Recording audio tracks & projects would be pretty intensive on the SSD alright though, I agree