Seagate ticking of death

[jimmy behan]

Waved goodbye to my second Seagate Barracuda drive in 2 months today after it failed again.
Been reading lots of similar tales on the net too. All very frustrating.

Any recommendations for a decent internal audio drive? Quiet, 32mb buffer, 7200rpm etc.

[taylordeupree]

ahh.. the joys...

i've always used external drives.. and, they too, last a couple/few years before they poop out. however, i've had great luck with my latest, which is a G-Drive...

i've had a 2nd internal in my machine for years that's always been solid, but it's only for my iTunes library, so maybe it doesn't get the workout that an audio recording drive would. that drive is... hmm.. maybe a western digital.. i can't seem to find info on what it is.

basically, all hard drives will fail eventually.. there's no magic brand.. but, if you're having bad luck with the barracuda's, i'd move on.

probably the best you can do for audio would be to get a Glyph rackmount. it's all basically the same inside, but Glyph is a great company and have excellent support. and, for what it's worth, their drives are "optimized" for audio applications...

[mac]

you'll find a concise discussion and info here:

http://socialsounddesign.com/questions/694/more-reliable-hard-drives

hope that helps

[billygomberg]

well you can always record the noise and etc etc etc

[pascal savy]

The glyph hard drives look very tempting, but is the price difference with similar products not "optimized" for audio really worth it?
For instance the glyph entry model (500gb) is about $220 where the seagate 500 gb basic drive is about $75. Thoughts?

[taylordeupree]

it's definitely a good point. i used to use a Glyph drive and found that it died on me like any other. the advantage was Glyph has excellent customer support.. and had my drive fixed and back to me in 2 days.

for the past years i've used off-the-shelf firewire drives.. not glyph... so, i guess, ultimately, it didn't end up being so important..

The glyph hard drives look very tempting, but is the price difference with similar products not "optimized" for audio really worth it?
For instance the glyph entry model (500gb) is about $220 where the seagate 500 gb basic drive is about $75. Thoughts?

[moodchannel]

I suggest sticking with "commercial" grade drives and focus on having a good backup system.

I have a mac pro and my drives are replicated nightly using a program called superduper.  no raid or anything like that... just two discs replicated to two backup discs on a nightly basis.  they can be triggered manually as well.

[taylordeupree]

yes

backup backup backup


i use apple's Backup application nightly, automated.. as well as an apple time machine that does backups as i go (but not of my audio drive)... as well, i have a little bus powered USB drive that i copy projects i'm working on to... so, 2 backups of audio projects and 2 of my computer/user files.

backup!

of course, good to have 2 backups... 'cos we all know hard drives WILL fail!

[billygomberg]

I guess I have a question...are you looking for a proper backup drive or a work drive?

if you are looking for backup, seriously consider a RAID mirror.  there are a few out there, will cost you more but is more secure when it comes to drive failure.

[mac]

if you are looking for backup, seriously consider a RAID mirror.  there are a few out there, will cost you more but is more secure when it comes to drive failure.

I'd say Mirrored RAID is not truly reliable backup option. Consider this, both discs do the same actions and spin together all the time, meaning they are wearing down at the same speed. obviously not much chance for both to fail together, but they still have a lot in common. They have same design, come from the same manufacturing batch and are shipped and handled together. Buying different disks might impact performance a bit, but it reduces the risk of double drive failure. 

Some more questions I came across that you might want ask yourself if considering RAID. Let me quote:

"A RAID-1 (...) will protect you against a good number of drive failures, but you can still have power spikes, file system corruption (mirrored identically to both drives), etc. What happens if you accidentally delete a file from your RAID-1? The same file gets deleted on both drives at once. It's not coming back.

The only way to truly keep your data safe is to have multiple copies of it, in multiple locations, and not all plugged in at the same time."

[taylordeupree]

yeah, super important.. keep backup drives that aren't plugged in all the time. i keep an audio archive and graphics archive in a cabinet. only take them out to get a file or back up stuff to them.

[jimmy behan]

oops, forgot all about this thread, thanks for all the replies!
billy, I'm just looking for an audio drive, nothing fancy.
been taking a short break from the music, so still haven't picked one yet, probably next week.
I've always just used regular, well spec'd drives for this without any problems.
I really need to automate my backup system though, which is (not very) manual at the minute.
I just do occasional backups onto another drive, and backup projects onto dvd when I'm done.
online backups might be something worth looking at too, as long as the internet never burns down or topples over.

[leaf]

i had a meltdown last summer ( hot loftspace studio ! ) when i had a daw racknmounted , trashed 2 1tb drives in 2 days , it was nearly all down to bad cooling in my system  , i spent some serious cash on an antec case and some very slick quiet psu and also plenty of fans for the case and deliberatly placed drives in the oversized case i bought and its been ok for now , backup for sure - i do 2 x copies ( 2 seperate drives of everything i need ).I actually think external drives last a bit better , seagates run hot but ive found western digital also bad.It really comes down to heat and wear , hot running drives run out of life quicker and literally drives have a lifespan .Its depressing.