What external hard drive enclosure(s) do you use?

[audioboffin]

Firstly: treat every hard drive that you use as though it might fail tomorrow, and you might then consider a safe backup protocol that includes taking copies of valuable data offsite, and regular backups.

There are two main issues with Lacie drives. Firstly they run very hot, so leaving them powered up for extended periods of time tends to overheat the drive mechanisms inside thus reducing life expectancy. On the other hand the connectors are dreadful, so multiple unplugging and replugging cycles of the power supply and Firewire connectors results in premature failure.

Personally I look for an enclosure that has adequate cooling, and an onboard power supply with an IEC mains connector. Most of the external supplies use frail cable for the DC supply and under-rated connectors.

I miss the old Sarotech cases with the slide apart design, they were great although inclined to bridge board failures.

I don't think there is any one design that is particularly great, like most things these days they are designed with increasingly shorter "Mean Time To Failure" engineered into the build.

Bottom line: multiple copies on multiple mechanisms, stored in multiple locations!!!!

[Shifted Music]

I had 2 Lacie Big Disks fail. 2 250 gig drives were used in these as a raid to make it a 500 gig drive. Failure was the enclosure/ controller which ruined one of the drives and all the data.

The 3 drives that were still good were pulled and re formatted and put in Granite Digital enclosures. . Beefy, reliable, expensive and ugly...But SOLID. These drives now hold back ups.

I use Glyph GT050q for my studio sample library and my Startup drive and storage. I share the studio computer so we each have one of these (external) for individual startup drives. Then only working sessions on the drives in the computer. There is no operating system on the drives inside the computer at all.

My home sample library is on a Granite digital fw800 enclosure, a little newer model. . not as ugly as the fw400 ones I bought a year and a half ago but just as reliable.

Eventually I will get over the trauma of loosing the lacie drive and be more open to other enclosures and this thread helps. . Rocstor is worth me looking into more. . but for now I went with the Granite Digital enclosures that I knew were historically reliable for backups and home sample library and Glyph's for the studio.

[Bentley Ferrari]

I've been using 4 Seagate Barracudas in an external SATA enclosure from Firmtek for 3 years without a hiccup. Firmtek is owned by some former guys from Apple, I believe. Anyway, ultra reliable, cool running, noiseless for all intents and purposes, and faster than firewire. I recommend Firmtek.

[Matt Darcy]

I'm looking to buy some drives but the requirments are

1.) external firewire 400
2.) Oxford chipset as suggested by many people here
3.) 2 firewire 400 ports to they can be daisy chained together without the need for a firewire hub.

I'm looking at the OWC's as suggested but I can't see if they have 2 firewire ports to daisy chain.

The G-Tech suggested only seem to have one port.

Also if possible from a UK shop/website.

[mike59271]

I was wondering if someone can check out my specs and gimme their opinon here. Im running Pro Tools LE 8 on XP Pro and am thinking about getting new drives. My C drive is pretty old and Ive reformatted on it more times than id like to count. At any rate I would like to replace it because at the same time i need to get rid of my Fantom Green Drive 1TB USB External, so i figured id take care of both. What i need to know are 2 things,

a) is this drive good for my C drive?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136320


b) Should i get 2 external drives (one for audio, one for VI's)
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other.../MEAQ7S1TB32M/


The reason i ask if i should get 2 drives is because Im not running a whole lots of samples. Currently The VI's i use are:

Komplete 5
BFD2 + 2 expansion paks
Best Service Ethno World Orient World
Altiverb
Speakerphone plus Pro Tools plugins.

If your telling me it really would be best to separate it on two drives than i was thinking of getting the OWC Mercury Elite but buy (2) 500 Gb versions instead of one 1tb drive. Also as a side note, can i hook up 2 external drives via eSATA? Feel free to recommend higher quality drives here if you feel it is needed. Im not looking to break the bank but i definitly dont want to run into hard drive problems for some time so taking care of what is needed now would be the best solution i think. Here are my computer specs as of right now in case you would like to know...

<<< System Summary >>>
> Mainboard : Asus P5KC
> Chipset : Intel P31/P35
> Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 @ 2533 MHz
> Physical Memory : 4096 MB (2 x 2048 DDR2-SDRAM )
> Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS
> Hard Disk : ST3320620A (320 GB)
> Hard Disk : MICRONET (1000 GB)
> DVD-Rom Drive : Memorex DVD16+/-DL4RWlD2
> Monitor Type : Dell Computer DELL E172FP - 17 inches
> Monitor Type : IBM IBM L191p - 19 inches
> Network Card : L1 Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T Controller
> Operating System : Microsoft Windows XP Professional 5.01.2600 SP3
> DirectX : Version 9.0c (May 2005)

[Bubblegum]

I have a Lacie 120GB FW 400 drive that I bought in 2003.

It's still working great as ever. Over the years it has been shipped via UPS from the UK to USA in a cheap carry case within a box with all my other gear and come with me as hand luggage to my new home in Thailand. I use it every day with my portable system and between 2003 and 2007 it was constantly being plugged in and unplugged as I transported my recording rig.

I guess I've been lucky. I'm pretty confident about getting a new Lacie FW drive for my new system this year.

[barters81]

I'm using a Sarotech Hardbox 500gb FW800 drive connected through a express1394 card into my macbook pro.

Works a treat....

[Hayesland]

I just purchased one of these wiebetech FW 800, 400 esata,usb - all connections x 2 with independent operation available
This thing is really solid and no trays
The handle is really important Simple things...... as I mentioned this in other threads, I guess were getting a list going.


http://www.wiebetech.com/products/RTX220-QJ.php