External Storage advice

[rich83]

Ok... so I have maxed out my portable 500GB Firewire 800 drive with photos (and other stuff, nae pr0n  )

So, my requirements are.

Firewire 800
Desktop config. (figuring that i can use my 500GB FW800 drive as a portable drive)
1-2TB
Mac compatible
Cheap (ish)

Talk to me... 

Rich

[alexperkins]

Ive got a WD MyStudio Mac 1TB drive which is Firewire 800. Works as my time machine and has been going strong for over two years now

They still make them too 

[neg]

NAS?  I have a couple of the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo's - really good

[alexperkins]

Ive got one of the Netgear NAS systems. Got 2x2TB drives in it and works a treat!

[neg]

Thats the one, got a 1TB and a 2TB, the 2TB free second disk arrived this week ;)

[rich83]

Cant use NAS... too slow.

[Ifti]

Used to use this with my MacBook. In fact I had 3 of them (all 4TB each!)

Now I have a NAS, and just one of the above drives which I use for backups of the most important data on my NAS.
I also have 2 of the My Passport Studio 640GB drives.

All of the WD 'Studio' range of drives are aimed at Mac's, and all have Firewire800 - not the cheapest drives, but highly recommend them.

[rich83]

Used to use this with my MacBook. In fact I had 3 of them (all 4TB each!)

Now I have a NAS, and just one of the above drives which I use for backups of the most important data on my NAS.
I also have 2 of the My Passport Studio 640GB drives.

All of the WD 'Studio' range of drives are aimed at Mac's, and all have Firewire800 - not the cheapest drives, but highly recommend them.

So is that expandable?

[andrewparker]

Drobo?

[rich83]

Drobo?

Far too expensive. (for me!)

[Ifti]

Used to use this with my MacBook. In fact I had 3 of them (all 4TB each!)

Now I have a NAS, and just one of the above drives which I use for backups of the most important data on my NAS.
I also have 2 of the My Passport Studio 640GB drives.

All of the WD 'Studio' range of drives are aimed at Mac's, and all have Firewire800 - not the cheapest drives, but highly recommend them.

So is that expandable?

You can actually get the 6TB version now - so 2x3TB drives.
I have read that you can upgrade the discs in the future if need be (both together though) with larger WD Green drives, as they become available.
The drive has 2 firewire ports on the back, and although Ive never tried it, Im pretty sure you can daisy chain other drives to it - so kinda expandable.....

[RedRobin]

.
Is it worth hanging on for the Thunderbolt connectivity peripherals such as external HD's to be available?

http://www.apple.com/uk/thunderbolt/

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=mac+thunderbolt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

[rich83]

My macs are not thunderbolt compatible. But if they were i would be looking at TB drives

[Degudodger]

Rich,

I recently bought a HP N36L Microserver for £230 and think it is bl00dy excellent. HP have extended their £100 cashback promotion until the end of June meaning the effective cost for the enclosure and FOC 250GB 7200rpm Harddrive is £130. I have two 1TB hard drives in there on a Raid 1 setup with Free-Nas running on the free 250GB HDD. I will be filling the two remaining vacant slots with 2x 2TB HDD's in a couple of months.

I still use a 2TB HDD as a secondary backup for my photos but the server will act as primary storage for iMac and other laptops we have in the house. 

[Ifti]

You can never have enough storage!! 



My NAS has 5x2TB HDDs - gives me around 7.25TB useable space.
The My Book Studio you can see on the right is connected to the NAS via eSATA. Its the 4TB version. At the moment its plenty enough to backup everything, but if space becomes an issue I'll use it to just backup my most important data. eSATA is super fast!!
I then have 2x640GB WD Studio Passport drives (can just see them to the right bottom). I use one for iMovie video editing, and the other is another backup of my kids photos etc which i usually keep offsite.