# Hard drives supply shortage



## yeeeha (Feb 16, 2007)

My friend told me two days ago that his company received official words from Seagate that the massive flooding in Thailand would seriously affect the production of its hard drives.

Same situation with Western Digital, see this article.

If you are into photography, more bad news.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

and with Hitachi - it's very dire. Prices heading to the roof and buying restrictions.


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## gwillikers (Jun 19, 2003)

Good thing I stocked up. If I buy another hard drive within the next year, my wife will leave me.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Was fun scrambling trying to find a couple hundred drives at short notice yesterday with suppliers mostly out. 10' long sales receipt from one of the local sources was cause for amusement....apparently a 51 drive sale was their record and the poor girl had to scan each one.

Bad time as video people are using space incredibly these days. One video client was looking for 24 TB to back up the existing 24 TB. :yikes:

I dont' see it getting better anytime soon given 3/4 of Thailand is submerged.

BTW all drives EXCEPT SSD are affected and even those manufacturers not in Thailand will see a shortage of parts for their drives as so many major drive part manufacturers are sited there.


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## macintosh doctor (Mar 23, 2009)

Also I have had a couple of suppliers advise us that they are no longer stocking hard drives from WD - I replied - thank you..
As they fail in 6 months any how.. so looks with distribution has finally woken up to the quality or lack off .... they must of gotten ill from all of the warranty claims..

You get what you pay for.... ( so looks like costco and best buy will continue to sell them. )


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

gwillikers said:


> Good thing I stocked up. If I buy another hard drive within the next year, my wife will leave me.



For fun, I sent you a hard drive, addressed c/o 'spouse.' I hope that's okay...

I guess with the bottoming out of the alleged high cost of RAM, something had to go into "shortage" mode.

I wonder if there will be a run on the 1000s of hard drives at my local Costco, computer stores, big box stores.... I doubt it.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

Glad I did my backup system overhaul in the spring and I have plenty of flash storage for my camera so I am pretty sure I can ride this out as is...

For those in need and buying new computers it will be the first time in years and years to actually see prices go up.


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## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

macintosh doctor said:


> Also I have had a couple of suppliers advise us that they are no longer stocking hard drives from WD - I replied - thank you..
> As they fail in 6 months any how.. so looks with distribution has finally woken up to the quality or lack off .... they must of gotten ill from all of the warranty claims..
> 
> You get what you pay for.... ( so looks like costco and best buy will continue to sell them. )


Eh? Maybe if you're talking about WD external drives, or maybe some of the "Green" line, but for my money, the WD Caviar Black line, and particularly the 1TB drives, can't be beat. I've never had one fail. My experience is mirrored in the thousands of reviews at NewEgg and elsewhere. Compare them to the similar spec'd Hitachis and Seagates (1TB, 7200 RPM) and I'd rather buy a drive that has only 10% "one egg" reviews vs one that has 15 to 20%. Only the Samsung 1TB has similarly large numbers of happy users. At this point, I'm still avoiding drives larger than 1TB because they seem to have a much higher failure rate - and luckily, I don't need a drive larger than that. 

Anyway...considering snagging an extra just in case something fails in the next few months.


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## yeeeha (Feb 16, 2007)

*More news*

My friend sent me an update this morning. With Seagate drives, supply will be very constrained for at least the next six weeks. The constrain is in the component supply chain, not Seagate's ability to manufacture drives.

The situation with Western Digital is worse. But my friend didn't give me details on that front.

I asked my friend if prices of HDD would go up in the next little while. He said definitely.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

I suggest you a little off on the Hitachi comments - far and away the most reliable in professional circumstances that we've seen....
We like WD Velociraptors but the Hitachi just are rock solid, the 2 TB and 3TB ( we still go through some 1 TB for boot drives but too small for pro use ).

Seagate has it's issues. XX)

That said online reviews are very subject to manipulation...I'd rather trust the judgement of a guy that buys and sells 10's of thousands of drives a year.


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2011)

Glad I sorted out some of my failing drive issues (Seagates of course) and have 2 hot spares hooked up so all ready for the next couple of failures LOL. Only 6 more Seagate 1.5TB drives to go and then I'm done with that whole nightmare. I guess those of us that _still_ have RMA's waiting will be waiting longer. I sent back drives to Seagate over 4 weeks ago and still nothing ... I should have done the advanced replacement.


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## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

MacDoc said:


> I suggest you a little off on the Hitachi comments - far and away the most reliable in professional circumstances that we've seen....
> We like WD Velociraptors but the Hitachi just are rock solid, the 2 TB and 3TB ( we still go through some 1 TB for boot drives but too small for pro use ).
> 
> Seagate has it's issues. XX)
> ...


MacDoc, I have several Hitachi drives - they've been fine. As for reviews (at NewEgg) being manipulated...by whom, and to what purpose? They sell some drives that have hundreds of BAD reviews and still people buy them and they still stock them, so I really doubt there's any manipulation going on. After all, if there was, wouldn't they want the reviews make the drives in question look better? I'm referring to drives that have hundreds or thousands of reviews over an extended period - not drives that have 3 or even just 10 reviews total.

It's hard NOT to worry about the reliability of a drive that gets 27% one egg reviews - most of which turn out to be failures, like this one: Newegg.ca - HITACHI Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3020ALA632 (0F12117) 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

The same drive at Amazon gets about 20% 1 star reviews, though on far fewer total (55) vs NewEgg's 498.

I'm glad that your experience has been different - I'd be curious to know which models you've particularly liked - at some point I may want some bigger drives.

In 20 years of buying drives it seems to me that every manufacturer has gone through bad bits - either as a company or with particular lines. There was a time when you didn't want to go anywhere near Western Digital...then it was the IBM "Death Stars"...and lately Seagate seems to be having some issues.


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## gwillikers (Jun 19, 2003)

No problem with WD blacks or greens, and I have a bunch of 'em. (I've become a bit obsessive compulsive about backing up)
My last purchase was a 3 TB WD green (for Time Machine), and I'll be interested to see how it does in the long term. The larger the drive, the more prone to failure.


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## Guest (Oct 22, 2011)

Paddy said:


> It's hard NOT to worry about the reliability of a drive that gets 27% one egg reviews - most of which turn out to be failures, like this one: Newegg.ca - HITACHI Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3020ALA632 (0F12117) 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
> 
> The same drive at Amazon gets about 20% 1 star reviews, though on far fewer total (55) vs NewEgg's 498.
> 
> I'm glad that your experience has been different - I'd be curious to know which models you've particularly liked - at some point I may want some bigger drives.


There may be a lot of 1 egg reviews, but have you read many of them? Lots of them are people complaining that they didn't get the rebates from Hitachi. While that's not a good thing I don't think that it warrants giving the drive a 1 egg review. Most of them didn't even bother to try and contact Hitachi and instead just filed a bad review on newegg. Does seem like that model had a lot of failures though. It also seems like some of the failures are from total newbie's that couldn't figure out how to make them work "over USB with windows"

Try the 7K3000 model. I have about 5-6 of them at the moment and so far so good.


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## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

mguertin said:


> There may be a lot of 1 egg reviews, but have you read many of them? Lots of them are people complaining that they didn't get the rebates from Hitachi. While that's not a good thing I don't think that it warrants giving the drive a 1 egg review. Most of them didn't even bother to try and contact Hitachi and instead just filed a bad review on newegg. Does seem like that model had a lot of failures though. It also seems like some of the failures are from total newbie's that couldn't figure out how to make them work "over USB with windows"
> 
> Try the 7K3000 model. I have about 5-6 of them at the moment and so far so good.


In the 12 pages I scanned, there were about 7 rebate complaints (ie: drive worked, didn't get rebate) and 2 or 3 complaints about very damaged packaging - drives were sent back as a result.

It really annoys me when people do that in reviews - it's like people reviewing books at Amazon and giving the book (which they actually enjoyed) one star because the UPS was late delivering it or something! (So yes - if that's what you meant by "manipulating reviews", MacDoc, I agree!)

Still - there are a disturbingly large number of people, many of whom ordered multiple drives, with DOA and very short-lived drives. I'd say that model may be one to avoid. The 7K3000 looks better. It's out of stock in quite a few places now, but Canada Computers has the 2TB one. Canada Computers | Hard Drives | Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 2TB 3.5" SATA3 6Gb/s 7200rpm 64MB Cache OEM (0F12115)


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

No this



> The deliberate manipulation of review sites by people directly involved with a product—the author of the book, say—is one of the oldest and most difficult problems for online-rating communities to solve.


Manipulation of the Crowd: How Trustworthy Are Online Ratings?: Scientific American

Now we do not carry the 32 meg cache Hitachi so perhaps there was a model issue and complicating the issue is the use of drives in cases by consumers.

We can only go by our assessment and OWCs


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## Niteshooter (Aug 8, 2008)

So it would seem that there are some bad eggs on Newegg, ouch.

I guess it's easy enough to manipulate feedback on a website, we have only a few Hitachi's in the mix but other than really old laptop drives I can't recall a lot of problems with any. Currently a few WD green 2TB drives which replaced the Seagate 1TB 7200 drives that people were complaining about. I didn't have problems with those either but just in case they were switched over to non mission critical computers.


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## broad (Jun 2, 2009)

drives seemed to be up about $8-$10 per unit for various sizes today vs the last time i looked a week or two ago


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## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

MacDoc said:


> No this
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Actually, the manipulation of reviews to make the bad ones go away is not what we're seeing here! 

I'm also well aware of the fact that most people don't bother reviewing things - and I'd say that in the case of something like hard drives, you might see a bias towards the negative simply because a drive that fails can have some pretty nasty consequences. A book you didn't particularly enjoy isn't likely to get you upset in quite the same way - and you can always stop reading the book, after all, and the annoyance/disappointment dissipates. 

I also know that the actual rate of hard drive failures within the first year is somewhere around 3% as an industry average, so we're definitely seeing more of the unhappy folks reporting than the happy ones. Obviously, some models may suffer a higher rate of failure than others - it's an average. So which are those models? How can you tell, short of buying hundreds of them yourself?

I look at the NewEgg reviews on drives _in comparison with NewEgg reviews on other drives_, figuring that it's the only reasonably accurate way to get a sense of which drives are perhaps more problematic than others. It's imperfect, but failing hundreds or thousands of my own direct experiences, it's about the best I can do. I don't have the benefit of your direct experience. 

So far I've been lucky - I've only had maybe 4 hard drives fail in 20 years of owning Macs - and for the last 10 or 15 years, we've had up to 8 Macs operational in the house at any one time. And I think it's probably been one from each of what were then the major manufacturers (WD, Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi) so my own experience doesn't provide any sort of reliable experience going forward! I even had an IBM 75GXP "Deathstar" that never died.


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## motoyen (Aug 15, 2001)

Be prepared for large increases in hard drives prices. I read a stat that said 60% of the world's hard drives are made in Thailand and those factories are mostly under water. Most of the factories are in an area called Ayuthaya and the Thai gov't estimates it's going to take 6-8 weeks before the water clears, so you're looking at 3 months before the factories can open again.


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## Guest (Oct 22, 2011)

Paddy said:


> So far I've been lucky - I've only had maybe 4 hard drives fail in 20 years of owning Macs - and for the last 10 or 15 years, we've had up to 8 Macs operational in the house at any one time. And I think it's probably been one from each of what were then the major manufacturers (WD, Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi) so my own experience doesn't provide any sort of reliable experience going forward! I even had an IBM 75GXP "Deathstar" that never died.


You are very lucky then. I've had 4 drive failures in the last month (6 in 2 months as a matter of fact). This morning a WD 1.5TB Green failed on me -- not a great way to start saturday morning with a drive failure @ 8am. Luckily as I stated earlier in this thread I already had a hot spare ready and waiting in the RAID setup. My experience is here is probably not typical, 5 out of the 6 were those lame 1.5TB Seagates that lots of people had issues with. The WD that failed on me today had failed once before as well -- but it seemed to be a transient problem as when testing it again it was fine, and I put it through some serious paces, a 32x erase procedure with Disk Utility which it did without issue -- so it was sort of expected (hence the hot spare waiting).


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

mguertin said:


> *You are very lucky then*. I've had 4 drive failures in the last month (6 in 2 months as a matter of fact). This morning a WD 1.5TB Green failed on me -- not a great way to start saturday morning with a drive failure @ 8am. Luckily as I stated earlier in this thread I already had a hot spare ready and waiting in the RAID setup. My experience is here is probably not typical, 5 out of the 6 were those lame 1.5TB Seagates that lots of people had issues with. The WD that failed on me today had failed once before as well -- but it seemed to be a transient problem as when testing it again it was fine, and I put it through some serious paces, a 32x erase procedure with Disk Utility which it did without issue -- so it was sort of expected (hence the hot spare waiting).


Paddy's experience is similar to mine, very few hard drive failures over the last 15 years. mg I think your experience is far from the norm and you have been very unlucky. 

Seagate issues aside, maybe where you live is in some sort of electromagnetic sink hole in the earth's magnetic field. Could be time to call in Mulder and Scully... the truth is out there...


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Just a note to EVERYONE and the EVERYONE you know.

We are getting deluged with failed drives.....that's bad enough....but we are getting deluged with 

a) OLD failed drives that should have been replaced proactively
b) people are NOT backing up so 6 people last week needed drive recovery and half of those are going to have to go to the expensive guys ( starting at $1400 ).

If you have a drive older than 2 years it needs to be scanned and watched ( SmartReporter is free and EVERYONE should run it ).

Drives older than 3 years should be replaced with current models which have much better MTBF, warranty and are faster. Drives are CHEAP people, data recovery/loss is not.

Older drives still functioning and scanned are good for backup ( dock is useful or for 2.5" a $20 USB case is a great approach )

*Pro users* in addition should be running temperature sensing software - one drive running hotter is a give away.

*SSDs* are more reliable and are a total hoot for older machines - it's a rebirth and then some.
That goes for everything from MacBooks, to iMacs to MacMinis
They do require some discipline in storage but the benefits are huge.....

The Momentus XT is an intermediate approach with benefits of both technologies, cheaper and long warranty.

These drives SSD and XT can always be moved forward to new machines you might acquire so represent excellent value in performance and value over time - all have at least 3 year warranties.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

MacDoc said:


> Just a note to EVERYONE and the EVERYONE you know.
> 
> We are getting deluged with failed drives.....that's bad enough....but we are getting deluged with
> 
> ...


Lots of good advice MacDoc...


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## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

MacDoc said:


> Just a note to EVERYONE and the EVERYONE you know.
> 
> We are getting deluged with failed drives.....that's bad enough....but we are getting deluged with
> 
> ...


AHA! I knew there had to be some sort of side benefit to needing more space every couple of years!!! :lmao:


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

It astounds me with the size of camera cards now how fast the space gets used up.
I had 16 gb of duplicates on the Air 

SSD = space discipline :baby:


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

*Suggested drive upgrades. SmartReporter should be run on on all systems.*

*Anything G4 or IDE* ( Powerbooks etc ) .....this is last call as drives are disappearing as a class. Those with data on them should move the data to sata or DVD.

*G5s - towers or iMac* - original drives should have been replaced long ago especially iMacs ( all but the iSight one are easy ).
Suggested drives would be 1 TB - these drives can all move forward so are good to have. There is good cooling in the G5 towers so fast drives help the machine.
G5 iMacs - smaller cool running advised.

*All MacPros* even the very latest can benefit from Velociraptor raids. At $599 the set and 250 megs per second sustained they are a treat. SSD speeds with large space, long warranty - client reaction is delightful.
This would apply to those in the imaging field not so much in the video field.

Any *early MacPros *the original 250 and 320 boot drives should have been replaced a while ago.
1 TB with big caches for boot and 2 or 3 TB with 64 meg cache for media. Any two year plus drives should be replaced....big caches are mandatory and forget the green drives in them unless it's purely for backup.

*Aluminum iMacs* ( All alum prior to 21.5/27" ) seem hard on drives and they tend to catastrophic failure with little warning. Running an SSD is a total refresh on these for the average user and will reduce failure and extend the life of the machine.
Otherwise look for quiet cool running drives rather than flat out speed. Even the 5400 green may be a good idea if you need space...2 TB are no problem in them and drive exchange in these are not that hard but should be done by a tech.
These are rock solid machines other wise and can go to 6 gigs of ram as well but an SSD + heaven for the average user...maybe $275 installed for a 120 gig.

*White Intel iMacs.*...difficult exchange and subject to heat stress so I would tend to keep the drive size low and green. Original drives should be watched very closely and backup/TimeMachine a must for all iMacs due to the type of failure. Not recommended for DIY. We're seeing enough failures in them on video and motherboards to recommend not putting much into them at this point

*Current gen iMac 21.5 and 27"* .....running heat sensor software and SmartReporter is very strongly recommended. It's a weak point on an otherwise lovely design and Apple has been struggling to get drive cooling under control. Again subject to catastrophic failure.
Each model generation is different so DIY - tread carefully. SSD plus 2 TB is a wicked combo on those machines allowing it. Those big i7s can really get cooking. Extended Applecare is highly recommended for these as it's cheap.

*MacMini's *- original drives more than 2 years old should be replaced both for proactive reasons and speed. 500XT, SSD are a treat even 750 7200 o4 1 TB are candidates tho a plain jane 500 5400 will be a step up for the earlier models.
Careful on DIY - easy to muck up.

Current gen MacMini - just fly with SSD - they all do except the G4s. With up to 16 gigs RAM the i5 and especially the i7 can be little drag racers and the Mini's have a good track record.

*MacBooks prior to 2.2 Santa Rosa *- original drives should already be replaced - I'd recommend a 320 or 500 cheapie as a decent approach for little cost. Certainly you can put an SSD in and if your space needs are light then a 40 or 60 ssd is cheap thrill. Top case problems are still under extended warranty.

*2.2 - 2.4 Santa Rosa MacBook *are sweet solid machines once you get the top case replaced. They will benefit from 500xt or SSD and like the Alum iMacs of the same generation last a while. All original drives should be replaced at this point. MacBooks are easy DIY

The same advice applies to the equivalent sequence of MacBook Pro non unibody - but harder for the DIY crowd and they tend to cook drives so original drives should be replaced by now and consideration given to cool running new ones.
$200 gets drive and a new battery for this gen so good additional life for the machines.

*Unibody MacBooks* ( white or Alum and 13" Core2 MacBook Pros ) are flat out a treat for SSD. XT is also a good choice and represent good value for performance gain on any of them. Anything more than 2 years old should have the original drive replaced.

Unibody MacBook Pros are good machines and earlier ones benefit from the SSD for the average user big time. Like getting a new machine and it extends battery life.
Anything 2 years old should have it's drive replaced proactively ( put the old one in a bootable case ) SSD ideal, XT good and all 2.5s up to 1 TB are easily user accessible.

*Current and one gen back i7s* for production can benefit from a combo of SSD boot and a second larger storage drive in the optical bay. It does kill battery life tho.
Even our fav the 2.7 i7 is terrific set up this way.

i5 users not in production - SSD you will love and battery life is helped.


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## The Doug (Jun 14, 2003)

MacDoc said:


> *Current gen iMac 21.5 and 27"* .....running heat sensor software and SmartReporter is very strongly recommended. It's a weak point on an otherwise lovely design and Apple has been struggling to get drive cooling under control. Again subject to catastrophic failure.


Yup, that was something I was concerned about before buying my mid-2011 iMac - immediately after setting it up I installed smcFanControl and boosted the speed of the fans slightly. Did the trick; the HD temp rarely approaches 100° F (it's usually between 88 and 93 or so when not under load). I also installed iStat Pro to monitor the various temps independently of the smcFanControl readouts.


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

MacDoc said:


> It astounds me with the size of camera cards now how fast the space gets used up.
> I had 16 gb of duplicates on the Air
> 
> SSD = space discipline :baby:


+1.

But ANY drive = space discipline IMHO.

Do I dare even mention all the often surplus .lproj language folders, extra surplus keyboard layouts or maybe even surplus unusable code that often gets installed and often exceeds 4GB of drive space??

Monolingual takes care of most of that, but read his manual before reading to exempt any recent Adobe or MS Word '08 and later installs.

Otherwise their updates won't work correctly. And don't remove ANY .en or english .lproj folders.

Try doing a search for .lproj with Spotlight (aka: stoplight) on your drive, and then try the same search using EasyFind or 'Find Any File' and compare the results.

And once removed, that's often 4GB+ one has available for any user's files and a lot less files/folders the OS has to look after and maintain.


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## Dr T (May 16, 2009)

*A limitation of Smartreporter*



MacDoc said:


> J...SmartReporter is free and EVERYONE should run it....


from the CNET website:

"SMARTReporter ... is also limited by OS X to checking ATA, SATA, and eSATA drives, not FireWire or SCSI..."

So it is of minimal value for someone who uses mainly Firewire drives (me for instance). I can use it to check the internal drives of the computers I maintain, but not the external drives.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Under what circumstances is your use mainly firewire - that's a dangerous approach to data security unless it is redundant.


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## Dr T (May 16, 2009)

MacDoc said:


> Under what circumstances is your use mainly firewire - that's a dangerous approach to data security unless it is redundant.


Our main computers operate with OS 10.6.8 and have Firewire 800 and/or 400 connections. 

1. I make backups of the internal drives of the most important computers. I use Carbon Copy Cloner for this purpose, making the backups on external drives with Firewire 800. Is there some danger lurking in that? If so, what alternative exists?

2. I store a lot of archival material on external drives - reference materials, basically, and again on external drives connected by Firewire 800. Is there something dangerous about Firewire for this purpose? How does it affect data security? In recent years, I have had a drive connected by firewire fail, but I have also had one connected by USB fail, and I have seen internal drives fail as well, so I do not see how Firewire could be the issue. And what is the alternative?

3. i have a few portable drives that I prefer to connect by Firewire 800 or 400, because that is faster than USB, and I use this method to move data between computers that are located either here in the backwoods of YGG or in different cities, but all of which we use at least once a week. Is there a data security issue with portable Firewire 800 and 400 drives?

I googled "firewire dangerous macintosh" and got 15 bazillion hits - some as recent as 2008. I did not find anything illuminating on the small percentage of pages that I looked at. So I find all this baffling.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

I really have no idea what MacDoc is on about in this case ... perhaps he means that he believes that Firewire will be phased out of Macs (and in one way he's correct, in another he isn't).

He'll have to clarify his remarks on that one.


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

MacDoc said:


> Under what circumstances is your use mainly firewire - that's a dangerous approach to data security unless it is redundant.


Could you explain your statement fuller and what's the "dangerous approach to data security unless it is redundant" all about.

Or are you referring to Dr T and his crew's use of multiple and alternated Firewire or USB backup drives he's mentioned here and in other threads that they use, just in case some nefarious user gets hold of them and the data isn't password or encrypted protected???

PS: we try and get rid of such nefarious users here on the west coast, and if found, try and get them sent back east or to the US where they probably came from in the first place.


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

I didn't think MacDoc's post was confusing at all, but I'll explain it: MacDoc's post of, "Under what circumstances is your use mainly firewire," is referring to people using a FW drive as their boot drive, instead of using their internal drive as a boot (primary) drive.


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

And is there anything wrong with using a FW drive as a boot drive???


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## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

pm-r said:


> And is there anything wrong with using a FW drive as a boot drive???


It's a bit slower. That's about it.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

I would strongly suggest internal drives have a lower failure rate against case and drive combined failure rate. 
Putting a drive in case adds additional risk ...period.....from component failure in the chain to pure physical damage from being dropped, knocked over, power cord yanked etc ( we've seen it all ).

Externals are best for back up not primary storage unless they are redundant.

In addition speed is compromised.

You add additional risk by using external non-redundant drives.

If you use an external for primary data then it is even MORE critical to back that up on a consistent and frequent basis.

•••••


and no Lars that's not what I meant 

•••

Nothing wrong with using an external as a boot from time to time but you lose speed with single drives unless you happen to have an eSATA rig.


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## Dr T (May 16, 2009)

MacDoc said:


> I would strongly suggest internal drives have a lower failure rate against case and drive combined failure rate.
> Putting a drive in case adds additional risk ...period.....from component failure in the chain to pure physical damage from being dropped, knocked over, power cord yanked etc ( we've seen it all ).
> 
> Externals are best for back up not primary storage unless they are redundant.
> ...


My rule of thumb (based on the past 25 years) is that all drives fail. It seems that you have a different rule of thumb?

Does lack of speed mean the same as "dangerous" (your earlier description)?

Pls define "primary storage". What is "primary storage"?

What does this mean: "You add additional risk by using external non-redundant drives."


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

John Clay said:


> It's a bit slower. That's about it.


More than a bit... a lot slower.


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## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

Dr T said:


> My rule of thumb (based on the past 25 years) is that all drives fail. It seems that you have a different rule of thumb?
> 
> Does lack of speed mean the same as "dangerous" (your earlier description)?
> 
> ...


I'm assuming that when he says "primary storage", MacDoc is referring to the main (as opposed to backup) place you store your data - images, video, music, documents etc. An example would be someone who uses their internal drive for the system and applications, but keeps all documents, images etc. stored on an external drive. He's already explained, quite coherently, why that is not such a great idea, simply because external drives are more vulnerable to damage and more prone to failures of various sorts.

I think he'd agree with you that all drives fail - otherwise I don't think he'd have bothered making that earlier post about drive replacement.


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## Dr T (May 16, 2009)

*MacDoc's reply*



Paddy said:


> I'm assuming that when he says "primary storage", MacDoc is referring to the main (as opposed to backup) place you store your data - images, video, music, documents etc. An example would be someone who uses their internal drive for the system and applications, but keeps all documents, images etc. stored on an external drive. He's already explained, quite coherently, why that is not such a great idea, simply because external drives are more vulnerable to damage and more prone to failures of various sorts.
> 
> I think he'd agree with you that all drives fail - otherwise I don't think he'd have bothered making that earlier post about drive replacement.


I am still waiting for McDoc' s reply.

I use email and stuff for time shifting, myself, so I most certainly do not expect any instantaneous kinda response from Mac Doc on this issue. But I do hope to hear from him or her at some point...


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

screature said:


> More than a bit... a lot slower.


Hmmm...??? 

I have never noticed any such slowdown(s) when booted from, and/or using either an old WD "Premier" MyBook via its FW 400 connection, nor any 7200RPM drive in my NewerTech dock when using its FW 400 or 800 connection to my mid-2007 iMac.

But using any 5400RPM booted drive in the NewerTech Dock via any FW connection can sure slow down any expected launching and user access operations, and sometimes a painful waiting experience!!!


----------



## Niteshooter (Aug 8, 2008)

Interesting comments, I replace the hard drives in our primary computers every two years. Clone the drive to the new one and set aside the old one as a very dated backup/boot drive.

I think what he might of meant is that if you aren't running a continuous backup as opposed to backing up when you remember can be dangerous. That's just a guess though since a failure is always going to take place when you least expect it which may be between backups.

In an older post he talked about replacing drives so obviously he knows that all drives fail. 

One big problem is that as drives get bigger the amount of data lost due to a failure has grown as well. We have about 4TB of photos so keeping backups is starting to become more challenging even though hard drive prices keep falling er were falling as I noticed the 3TB drives I've been keeping an eye on have suddenly taken a turn upwards in price. Probably time to do a rethink on what I've been doing.


----------



## mrhud (Oct 30, 2007)

Anyone have experience with Iomega drives, specifically the eGo? I see them at costco.ca and was thinking of picking up the Mac edition model, only because it has a firewire port. 2TB for 169$ seems pretty reasonable.


----------



## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

I have two Iomega 1 TB drives and have been using them now for nearly a year, trouble free.


----------



## screature (May 14, 2007)

pm-r said:


> Hmmm...???
> 
> I have never noticed any such slowdown(s) when booted from, and/or using either an old WD "Premier" MyBook via its FW 400 connection, nor any 7200RPM drive in my NewerTech dock when using its FW 400 or 800 connection to my mid-2007 iMac.
> 
> But using any 5400RPM booted drive in the NewerTech Dock via any FW connection can sure slow down any expected launching and user access operations, and sometimes a painful waiting experience!!!


When I boot from my firewire drive which is my bootdrive back up for testing purposes it takes forever to boot and operations are extremely slow comparatively speaking.

I mean come on you have 40MB/s throughput vs. a potential 300MB/s throughput... it isn't rocket science FW is significantly slower than SATA. Even FW 800 is significantly slower.


----------



## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Paddy - just re-read my comments - 

What is so hard to understand that non-redundant drives in external cases containing data that is not backed up is at a higher risk than internal drives.
There are more links in the failure chain with external which I laid out. Just ask the guy that knocked over his LaCie and spent a second $5000 recovering what has been recovered to the LaCie ...which he did not back up.

•••

And anyone who does not see a difference between internal and external boot and performance on Firewire clearly has not optimized their drive..

The difference is enormous even on a standard SATA drive - but if your drive i a mess as most that are not optimized are ....then you will see no difference.

Of course those people believe Apple's reality spin that you don't need to defrag/optimize.
They are wrong.

With SSDs - there is no need to. With platter drives there is.


----------



## CanadaRAM (Jul 24, 2005)

mrhud said:


> Anyone have experience with Iomega drives, specifically the eGo? I see them at costco.ca and was thinking of picking up the Mac edition model, only because it has a firewire port. 2TB for 169$ seems pretty reasonable.


As commented earlier, the drive inside the iOmega will be Seagate, WD, or at a long shot Hitachi or Samsung. The iOmega case is quite well built, we haven't seen any issues with customers.


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## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

MacDoc said:


> Paddy - just re-read my comments -
> 
> What is so hard to understand that non-redundant drives in external cases containing data that is not backed up is at a higher risk than internal drives.
> There are more links in the failure chain with external which I laid out. Just ask the guy that knocked over his LaCie and spent a second $5000 recovering what has been recovered to the LaCie ...which he did not back up.
> ...


Er, no difficulty understanding here...

I'm not sure if you mean "re-read" as a command to me or a note about what _you_ just did...ie: don't know whether you're implying that I don't get it or whether you're sighing over others not getting it. I definitely get it - I tried to explain it to Dr. T, who seemed to be questioning your earlier remarks about not using external drives for primary storage.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Yeah - sorry Paddy - got you and Dr T tangled. Thought that my explanation was rather straight forward.

••••

Generally for external backup - low rpm low draw drives are preferred as they run cool - performance in back up should be measured in reliability over time not speed for the average user.

The Seagate Freeagent on the desk we use for backup just keeps working - no fuss at all.

Speed is for internals.....where it does make a difference.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Damn prices going through the roof on some models even over the last week. More than double in some cases with the 3TB drives and just about 30% across the board plu out of stock and buy limits all over.


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## speckledmind (Jan 12, 2005)

MacDoc said:


> Damn prices going through the roof on some models even over the last week.


Are they ever.

I was heading out to buy a HD the day before this story broke, since there where none in stock at the local store (WD Caviar Black line 1TB), I figured I would call back in a few days, wow, what a surprise I got.

The day before the shortage was announced, the Western Digital Caviar Black line (7200 rpm, 64mb cache 1TB drive in store price was $79.99, I was told a few days later when I called back that the prices went up the day the shortage was announced, and changed three time during that same day, this past Monday that same drive was selling for $119.99 (still none in stock), yesterday the price quoted was $129.99 (still none in stock).

Online store show Item in stock, a quick phone call says the contrary, so they are ready to take my money but they have no idea when they will ship  it makes me wonder on when will they ever get HD, and what the price will be when they will have them in stock ?

PS : This drive is to replace my internal back up drive that is failing.


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## groovetube (Jan 2, 2003)

guess I better snag that 1TB backup quick.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Yeah - my fishing buddy was expecting to ay $60 for a bare 1TB - $109 from one of the local discounters here - 
Prices gonna ad 50% or more to our large storage systems. 

Fortunately we are concentrating on SSDs just now.


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## Dr T (May 16, 2009)

*A dangerous tangle*



MacDoc said:


> Yeah - sorry Paddy - _ got you and Dr T tangled. [I t]hought that my explanation was rather straight forward. ....._


_

I have responded to your earlier, cryptic posting about the 'dangers' of Firewire drives, because I thought you were knowledgeable and would improve my understanding. But I still see no follow-up from you that addresses my response. You still have not clarified this issue of 'danger' in my use of external Firewire drives, as raised by you in the first place, and I'll cease expecting to hear from you on this._


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Fine then cease asking about things already clearly explained - I can't help your lack of comprehension ....again.

ALL externals pose a higher risk....got it now.


----------



## screature (May 14, 2007)

MacDoc said:


> Fine then cease asking about things already clearly explained - I can't help your lack of comprehension ....again.
> 
> ALL externals pose a higher risk...got it now.


Hmmm... I don't really see how this entirely true MacDoc. Sure for lower end single bay enclosures I can see how this could be the case but for multi-bay RAID (or otherwise) enclosures that have active cooling that are built for pro applications I don't see how this is the case.

Do you have failure rate data to support what you are saying?


----------



## Guest (Oct 29, 2011)

screature said:


> Hmmm... I don't really see how this entirely true MacDoc. Sure for lower end single bay enclosures I can see how this could be the case but for multi-bay RAID (or otherwise) enclosures that have active cooling that are built for pro applications I don't see how this is the case.
> 
> Do you have failure rate data to support what you are saying?


I support MacDoc's stance on this one. Most external drives have the following things (that an internal doesn't have) that can fail:

additional power supply (internal or external)
a very easy to unplug (sometimes when you don't want to) cable
quite often cheap connectors, often poorly surface mounted
it can be moved/fall much easier
a whole additional bridge board (FW/USB/whatever)

Just the math on it alone makes it many times more likely to fail than something that's plugged into a single sata cable within your case.

I have a big box full of dead external hard drive enclosures that one or the other thing above failed on over the years. Often it is possible to transplant the bare drives from them when failures happen ... but only sometimes, depending on the enclosure ... some of those dedicated hardware RAID ones you can't transplant into anything but the same type and version of the enclosure or it won't recognize the striped/mirrored data.

On the flip side I've only ever had one machine that the internal sata bus failed on (and it was an Xserve).

When you look at is this way I think everyone can agree that external pose a much larger chance of failure, just due to the number of additional things in the chain that can fail, not to mention that many external cases are built really cheaply which doesn't help their longevity. I've never owned an external case that lasted more than a couple of years before failing that I can remember (but my Sawtooth dual G4 500 still works like the day I bought it).


----------



## screature (May 14, 2007)

mguertin said:


> I support MacDoc's stance on this one. Most external drives have the following things (that an internal doesn't have) that can fail:
> 
> additional power supply (internal or external)
> a very easy to unplug (sometimes when you don't want to) cable
> ...


But the majority of these are reasons for an enclosure/enclosure drive combo to fail not the drive itself... In many cases a drive can be easily removed form a failed enclose and still work just fine (I know you said this but just emphasizing)... Sure data may have been lost along the way due to failure of the enclosure but the drive can still be just fine.

Yeah but that is not surprising as you live in an electromagnetic sink hole that kills HDs. 

At any rate externals are a necessity for most people for backup purposes at least. I do agree however that an external should never be used as a primary boot drive.


----------



## Guest (Oct 29, 2011)

screature said:


> But the majority of these are reasons for an enclosure/enclosure drive combo to fail not the drive itself... In many cases a drive can be easily removed form a failed enclose and still work just fine (I know you said this but just emphasizing)... Sure data may have been lost along the way due to failure of the enclosure but the drive can still be just fine.
> 
> Yeah but that is not surprising as you live in an electromagnetic sink hole that kills HDs.
> 
> At any rate externals are a necessity for most people for backup purposes at least. I do agree however that an external should never be used as a primary boot drive.


The point is that a case failure is still a failure. It means that you've lost access to that drive until you fix. If you a geek it's not as big of a deal (provided there was no data loss) but it still requires replacing the case, swapping the drive, etc. not to mention the additional cost and downtime. 

The point is that externals, while a necessity sometimes, have a higher risk of failure for one reason or another. Not being able to get your data == failure regardless of the cause.


----------



## screature (May 14, 2007)

mguertin said:


> The point is that a case failure is still a failure. It means that you've lost access to that drive until you fix. If you a geek it's not as big of a deal (provided there was no data loss) but it still requires replacing the case, swapping the drive, etc. not to mention the additional cost and downtime.
> 
> The point is that externals, *while a necessity sometimes*, have a higher risk of failure for one reason or another. Not being able to get your data == failure regardless of the cause.


Well I think externals are almost always a necessity, not sometimes... iMacs, and every laptop (at least that Apple sells) come factory configured with only one drive and by far the easiest back up solution is an external drive.

So in the case of externals, if they fail it should be only a case of a back up that has failed and not a primary drive so down time should be minimal in most situations.

I will acquiesce to you and MacDoc as your arguments make sense. However, externals are a necessity for most people at least for back up. I agree that they shouldn't be used for primary data unless (as always should be the case) they are fully backed up.... probably to another external.


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## greydoggie (Apr 21, 2009)

I think external drives are more prone to failing because either like you said something goes wrong with the enclosure or because people move them around or they are more prone to being knocked around which would damage the hard drive inside it easier. I wouldn't use external as a primary hard drive.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

mguertin said:


> The point is that a case failure is still a failure. It means that you've lost access to that drive until you fix. If you a geek it's not as big of a deal (provided there was no data loss) but it still requires replacing the case, swapping the drive, etc. not to mention the additional cost and downtime.
> 
> The point is that externals, while a necessity sometimes, have a higher risk of failure for one reason or another. Not being able to get your data == failure regardless of the cause.


Depends how you look at it.
I can "fix" a failed external a lot faster than pretty much any internal drive in the current Macs.
The old G4 and G5 Macs were great - pop open the case and undo a few screwes and unplug two cables.
Now I have Minis and MacBook Pros - pain in the butt to replace a drive.
I can replace a drive in an external enclosure or replace the enclosure in a few minutes.

But interestingly enough - out of the ten Macs we have in the family, we have never had an internal drive fail yet - even the hard drive in the 10-year old G4 is still chugging along happily.
But externals - three failures over that period - all of them enclosure failures, no hard drive failures.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

> So in the case of externals, if they fail *it should be only a case of a back up that has failed *and not a primary drive so down time should be minimal in most situations.


exactly and if you need externals for primary data ( which many do ) then a redundant external is in order to reduce risk, RAID 5, RAID1

Even bus powered redundant drives are becoming popular for photographers who are shooting in the field and do not want the risk of a single external. ( single anything )

Part of the reason I harp on this aspect is that I've heard clients coming in saying they were "told" that is was safer and sometimes told it was faster to keep their work on an external.
Now wether it was mangled in translation or not it's too pervasive for my liking.
Certainly in a tower with two drives there is some good sense for speed and perhaps security to have the data drive and the boot drive separate ( boot drives do get beat especially with low ram ....had a client with 3 gigs on a 2.66 Nehalem doing production - of course his drive bit the dust pretty quick ).
Low ram and old drive = high risk plus slow performance as the optimization goes to hell.


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## Dr T (May 16, 2009)

MacDoc said:


> Fine then cease asking about things already clearly explained - I can't help your lack of comprehension ....again.
> 
> ALL externals pose a higher risk....got it now.


Yes, thank you for making it very clear - I will buy no externals from you. Or anything.


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## Dr T (May 16, 2009)

*Short memory...*



MacDoc said:


> Damn prices going through the roof on some models even over the last week. More than double in some cases with the 3TB drives and just about 30% across the board plu out of stock and buy limits all over.



I remember the first 1 gig drive that I bought. It cost$ 1,000. Yeah, $1K. Was that through the roof? I thought it was a bargain.

Damned prices going through the roof? I bought a 4 TB drive this week for $ 525 because I wanted something reliable not some piece of cheep stuff!! You (1) only sell cheep stuff and (2) chase away potential clients, not necessarily in that order..


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

Maybe you should have bought TWO, as how else are you going to backup that 4 TB drives data??

And I hate to think back to what some of us paid for a HUGE 100 MB SCSI hard drive that doesn't seem to be that long ago when any such time span seems to disappear for some of us old folks.


----------



## Guest (Oct 30, 2011)

Dr T said:


> I remember the first 1 gig drive that I bought. It cost$ 1,000. Yeah, $1K. Was that through the roof? I thought it was a bargain.
> 
> Damned prices going through the roof? I bought a 4 TB drive this week for $ 525 because I wanted something reliable not some piece of cheep stuff!! You (1) only sell cheep stuff and (2) chase away potential clients, not necessarily in that order..


Holy sour grapes batman. I can assure you that Macdoc sells non-'cheep' things, I have the invoices to prove it! I think that publicly condemning him for selling nothing but 'cheep' stuff because you don't agree with his stance on failure rates of drives is uncalled for a likely borderline slanderous.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

mguertin said:


> Holy sour grapes batman. I can assure you that Macdoc sells non-'cheep' things, I have the invoices to prove it! I think that publicly condemning him for selling nothing but 'cheep' stuff because you don't agree with his stance on failure rates of drives is uncalled for a likely borderline slanderous.


+1 Agreed, not quite sure where DR T has the knowledge to say that MacDoc sells cheap stuff, has he even ever bought anything from MacDoc?

Dr T seems to have a bee in his bonnet for some reason when it comes to MacDoc. At least do business with him first and then he may have a legitimate reason for feeling stung.


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

I hate buying "bundles" of stuff. I'd prefer to buy a Mac from an authorized dealer, and buy a hard drive separately, on my own, and do my own upgrades. That also costs less.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

screature said:


> Dr T seems to have a bee in his bonnet for some reason when it comes to MacDoc.


Well...I agree that Dr T went a bit overboard but so did MacDoc with his incredibly loud shouting "All externals pose a higher risk..."

I assume everyone knows that on the Net, typing in all capitals or using unusually large font is considered shouting at someone.
So I can understand Dr. T's reaction.

BTW - I don't really agree with MacDocs assessment that "All externals pose a higher risk..."

When he posted that initially, it came across as if a hard drive in an external enclosure had a higher failure rate than the same hard drive internal to the Mac.
I was trying to get my head around that because this didn't make any sense to me, so I was waiting for a more detailed explanation as well.
The explanation then eventually was that with an external hard drive there are more potential failure modes that don't exist with an internal hard drive, ie the bridge, connectors and connecting cable.
So yeah - the failure rate of that whole external system is higher than the failure rate of the internal drive but that doesn't equate to a higher "risk".
The "risk" is if one looses data and that is essentially the same in either situation. The only minimal higher risk with an external is if one looses data during the data transfer because of a bridge or connection issue, but that seems quite unlikely - never happened to me yet.
I don't think externals are as problematic as MacDoc makes them out to be and it certainly doesn't warrant him 'shouting'.
As they say - takes two to Tango....


----------



## screature (May 14, 2007)

krs said:


> Well...I agree that Dr T went a bit overboard but so did MacDoc with his incredibly loud shouting "All externals pose a higher risk..."
> 
> I assume everyone knows that on the Net, typing in all capitals or using unusually large font is considered shouting at someone.
> So I can understand Dr. T's reaction.
> ...


If you follow the thread you can see that MacDoc had presented his arguments and Dr T wouldn't let it go... MacDoc was wrong in yelling at Dr T, but I can understand his frustration.

The whole issue started off because MacDoc was saying that an external drive should not be used as a primary data source or boot drive unless it is fully backed up because it is riskier...

While only marginally so, it is still true (due to the enclosure primarily) and in general very good advice. Dr T took exception right off and the chip on his shoulder was evident well before MacDoc yelled at him.

It does take two to tango but only one to offer the invitation and on that front I think it was Dr T.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

screature said:


> It does take two to tango *but only one to offer the invitation* and on that front I think it was Dr T.


Very good :clap:
That is a new one to me


----------



## jamesB (Jan 28, 2007)

pm-r said:


> And I hate to think back to what some of us paid for a HUGE 100 MB SCSI hard drive that doesn't seem to be that long ago when any such time span seems to disappear for some of us old folks.


 How well I remember my very fist HD purchase, a whopping 20 MB micro-science for $1100.
I recall being ecstatic just to get rid of some of the many floppy disks needed to run applications.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

> BTW - I don't really agree with MacDocs assessment that "All externals pose a higher risk..."


fine defend your position - you can't possibly see what we see in drive failures and I'll quite happily put you in touch with the guy down the street who does nothing but recover drives.

Even on a drive by drive basis not counting the case - the power supplies, the cooling etc are inferior to the monitored conditions with most machines where a fan will spin up for over heating and SMART can monitor the drive continuously.

Adding in the case failure ( which often took out the drive motherboard ) and all the other risks associated with an external device the risk of data loss is higher.

I dinged Dr. T for being obtuse....no other reason. My post was clear - the risk is higher in our rather well experienced view.

The possible exception is some iMacs but they had a specific drive that Apple used that was very failure prone.
There was a brief case of that with 60 gig portable internal drives as well - one particular model was prone to catastrophic failure.

You are not going to accidentally yank the connector on the internal drive.....happens all the time on externals....most times they survive, some times they don't.
Higher risk.....people should easily understand that....some seem not to.


----------



## broad (Jun 2, 2009)

any reason why you constantly refer to yourself in the plural?


----------



## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

screature said:


> ...
> It does take *two to tango* but only one to offer the invitation ...



And I always thought it was "It takes *two to tango*, but at least *three* to get undone."


----------



## gwillikers (Jun 19, 2003)

Back to the original topic... 
Wow, my last HD purchase was on Sept 30th, from TigerDirect, and it was a 3TB WD external for $129.00. I didn't care about the external case, but I was very happy about the price for that size drive. It's a great backup drive for Time Machine etc..

But here's the thing... the price today is, $329.97 !!

:yikes:


----------



## kelman (Sep 25, 2010)

Canada Computers are $100 cheaper

Canada Computers | Hard Drives | Western Digital Elements Desktop 3TB External Hard Drive (WDBAAU0030HBK-NESN)


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## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

gwillikers said:


> Back to the original topic...
> Wow, my last HD purchase was on Sept 30th, from TigerDirect, and it was a 3TB WD external for $129.00. I didn't care about the external case, but I was very happy about the price for that size drive. It's a great backup drive for Time Machine etc..
> 
> But here's the thing... the price today is, $329.97 !!
> ...


TigerDirect is massively overpriced for many, many products. Try NCIX or Canada Computers.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

John Clay said:


> TigerDirect is massively overpriced for many, many products. Try NCIX or Canada Computers.


+1. TigerDirect was good on pricing in their early days, probably 7 or 8 years ago... maybe longer. 

I haven't seen a product (that I have any interest in) competitively priced from them since then and have not bought from them since.

In their early days when their pricing was good I used to try and get my local go to suppliers to match them but they couldn't... my how times have changed.


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## gwillikers (Jun 19, 2003)

My point (despite peoples hatred of TigerDirect or any other retailer) is that the prices seem to be rising, as per the title of this thread. I simply used my TigerDirect experience as an example of how much of a discrepancy there can be.

And having said that, I couldn't beat the price I got on that drive from TigerDirect for that 3TB WD drive, so while I generally agree that they're not a "go-to" place to buy from, they do occasionally have some good deals.


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## gwillikers (Jun 19, 2003)

John Clay said:


> TigerDirect is massively overpriced for many, many products. Try NCIX or Canada Computers.


Nobody could beat the $129.00 price I got from TigerDirect back on Sept 30th. I normally use atic.ca, but I digress...


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## HenriHelvetica (Oct 4, 2011)

whoa... i just took a look at some pricing moments ago. Wow.


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## broad (Jun 2, 2009)

kelman said:


> Canada Computers are $100 cheaper
> 
> Canada Computers | Hard Drives | Western Digital Elements Desktop 3TB External Hard Drive (WDBAAU0030HBK-NESN)





> Prices and specifications are subject to change without notice.


keep that in mind ^^


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## speckledmind (Jan 12, 2005)

Prices are still climbing (still none in stock). This is nothing more than a cash grab and gouging.

Western Digital Caviar Black (WD1002FAEX) 1000GB (1TB) SATA3 7200RPM 64MB Cache $ 149.99


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

I picked up a Western Digital mini drive, a 'My Passport' 500 GB at Costco Thursday for $75. I will use it as a travelling backup for my MBP. It is USB 3 and USB 2 compatible. I cloned my MBP to it yesterday. It does indeed boot my MBP, albeit pretty slow as I only have USB 2 on my late 2009 MBP. A 1 TB version was also available. Amazing they can make these things small enough for your shirt pocket with that kind of capacity. At any rate, they had lots in stock and the price was right for my purposes.


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## Niteshooter (Aug 8, 2008)

I picked up some Western Digital 3TB drives a couple of months ago for $119 at Canada Computers they don't list them today but the 2TB 3Gp/s is $169. All the prices seem to be up on bare drives.


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## IllusionX (Mar 10, 2009)

those who live in Montreal... PcDepot still have WD green 3TB for 129$


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## kelman (Sep 25, 2010)

broad said:


> keep that in mind ^^


Understood, still at the same price now, can't see it jumping $100 at once either can you?


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## ertman (Jan 15, 2008)

I also notice it is not just bare drives, but also external. Many drives seem to be up by as much as 50% or more. This isn't just tigerdirect, but also many other companies.


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## tilt (Mar 3, 2005)

SINC said:


> I picked up a Western Digital mini drive, a 'My Passport' 500 GB at Costco Thursday for $75.


Cool. I picked up a Western Digital My Passport SE (1TB) pocket-sized drive, just like yours Sinc, for $99 at Future Shop last week. I used that to clone my Snow Leopard before upgrading my MacBook Pro to Lion!

Cheers


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2011)

Some are closer to 100% more expensive.


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## broad (Jun 2, 2009)

kelman said:


> Understood, still at the same price now, can't see it jumping $100 at once either can you?


when CC runs out of the ones they have now (that they probably paid $80 for) and they go to buy more and they pay $150+ per drive then yes, i could very easily see the price going up $100 in one shot.


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## kelman (Sep 25, 2010)

broad said:


> when CC runs out of the ones they have now (that they probably paid $80 for) and they go to buy more and they pay $150+ per drive then yes, i could very easily see the price going up $100 in one shot.


And by that time Tiger Direct will already be $100 more than it is as well.


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## broad (Jun 2, 2009)

and i might step off the curb tomorrow and get hit by a bus.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

IllusionX said:


> those who live in Montreal... PcDepot still have WD green 3TB for 129$


Just looked at their web site.

Why would it say "Works with Win 7 only" - doesn't make any sense - or is my French way off?

Western Digital
Disque Dur
3TB Sata / 64M cache
Fonctionne avec Win 7 seulement

http://pcdepotliquidation.com/


----------



## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

krs said:


> Just looked at their web site.
> 
> Why would it say "Works with Win 7 only" - doesn't make any sense - or is my French way off?
> 
> ...


If it reads like my packaging did, it read, "works with Win 7 only unless reformatted for Mac. That took me about 90 seconds to do.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

So this is what WD puts on the package?

Still doesn't make sense - so that drive doesn't work with Windows XP or Windows Vista the way it comes out of the box.


----------



## kelman (Sep 25, 2010)

broad said:


> and i might step off the curb tomorrow and get hit by a bus.


You might, so what's the point of all this? I simply offer up an alternative to a high price to those who want to run out right away and buy one, not knowing or caring if it goes up tomorrow because I don't need one right now. Kind of like saying 'hey gas is 5 cents cheaper down the road' for those with no gas, who knows when it goes up but I have a full tank of gas so I don't care.


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## kelman (Sep 25, 2010)

John Clay said:


> TigerDirect is massively overpriced for many, many products. Try NCIX or Canada Computers.


Pretty much the point I was trying to make with simply offering up a link.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Future Shop is offering a 2 TB external for $80.- less 10% right now.
Iomega Select 2TB External Desktop Hard Drive : External Desktop Hard Drives - Future Shop

Not the greatest reviews however.


----------



## gwillikers (Jun 19, 2003)

krs said:


> Future Shop is offering a 2 TB external for $80.- less 10% right now.
> Iomega Select 2TB External Desktop Hard Drive : External Desktop Hard Drives - Future Shop
> 
> Not the greatest reviews however.


Good price but yes, scary reviews.

Just noticed that my "go-to" reseller for drives, atic.ca, has ballooning prices on bare SATA drives. This thing is spreading fast.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Hard to figure out what the actual unit is that FS is selling snce they don't list an Iomega product number.

This one at TigerDirect looks to be the same at $260.-!!!
Buy the Iomega Select 34974 2TB External Desktop HD at TigerDirect.ca


----------



## ertman (Jan 15, 2008)

Regarding the TigerDirect being too overpriced, I think that is more an item by item issue. I have found many computer components cheaper at tigerdirect than at NCIX or one of the other alternatives offered on here. I have even found hard drives for less, but also more.


----------



## screature (May 14, 2007)

ertman said:


> Regarding the TigerDirect being too overpriced, I think that is more an item by item issue. I have found many computer components cheaper at tigerdirect than at NCIX or one of the other alternatives offered on here. I have even found hard drives for less, but also more.


I guess it depends on the luck of the draw and what you are looking for... 

Like I said in a previous post in their early days their pricing was very good, pretty much across the board... over the last several years whenever I have went to them for a product I was interested in I could always find it somewhere else at a cheaper price, often locally which means it was even cheaper than the listed price as when local there are no shipping fees. In fact when I think about, that is probably what made for the price difference... shipping vs. no shipping charges.

Obviously YMMV but that has been my experience.


----------



## Guest (Nov 6, 2011)

I stopped buying from tigerdirect after I ran into some serious issues with returns on DOA items. At one point they were trying to have me ship to random places in the US for different items, stating that they wouldn't accept direct returns and that I had to ship all of the stuff back to the originating warehouses. I ended up getting that resolved finally, but it was a nightmare and enough to make me not buy from them again. At the end of the day I was still out all the return shipping (at least just to markham and not all over the US) and they didn't have viable replacements so basically it was a matter of 'too bad for you' ... No offer of credit or anything aside from refunding me my the purchase price.

They tend to also sell a lot of EOL items, so be careful on that front, if you end up with something in that category that dies during their warranty period that they have no replacement for you'll end up losing money on one way or another.


----------



## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

Well, NewEgg's prices have certainly gone nuts. A 1TB WD Caviar Black is $229 + $10.74 shipping (plus HST, of course!) That's $60 more than just 5 days ago. Pretty much all of their drive prices are now pretty out there - drives I bought over the past year or 18 months are anywhere from 50% to 150% more. I'd say NewEgg is probably taking advantage of the situation at the moment, with a rise in prices that fast.

Canada Computers is selling the WD 1TB Caviar Black for $149 - so it definitely is worth shopping around. Prices may not go back to normal for up to a year...

Thailand Floods Causes Hard Drive Prices to Soar

BTW - if you're looking for large amounts of external storage and don't care too much about drive speed, the 2TB WD My Book Essential at Costco for $139 is a downright bargain these days. Costco - Western Digital® 2 TB My Book® Essential? External Hard Drive


----------



## Niteshooter (Aug 8, 2008)

FYI on some external 2.5" drives the USB2 port is part of the hard drives motherboard so you can't pull one of those drives and use it somewhere else. Not sure if this is a growing trend but the WD 1TB external we bought was like this. I wound up selling it to a coworker who just needed an external drive.


----------



## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

Niteshooter said:


> FYI on some external 2.5" drives the USB2 port is part of the hard drives motherboard so you can't pull one of those drives and use it somewhere else. Not sure if this is a growing trend but the WD 1TB external we bought was like this. I wound up selling it to a coworker who just needed an external drive.


Sneaky. Good to know. This is the 3.5" drive though - I assume they haven't done the same with it? (Anyone know?)


----------



## ertman (Jan 15, 2008)

I believe that there is a trend with hardwiring the drives to the enclosures, I haven't heard of the 3.5, but it wouldn't surprise me.

I had been looking at getting a 3TB usb external. The prices were 129/139 for a WDelements to 149/159 for an essentials.


----------



## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

As I posted to our local VMUG listserv today for a member that picked up a WD 1TB drive (model not mentioned) at one of our local Staples stores on the weekend for $79.00 —
" I guess the reality of the shortage hits home when one checks the Staples.ca on-line store and a good majority of the hard drives, either internal, external, 2.5" or 3.5" are now listed in big red print - "Out of Stock", and it's the same at bestbuy.ca and futureshop.ca with many now listed as - "Not Available Online Not Available In Store"

So actual availability has quickly become a reality issue as others have previously mentioned.


----------



## gwillikers (Jun 19, 2003)

pm-r said:


> So actual availability has quickly become a reality issue as others have previously mentioned.


Finally my obsessive compulsive approach to buying/owning hard drives pays off! :lmao:


----------



## yeeeha (Feb 16, 2007)

*Seagate is making drives, not Western Digital*

According to my friend Seagate is making drives, apparently not so with Western Digital. It appears that the manufacturing plant of WD is still flooded.

Seagate simply can't keep up with the demand. Information from Seagate suggests that we may not see a relief to the shortage until next Spring.

My friend works for a distributor of hardware and software.


----------



## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Seagate IS making drives but they are also affected by the parts shortage.
Our contacts are saying spring as well.


----------



## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

Apparently the company that makes and supplies the majority of the motors for the majority of HD manufacturers is just a short distance away from the WD plant and is also flooded.

Sure wet according to these shots:
Photo Album - Imgur


----------



## macintosh doctor (Mar 23, 2009)

Some SSDs have come down in price. not by much but about $75


----------



## screature (May 14, 2007)

Seems the consensus is don't buy an HD now unless you absolutely have to... Maybe a good time to do a good house cleaning and get rid of stuff you don't need, or at least if you are unsure back it up to DVDs.


----------



## Guest (Nov 8, 2011)

screature said:


> Seems the consensus is don't buy an HD now unless you absolutely have to... Maybe a good time to do a good house cleaning and get rid of stuff you don't need, or at least if you are unsure back it up to DVDs.


I'm really really hoping that my magnetic vortex that destroys hard drives takes a hiatus until spring at least ...


----------



## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Well your Seagates ARE under warranty correct?

The downside will be in the introduction of new machines....it's going to hammer pricing big time tho may hasten the inclusion of SSDs.


----------



## screature (May 14, 2007)

mguertin said:


> I'm really really hoping that my magnetic vortex that destroys hard drives takes a hiatus until spring at least ...


:lmao: Indeed... best of luck mg!


----------



## Guest (Nov 9, 2011)

MacDoc said:


> Well your Seagates ARE under warranty correct?
> 
> The downside will be in the introduction of new machines....it's going to hammer pricing big time tho may hasten the inclusion of SSDs.


Hah, yes they are, but I can just imagine what's going to happen to the warranty replacement times if (more like when) they die. I've only got 4 left in rotation to go, whew. Of course I only have one spare right now, so crossing fingers and hoping that they last until the floods are over and things are back to normal.

That's one way of getting hard drive and SSD prices closer I suppose, but it wasn't the approach I was hoping for. 

I'm pretty sold on SSD for boot/application drives -- and if that's all you have on it most people would be fine with 120G (or less). Unfortunately the choice of multiple internal drives (without modding that is) is pretty limited which is unfortunate. A smaller SSD boot and a big data drive is a good combo in my eyes.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Got an email from Amazon.com yesterday - they are flogging external hard drives at prices that don't seem to be out of this world.
A few examples:
WD Elements 2 TB USB 2.0 for $114
Same at 1 TB for $90
1 TB laptop portable externals with USB 2.0, some USB 3.0 for between $90 and $144
500MD Usb 2.0 portables for between $70 and $80


----------



## speckledmind (Jan 12, 2005)

Finally got a phone call, WD Caviar black 1 GB HD's are in stock, but at what price I asked, $ 179.99 each the salesman replied (there are the drives that where selling for $79.99 a couple of weeks ago).

At that price, I might wait until the storm clears.

Western Digital Caviar Black (WD1002FAEX) 1000GB (1TB) SATA3 7200RPM 64MB Cache $ 179.99


----------



## groovetube (Jan 2, 2003)

perhaps they'll be sitting on some stock for a while.


----------



## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

speckledmind said:


> Finally got a phone call, WD Caviar black 1 GB HD's are in stock, but at what price I asked, $ 179.99 each the salesman replied (there are the drives that where selling for $79.99 a couple of weeks ago).
> 
> At that price, I might wait until the storm clears.
> 
> Western Digital Caviar Black (WD1002FAEX) 1000GB (1TB) SATA3 7200RPM 64MB Cache $ 179.99


That's $30 MORE than they were a couple of days ago. I didn't check yesterday, but they had PLENTY in stock at $149 at most locations two days ago (10+ at Kennedy Rd.) - I swear. I was considering getting one "just in case" but talked myself out of that as I do have some redundancy already.

Someone's taking advantage, is all I can say. They probably finally realized that newegg.ca was selling them for $229, so why not join the party while it lasts.


----------



## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

It's not quite so simple as that - many are running with a blended price and you have to look at what it costs to replace the units as well as the cost of the units in stock.

The deals that are out there are on 2 and 3 TB 5400 rpm drives which are fine for backup.


----------



## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

mguertin said:


> Hah, yes they are, but I can just imagine what's going to happen to the warranty replacement times if (more like when) they die. I've only got 4 left in rotation to go, whew. ...



Don't worry, they'll probably just ship you a *refurbished* unit that I'm sure they have lots of and in stock. 

Just as their and other brands "replacement policy" states that they *can* do, and I'm guessing, they often do.


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2011)

pm-r said:


> Don't worry, they'll probably just ship you a *refurbished* unit that I'm sure they have lots of and in stock.
> 
> Just as their and other brands "replacement policy" states that they *can* do, and I'm guessing, they often do.


Yep, but at least with this model the refurb one is probably better than the factory one as it will more likely work as expected and has had QA


----------



## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

Excuse my ignorance but what's a "QA"??

Quality Assurance???


----------



## Guest (Nov 11, 2011)

pm-r said:


> Excuse my ignorance but what's a "QA"??
> 
> Quality Assurance???


Yep.


----------



## ertman (Jan 15, 2008)

Well, I am more convinced of price gouging by some retailers as the 3TB external drive by seagate went up $90 overnight at best buy. 


I doubt that _all_ retailers would be purchasing inventories at such high prices just to be able to sell a customer hard drives. I think it more related to supply and demand and with the supply shifts prices have sky rocketed, likely due to a more inelastic demand.


----------



## broad (Jun 2, 2009)

prices seem to have taken an even further turn for the worse today.

ouch


----------



## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

There is some relief tho - the motor factories are gearing up in double shifts so while half are still under water it should be back to full supply of that part aspect in a short time.


----------



## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

*Futureshop Verbatim 2TB 7200RPM USB3.0 7 year warranty 118.99*

Verbatim SuperSpeed 2TB 3.5" Desktop External Hard Drive : External Desktop Hard Drives - Future Shop

Experience transfer speeds up to 10 times faster with the new SuperSpeed USB 3.0. This Verbatim desktop hard drive comes with the fastest USB connectivity available. SuperSpeed USB 3.0 helps you blaze through demanding tasks by reading and saving files faster.
Average Seek Time
22 ms
Data Buffer
32 MB
Included In Box
USB Cable; User Guide; AC Adaptor
Interface
USB
Maximum Data Transfer Rate
Up To 640 MBps
PC/Mac
PC and Mac
Product Dimensions
24.13 (W) x 20.07 (H) x 7.87 (D) cm
Product Weight
1.4 kg
Rotations Per Minute (RPM)
7200 RPM
Software Included
Nero BackItUp & Burn
Storage Capacity
2 TB
System Requirements
Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7; Mac OS X 10.1 & Later; Linux Kernal 2.6 & Later
Warranty Labour
1 Year(s)
WebId
10177433
More information
Verbatim SuperSpeed desktop drive is backwardly compatible with USB 2.0. This external hard drive features Nero BackItUp Essentials software that allows full system backup and restore functions, the ability to schedule automatic backup by date/time and an encrypted backup option with password control.

FEATURES:
2TB storage capacity

SuperSpeed USB 3.0 increases transfer speed up to 10x faster than USB 2.0

*Backwardly compatible with USB 2.0 ports*

Industry-leading 7-year limited warranty

Includes Nero BackItUp software


----------



## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

That Verbatim drive looked like a great deal (7 year warranty was nice too) UNTIL I read this on an Amazon.com review:



> The box says it's Mac compatible as a USB 2.0 drive, but beware: *You cannot boot from this drive if you're using it as a backup drive in case of main Mac HD failure.* I was able to install MacOS X 10.6 on it with no reported problems, but it won't boot (yes, Intel Mac, GUID partition). *I called Verbatim support who confirmed this is not possible. *
> 
> Background: [...]
> 
> It works great as a non-bootable backup device, very quiet.


So if you just need lots of storage capacity, it's an option - as a bootable backup, doesn't sound so good.


----------



## Voyager (Aug 7, 2005)

Paddy said:


> That Verbatim drive looked like a great deal (7 year warranty was nice too) UNTIL I read this on an Amazon.com review:
> 
> 
> 
> So if you just need lots of storage capacity, it's an option - as a bootable backup, doesn't sound so good.


That's been my experience as well. Works nicely with Time Machine BUT can't be used as a bootable backup.

Also, WD is the only company that has created a list of their hard drives and says whether or not it might be used to create a bootable hard drive.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Voyager said:


> Also, WD is the only company that has created a list of their hard drives and says whether or not it might be used to create a bootable hard drive.


What exactly determines if a hard drive is bootable or not?

The only problem I ever had in that regard was years ago with an Acomdata external FW drive.
I queried Acomdata support on that, they sent me new firmware for the drive and that fixed the issue.

So to me this is a firmware issue with the enclosure, not a hard drive issue as such.

And - another question - if one does a bootable back up with CCC say and if it completes properly, is that an insurance that the back up can be booted from?


----------



## andreww (Nov 20, 2002)

Was looking at a Momentus XT hybrid drive for my MBP at Canada Computers in late October (around the 20th). As my store had plenty and the sale was supposed to last to the 27th, I decided I'd pick one up the following weekend (22nd). On the Saturday morning I checked stock and it was now at $119. Figured that was the regular price and they must have ended the sale early, I'd just keep my eyes peeled and it would eventually go down again. A week later it was at $139, and now its at $159.


----------



## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

krs said:


> What exactly determines if a hard drive is bootable or not?
> 
> The only problem I ever had in that regard was years ago with an Acomdata external FW drive.
> I queried Acomdata support on that, they sent me new firmware for the drive and that fixed the issue.
> ...



Some drives are just not Mac OS bootable, usually due to the chipsets used etc., and no firmware is going to change the fact with such drives.

Whether the clone is bootable or not, and something that everyone should do, is test it to confirm that it works. 

Even Mike Bombich the developer of CCC strongly recommends doing just that in his literature and documentation.


----------



## speckledmind (Jan 12, 2005)

There is no stopping those retailers, prices are going through the roof 

Western Digital Caviar Black (WD1002FAEX) 1000GB (1TB) SATA3 7200RPM 64MB Cache $ 199.99


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

pm-r said:


> Some drives are just not Mac OS bootable, usually due to the chipsets used etc., and no firmware is going to change the fact with such drives..


Are you talking about bare drives or external drives in some enclosure?

Other than that very first Acomdata one years ago, I have never come across an external or internal drive I couldn't boot from or have I ever seen a drive that stated it was not Mac bootable (or ir was for that matter).
So is this something new I now have to watch out for when buying a drive?
Not that I'm going to buy one any time soon at those prices.


----------



## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

krs said:


> Are you talking about bare drives or external drives in some enclosure?
> 
> Other than that very first Acomdata one years ago, I have never come across an external or internal drive I couldn't boot from or have I ever seen a drive that stated it was not Mac bootable (or ir was for that matter).
> So is this something new I now have to watch out for when buying a drive?
> Not that I'm going to buy one any time soon at those prices.


Unfortunately the Mac HD boot problem has been around for years, and still is.

I was basically referring to external USB and FW drives, but any drive could end up being not bootable, external or internal depending on all kinds of things.

Read Bombich's article for various situations and reasons:
What makes a volume bootable? / Frequently Asked Questions and Troubleshooting / FAQs - Bombich Software Support


----------



## broad (Jun 2, 2009)

speckledmind said:


> There is no stopping those retailers, prices are going through the roof
> 
> Western Digital Caviar Black (WD1002FAEX) 1000GB (1TB) SATA3 7200RPM 64MB Cache $ 199.99


you do realize that the retailers dont throw darts at dartboards to set prices, right? 

they pay more ergo they charge more. seems pretty logical to me


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Great article by Bombich but there is absolutely nothing in there that suggests that an internal IDE/PATA or SATA drive might not be bootable because of the type of drive itself.
The issue is the external enclosure and connectivity, USB or FW, to the Mac

The points he lists are:


Bootability comes down to a few simple rules:

1. The hard drive enclosure must support booting a Macintosh (applies to external hard drives only)
2. The computer must support booting from the interface used to attach the hard drive (e.g. USB, Firewire, eSATA)
3. The computer must support booting from the hard drive's partition format (e.g. APM vs GPT vs MBR)
4. The cloned filesystem must have all the required components of Mac OS X
5. The cloned operating system must be properly "blessed"


----------



## kelman (Sep 25, 2010)

krs said:


> Great article by Bombich but there is absolutely nothing in there that suggests that an internal IDE/PATA or SATA drive might not be bootable because of the type of drive itself.
> The issue is the external enclosure and connectivity, USB or FW, to the Mac


I bought a 750G 2.5 inch drive that wouldn't take an OS and read somewhere afterwards that it was common, went and bought the competitors 750 2.5 inch drive and it ran fine. I can't remember now which took and which didn't but it was Seagate and WD involved.


----------



## tilt (Mar 3, 2005)

Voyager said:


> Also, WD is the only company that has created a list of their hard drives and says whether or not it might be used to create a bootable hard drive.


I wish I had known about this whole issue (and about this list) before I went out and bought my WD external. It would not boot, I had even posted a thread about this at the end of October (link below) and did not get any useful info!

http://www.ehmac.ca/mac-ipod-help-troubleshooting/97823-lion-external-does-not-boot.html

I bought that drive because it said it was Mac compatible and so that I could clone my Lion and use it as my bootable drive on someone else's Mac when I travel without my MBPro; and also as my Recovery boot disk when my MBPro misbehaves! Now that is not possible. 

What is Futureshop's return policy? If it is one month, I can still return that drive. No, scratch that, I just realised I threw away the packaging!

Cheers


----------



## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

tilt said:


> I wish I had known about this whole issue (and about this list) before I went out and bought my WD external. It would not boot, I had even posted a thread about this at the end of October (link below) and did not get any useful info!
> 
> http://www.ehmac.ca/mac-ipod-help-troubleshooting/97823-lion-external-does-not-boot.html
> 
> ...


Sorry I missed your previous post but you seemed to be having other problems as well. Not just a non-bootable USB drive.

But seriously, if you used that drive as your only backup and then went travelling with it, that's living dangerously.

So maybe use it as your home backup, you can still clone back from it and it's safe there, and buy another proper "bootable" drive to take when travelling.


----------



## screature (May 14, 2007)

pm-r said:


> Some drives are just not Mac OS bootable, usually due to the chipsets used etc., and no firmware is going to change the fact with such drives.
> 
> Whether the clone is bootable or not, and something that everyone should do, is test it to confirm that it works.
> 
> Even Mike Bombich the developer of CCC strongly recommends doing just that in his literature and documentation.





krs said:


> Great article by Bombich but there is absolutely nothing in there that suggests that an internal IDE/PATA or SATA drive might not be bootable because of the type of drive itself.
> The issue is the external enclosure and connectivity, USB or FW, to the Mac
> 
> The points he lists are:
> ...


 Exactly krs. Any hard drive is OSX bootable in terms of being a bare drive not in a specific enclosure. Whether or not a *volume* is bootable has nothing to do with the (healthy) drive itself i.e. it does not matter who manufactured the drive what matters is who manufactured the enclosure.


----------



## Voyager (Aug 7, 2005)

> And - another question - if one does a bootable back up with CCC say and if it completes properly, is that an insurance that the back up can be booted from?


No. I used CCC to try and make a bootable backup on a Verbatim HD. It seemed to make a complete copy and that copy was even recognized and listed as a startup disk in System Preferences. However, I've never been able to get it to boot successfully.


----------



## macintosh doctor (Mar 23, 2009)

We had a dinner with HP and one of our wholesalers last night. HP was estimating that the return to anything considered normal supply would not be till early March.. 
pretty frightening.


----------



## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

One of the reasons I've always advocated buying drives and enclosures separately is the whole booting issue. I also want to know WHAT is inside. With some companies, this can vary from drive to drive and model to model - with Verbatim, from what I can tell, they've partnered with Hitachi. Hitachi drives are no problem - but clearly, the Verbatim enclosure is.

At any rate, if you buy an enclosure that clearly states that it is Mac-bootable, and put the hard drive of your choice in it, then you're pretty much guaranteed good results. I've had good luck with Macally, Vantec & Rosewill enclosures.


----------



## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

Paddy said:


> One of the reasons I've always advocated buying drives and enclosures separately is the whole booting issue. I also want to know WHAT is inside. With some companies, this can vary from drive to drive and model to model - with Verbatim, from what I can tell, they've partnered with Hitachi. Hitachi drives are no problem - but clearly, the Verbatim enclosure is.
> 
> At any rate, if you buy an enclosure that clearly states that it is Mac-bootable, and put the hard drive of your choice in it, then you're pretty much guaranteed good results. I've had good luck with Macally, Vantec & Rosewill enclosures.


Quality brand enclosures such as Lacie (minus the selective power supply issues), OWC and Macally units are guaranteed to work properly and can be boot volumes. I've never liked the WD Passports, despite their soaring popularity, and many are non-bootable, along with the Verbatim units. Those two brands are good for Time Machine backups and little else.


----------



## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

Paddy said:


> One of the reasons I've always advocated buying drives and enclosures separately is the whole booting issue. I also want to know WHAT is inside. With some companies, this can vary from drive to drive and model to model - ...


+1. As well for the fact that you don't end up with a stupid space wasting (often many GBs) "virtual CD" partition that is most often useless and almost if not impossible to remove, and many prebuilt drives are now coming with such partitions built-in.


----------



## broad (Jun 2, 2009)

with lacie it seems as long as you avoid the d2 quadra models you're probably ok.


----------



## screature (May 14, 2007)

Lars said:


> Quality brand enclosures such as Lacie (minus the selective power supply issues), OWC and Macally units are guaranteed to work properly and can be boot volumes. I've never liked the WD Passports, despite their soaring popularity, and many are non-bootable, along with the Verbatim units. Those two brands are good for Time Machine backups and little else.


What your post basically advises Lars is know what you are buying.... a philosophy I concur with 100%. If you can't boot OSX from and external drive, either ready made or one that you built yourself that is one's own failing...

GIYF... do some research before you lay down your cash and you will avoid disappointment.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

You guys and gals now made me nervous that my clones possibly won't boot.
I suppose even if they don't. one still has the backed up files on the external and one can access them if need be - just not as nice as having a fully functional and configured Mac back up.

But....it almost seems that the enclosure manufacturers must do something to make an enclosure non-bootable.
I bought a dirt cheap "no-name" USB 2.0 enclosure from Deal Extreme (I think) - anyway, one of these Chinese 'free shipping' places.
I liked it because it was extremely tiny, case was made of black anodized aluminum and it had a fukk sized USB connector rather than those tiny ones. Cost delivered to my door was about $8.-
Just tried booting fro, it with a MacBook Pro and the back up booted up perfectly (which I almost didn't expect after all this discussion here)
This enclosure came with a Y-cable although I don't need it - the cable is quite heavy compared to the ones I get when I buy an enclosure here.


----------



## screature (May 14, 2007)

broad said:


> with lacie it seems as long as you avoid the d2 quadra models you're probably ok.


For being able to boot from the external I agree... just don't expect it to last too long.. at least from my experience... 

Lacie externals are the only ones that have failed on me... 2 at this point... I have given up on Lacie and all ready made externals. I did so along time ago. Now I build my own and I am much happier... not to mention I have more money in the bank.


----------



## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

You did well with the price of that enclosure, and now you know it's bootable as well.

Some of the "cheap" enclosures go really cheap with the chipsets used and other needed electronics to be Mac bootable, and basically it often just comes down to the almighty dollar as one of Ruskin's quotes refers to.

And BTW: I also prefer those "fukk sized USB connector rather than those tiny ones." But I think I'd refer to the small ones as truly "fukk"!!!


----------



## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

Lars said:


> I've never liked the WD Passports, despite their soaring popularity, and many are non-bootable, along with the Verbatim units. Those two brands are good for Time Machine backups and little else.


I bought a 500 GB WD 'My Passport' mini HD at Costco for $75. It fits in my shirt pocket making having a bootable HD with me for my MBP a breeze. Works perfectly albeit, a slow boot up from the WD, but worth it for the convenience and not having to lug around a big HD. A friend has had the same drive now for two years with no issues at all. Just saying.


----------



## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

SINC said:


> I bought a 500 GB WD 'My Passport' mini HD at Costco for $75. It fits in my shirt pocket making having a bootable HD with me for my MBP a breeze. Works perfectly albeit, a slow boot up from the WD, but worth it for the convenience and not having to lug around a big HD. A friend has had the same drive now for two years with no issues at all. Just saying.


Yes, I shouldn't generalize the entire brand. I'm sure some of their units are fine, like yours; I've just encountered too many over the years that had strange issues (like being non-bootable).


----------



## CanadaRAM (Jul 24, 2005)

External vs Build your own

The anomaly right now is that you can buy externals for less than internals (let alone an internal + an enclosure), because internals are in such short supply, while there is still some external stock available in Canada.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Yeah - the 5400 externals in particular are staying low price. And nothing wrong with them for backup.

3 TB high end bare drives are just flat out brutal.


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

The Costco WD Passports, still reliable, still a bargain.

The only way to drive down prices otherwise is stop buying completely until the market goes back to normal. Like gasoline, this is an artificial arbitrary costing. Unlike gas, some of us can get by without a new hard drive a few more days, weeks or months (if we have backup solutions already). Let the high prices die.


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## broad (Jun 2, 2009)

HowEver said:


> The only way to drive down prices otherwise is stop buying completely until the market goes back to normal. Like gasoline, this is an artificial arbitrary costing.


let us know how that goes for you


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## tilt (Mar 3, 2005)

SINC said:


> I bought a 500 GB WD 'My Passport' mini HD at Costco for $75. It fits in my shirt pocket making having a bootable HD with me for my MBP a breeze. Works perfectly albeit, a slow boot up from the WD, but worth it for the convenience and not having to lug around a big HD. A friend has had the same drive now for two years with no issues at all. Just saying.


Sinc, I have the same drive, except it's a 1TB, and it's NOT bootable! Are you sure yours is bootable?

Cheers


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## Dr T (May 16, 2009)

broad said:


> with lacie it seems as long as you avoid the d2 quadra models you're probably ok.


This is so cryptic, I rate it as just scare-mongering. I do not mean to single you out - I just wish that you lot could supply some bona fides for your sweeping claims, and then try and be just a wee bit helpful by supplying some actual info.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

tilt said:


> Sinc, I have the same drive, except it's a 1TB, and it's NOT bootable! Are you sure yours is bootable?
> 
> Cheers


Hi tilt, yes mine is bootable. As I said it is very slow, but it does boot. When you hold down the option key to select the drive to boot from, it takes about 20 seconds for it to appear before you can select it. It took some patience to get it to boot, but it does indeed, albeit about five full minutes with 350GB of my HD full.

I assume you reformatted the drive to Mac format using Disk Utility first before using it, didn't you?

Here is the option screen clearly showing the mini HD:


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## broad (Jun 2, 2009)

Dr T said:


> This is so cryptic, I rate it as just scare-mongering. I do not mean to single you out - I just wish that you lot could supply some bona fides for your sweeping claims, and then try and be just a wee bit helpful by supplying some actual info.


in the years that i have spent working on and around computers i have seen an almost innumerable number of lacie d2 quadra models with failed power supplies. i have seen more failures of them than probably any other external, save for the WD mybooks a few years ago that ended up getting recalled. im sure anyone else that sees a lot of unique products (ie hundreds of drives belonging to unique customers rather than 3 they own and have had "no trouble" with) will say something similar. lars? john clay? mguertin? 

Ass berger's ramblings: lacie sucks

note the "at various client locations". again this is someone who is seeing this repeatedly at who knows how many different and unique locations, not saying " i have one and its been ok therefore they're awesome". check the comments as well. this is but one blog post pulled from a 2 second google search, more searching will result in more reporting of the exact same issue.


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## broad (Jun 2, 2009)

Power cord buzzes and MACPro does not recognize it - FixYa



> The LaCie AC Power Supply Model No:ACU057A-0512 buzzes when it is plugged and seems to cause the Hard Drive to 'tick'. Is that a problem? The 500GB LaCie d2 HD QUADRA light blinks when it is plugged in and my MACPro is not recognizing it.
> Posted by smanley on Mar 12, 2009
> + Ask for Clarification Flag Question
> Solutions (1)
> ...


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## tilt (Mar 3, 2005)

SINC said:


> Hi tilt, yes mine is bootable. As I said it is very slow, but it does boot. When you hold down the option key to select the drive to boot from, it takes about 20 seconds for it to appear before you can select it. It took some patience to get it to boot, but it does indeed, albeit about five full minutes with 350GB of my HD full.
> 
> I assume you reformatted the drive to Mac format using Disk Utility first before using it, didn't you?
> 
> Here is the option screen clearly showing the mini HD:


Yes Sinc, I did everything by the book, and I can see the volume in the boot-options screen, but when I click on it the whole thing just freezes. I posted a whole thread with a lot of detail - a link to that thread is a few posts before this in this very thread.

Cheers


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

tilt said:


> Yes Sinc, I did everything by the book, and I can see the volume in the boot-options screen, but when I click on it the whole thing just freezes. I posted a whole thread with a lot of detail - a link to that thread is a few posts before this in this very thread.
> 
> Cheers


As I said tilt, from the time I select the mini HD it takes five or more full minutes to actually boot. The images disappear once you select the Min HD icon arrow, all appears to be frozen, but patience is needed. I assume it is because the speed of the HD is so slow. I just tried again and it took 5:38:12 to complete the boot until the MBP was operating on the Mini HD.


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

broad said:


> in the years that i have spent working on and around computers i have seen an almost innumerable number of lacie d2 quadra models with failed power supplies. i have seen more failures of them than probably any other external, save for the WD mybooks a few years ago that ended up getting recalled. ... ...


What WD Mybook models were recalled "a few years ago"??

I have two of the older WD MyBook Premier USB/FW models, both registered, and don't recall any MyBook recall and the only reference I could find was a wikipedia reference:
"...even despite a recall in 2000 (which was due to bad motor driver chips)."
Western Digital - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

pm-r said:


> What WD Mybook models were recalled "a few years ago"??
> 
> I have two of the older WD MyBook Premier USB/FW models, both registered, and don't recall any MyBook recall and the only reference I could find was a wikipedia reference:
> "...even despite a recall in 2000 (which was due to bad motor driver chips)."
> Western Digital - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


A whole lot of reviews of the LaCie D2 Quadra 1TB drives at Amazon - about 20% are very unhappy. Only takes reading a couple of reviews to come across the power supply issue.

I can't find anything about a WD recall, other than the one in 1999.


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

I was concerned about the posted comment as I have two of the WD MyBook Premier externals and thought I may have missed any recall notice somehow. So far they have been excellent except of one FW port on one of them that went kaput, but that was fixed under warranty.

LaCie used to make some excellent external products many years ago but their quality of parts used over the last few years has been questionable at best, and I sure discourage any user to purchase their products now.

One of the reasons for their power supplies to go kaput that an electronics fellow explained is that the user will often disconnect the drive but leave the PS powered, and some capacitors etc. overheat due to the lack of resistance when the drive enclosure is disconnected.

Something to heed I guess for those using LaCie external drives — don't disconnect the enclosure and leave the PS powered on!!!


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

That power supply issue was wider than LaCie - OWC had many failures as did others in the external case/drive building biz using PS from a specific Chinese supplier who was producing inferior product. Cleared up about 18 months ago. OWC was very good on honouring replacements past warranty periods in that situation.

We also saw many LaCie failures with drives overheating badly in the cases. Hard to know if it was case design or the PS or a bad drive batch.
Least with OWC we know what drives go in the cases - LaCie were a mixed bag.

We've settled on Hitachi and have been pleased with the very low failure rate.

Seagate 1.5 TB of 18 months ago were an outright nightmare for many in mulitple drive situations....Seagate was pretty good about it even to the point of free recovery for one client.


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## Z06jerry (Mar 16, 2005)

tilt said:


> Sinc, I have the same drive, except it's a 1TB, and it's NOT bootable! Are you sure yours is bootable?
> 
> Cheers


I also recently bought the 500 GB version of this WD Passport drive for a friends iMac, cloned with CCC and had no problems booting from it (although booting via usb is definitely slower).

I'm _guessing_ your issue may be your 1 TB version having greater power requirements, and since Macs are still usb 2 (limited to 500ma) it may not be getting enough power to boot properly.


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## tilt (Mar 3, 2005)

Z06jerry said:


> I'm _guessing_ your issue may be your 1 TB version having greater power requirements, and since Macs are still usb 2 (limited to 500ma) it may not be getting enough power to boot properly.


Do drives require more power to boot than to just work normally? I am able to access the drive normally. The only thing I am unable to do is boot from it.

Cheers


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## Z06jerry (Mar 16, 2005)

tilt said:


> Do drives require more power to boot than to just work normally? I am able to access the drive normally. The only thing I am unable to do is boot from it.
> 
> Cheers


One of the experts here will probably know, like I said I'm just guessing. Since others including myself are able to boot with the 500gb version of your drive it must be something unique about the 1TB drive inside yours. Just curious, have you tried to boot a different Mac with it?


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Did you format the 1TB as GUID before trying to boot from it?


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