# External Hard Disks



## theturninggate (Feb 21, 2008)

Storage. Backups. The bane of my existence!!

I find myself needing additional external storage, and related advice.

I've seen a lot of external hard disks at the Apple store, and I'm wondering whether there's any significant difference between one of these boxed monsters, and simply buying a naked hard disk and enclosure?

Ideally, I'd like to get a 5''GB Time Machine drive for local backups, and a 1 Terrabyte drive for photography storage. For redundancy, I'd probably also burn photos to DVD-R.

Any and all advice is most welcome. Thank you.


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## DonRicklin (Feb 21, 2008)

Matthew I use a slim laptop drive in a cheap USB sleeve from eBay with my laptop, works fine. OWC has some good deals on largish drives, too that you can use for direct connect to DT. 

I plan to get a USB hub to use with the USB connect on my older Airport so I can print and do TimeMachine with nothing else on at home!

Don


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## wblink (Feb 21, 2008)

theturninggate said:


> Storage. Backups. The bane of my existence!!
> 
> I find myself needing additional external storage, and related advice.
> 
> ...


 

Hi,

If you're on a network: I use a Buffalo NAS drive. It si extendible and works unnoticed with my backup prgm (Acronis).


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## jslabovitz (Feb 21, 2008)

Those "boxed monsters" you see at the Apple store are, generally, just an enclosure, Firewire/USB bridge card, and power supply.  If you are capable of assembling your own, the advantage would be that you can pick exactly which drives you want. For examples, many people consider Seagate to be very good quality. Many of the "boxed monsters" are using cheaper drives.

The other poster's recommendation of a NAS system is okay, but I've found that if you're actually using the system for real-time access (eg, if you keep your photos that are in your LR catalog), it's really too slow to be usable.  (I currently own a ReadyNAS NV.)  You're better off with a directly-connected drive, preferably Firewire 8''.

I just ordered (but haven't yet received) Weibetech'sSilverSATA II FH, which is a two-bay, FW8''/USB enclosure from which the drives can be easily removed & swapped. I'm planning to have one 1TB Time Machine drive, plus two (to start) 512GB drives for archives and photo storage.  I figure I'll keep the TM drive in the enclosure, and backup both my main hard drive as well as the archive drives when they are in the second bay.


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## theturninggate (Feb 21, 2008)

Oh, I hadn't thought of having my Time Machine drive backup my externals as well. You can do that? That's brilliant!! Maybe I'll need a larger Time Machine drive ...

So, there's no advantage to using a boxed monster over a drive and enclosure. That's good information. And Seagate! I'll have to price them. Thanks!


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## Denis Pagé (Feb 21, 2008)

Another cheap backup solution not talked about:
1- Buy as many drives you wish.
2- Buy a 3'$ USB cable adapter to IDE/SATA.
This way you can connect an old IDE drive or a new SATA drive; Backup, send drive to bank or remote storage, put a second drive on the cable and so on...
No need for an enclosure, just antistatic bags.


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## topanga (Feb 21, 2008)

Next time I need to upgrade my external drives (Western Digitals at the moment), I am going to seriously look at the DROBO system.


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## rcannonp (Feb 22, 2008)

I recently got a WiebeTech RTX™ 2''. I generally like it. The fans are a little noisier than I would like, but I can't hear them if I have music on. I like that you don't need trays for it. You just slide the bare drives right in the front. It's a JBOD setup. If you want hardware RAID then you have to step up to the higher capacity models.


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## wblink (Feb 22, 2008)

jslabovitz said:


> The other poster's recommendation of a NAS system is okay, but I've found that if you're actually using the system for real-time access (eg, if you keep your photos that are in your LR catalog), it's really too slow to be usable.


 
Plus (as I read later on) LR isn't officially supporting working on a network! See the thread about LRView.


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## Denis Pagé (Feb 22, 2008)

*LRViewer not related to Lightroom*



wblink said:


> Plus (as I read later on) LR isn't officially supporting working on a network! See the thread about LRView.


Just to clear some misconceptions...

Somehow, LRViewer have absolutely no relation with Lightroom. Altough, both are programs being able to access the same databases _(Catalogs)_. Here is the shema:
Lightroom + SQLite3 engine <--> Catalogs <--> LRViewer + SQLite3 engine

Beside backing up, as the OP is also wanting a storage solution, it is worth noting that original photo files are outside this sheme and are referenced by the Catalogs; Not the SQLite engine. So, they can reside anywhere the operating system have access to.

By design, Lightroom's embedded SQLite3 engine will only open _(what appear to be)_ local Catalogs _(Databases)._

LRViewer on the other hand, depending on how its SQLite3 engine has been compiled, can open Catalogs in shared mode.

Precompiled distributions of SQLite3 are in EXCLUSIVE mode for the Mac version and SHARED mode in the Windows version. You can override this behavior by recompiling the source. More information on SQLite3 Web site. Also here.

_(Database programming and devevoppement is my daily work in life)_


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## wblink (Feb 22, 2008)

Denis Pagé;878' said:
			
		

> Just to clear some misconceptions...
> 
> By design, Lightroom's embedded SQLite3 engine will only open _(what appear to be)_ local Catalogs _(Databases)._
> 
> ...


 
Thank you Denis!

Didn't know these things, because my profession is paper-production "on the floor". (Means I'm out in the wild with a bunch of nice guys to work our butts off to make as much paper as we can in a shift).
No photografic Paper (sigh). 

But : for REALLY good Rotation Offset you will be happy to use SAPPI paper, especially made by my crew :cheesy

Bottom line: LR CAN be used across a network?


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## Denis Pagé (Feb 22, 2008)

wblink said:


> Thank you Denis!
> 
> Bottom line: LR CAN be used across a network?


Quite off topic here! I was almost myself if not clarifying for the storage needs of the OP. 

Will reply to your question in the following weeks in the proper forum...


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