Drive SMART status to be taken seriously

[HCMarkus]

I just took delivery on an 8TB Seagate external USB3 spinner from Amazon to bolster my long-term emergency backup situation. It cost me $142.95 plus tax... just sayin'. Although the one I bought is currently $190, a similar one is $150 as I type this: https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Backup-E ... hard+drive

On a related note, Samsung 850 EVO 1TB SSDs got down to $265 on Cyber Monday. I almost bit, but, after moving a little data around realized I still have plenty of SSD space in my studio machine and resisted pulling out the credit card. The 1TB EVO is $285 today, and makes a fine sample container. The 2TB version is a tad more expensive per GB. The price is considerably higher if you want the 4TB version.

[mikehalloran]

I just noticed that this "new" drive I got on Amazon says it was manufactured in 2010 on the sticker on it. 7 years old? Do they have that much of an inventory backlog or have I been snookered?

WD goes by that date or a receipt from an authorized reseller of new drives. They have a ‘no questions asked’ warranty policy. Unlike Seagate, they do not test warranty returns. You get a refurb unit good for the remainder of the original warranty period. You can enter the particulars on the WD site to determine eligibility if there’s no receipt.

An authorized reseller sold you a 7 year old NOS drive with a 5 year warranty? yeah... could happen I suppose...

I would never put my Amazon Pro Seller’s status in such jeopardy after you shipped it back and wrote the appropriate review. No sir!

[James Steele]

The seller is going to let me return it. I just explained that it had bad sectors and wouldn't rebuild in a RAID 5 array.

Interesting options HC. Money is a little tight but seems like a good way to go. I wonder how practical it is to get two of those 8TB drives and maybe it it's possible have Time Machine backup up to both in a redundant manner... like a mirror... so that if one of 8TB drives fail you have another? What kind of sold me on the RAID box is it was a) free, and b) if a drive fails I replace it and since it's level 5, I haven't lost anything. Ahh well... maybe I'll go with the SSD for sample library and make the RAID box a Time Machine volume that's updated every night. Hmmmm.

[HCMarkus]

I wonder how practical it is to get two of those 8TB drives and maybe it it's possible have Time Machine backup up to both in a redundant manner... like a mirror... so that if one of 8TB drives fail you have another?

I currently run two 4TB external spinners as Time Machine backups, rotating them on and offsite every week or so. Works great. When these are full, I'll go to bigger drives (like the 8TB one I just got for backup-backup) for the next round of TM drives.

Using SSD(s) for samples speeds project load time significantly. Using your RAID Array for TM sounds like a plan, too (as long as it work properly!)

[mikehalloran]

TM supports alternating drives (2) or rotating drives (3 or more). My security protocol has two units in hidden locations. When I moved into this place, I hired a skinny college kid to run Ethernet to every room in the house (I have a tight craw space).

[James Steele]

TM supports alternating drives (2) or rotating drives (3 or more). My security protocol has two units in hidden locations. When I moved into this place, I hired a skinny college kid to run Ethernet to every room in the house (I have a tight craw space).

I guess what I'm trying to achieve is redundancy. I'd like TM to be backing up the same data to two separate drives so if one drive were to have an issue and die, there would be a second drive as a backup to the first drive. If that makes any sense.

If I use my RAID as a TM backup, I'd probably have it turned off most of the time as it's a little noisy and manually run a backup once or twice a day.

[mikehalloran]

TM supports alternating drives (2) or rotating drives (3 or more). My security protocol has two units in hidden locations. When I moved into this place, I hired a skinny college kid to run Ethernet to every room in the house (I have a tight craw space).

I guess what I'm trying to achieve is redundancy. I'd like TM to be backing up the same data to two separate drives so if one drive were to have an issue and die, there would be a second drive as a backup to the first drive. If that makes any sense. .

Yes, that’s been clear. The way TM is designed, you stand a chance to lose the last hour of work but that’s all.

For a 2-drive system, RAID 1+0 aka RAID 10 is what has been recommended for the last few years.

[James Steele]

TM supports alternating drives (2) or rotating drives (3 or more). My security protocol has two units in hidden locations. When I moved into this place, I hired a skinny college kid to run Ethernet to every room in the house (I have a tight craw space).

I guess what I'm trying to achieve is redundancy. I'd like TM to be backing up the same data to two separate drives so if one drive were to have an issue and die, there would be a second drive as a backup to the first drive. If that makes any sense. .

Yes, that’s been clear. The way TM is designed, you stand a chance to lose the last hour of work but that’s all.

For a 2-drive system, RAID 1+0 aka RAID 10 is what has been recommended for the last few years.

Sorry, I was having a hard time following. So when you said "alternating" it means that if you have TM backup once per hour it backs up to Drive 1, then the next hour it backs up to Drive 2, and then repeats this process? I've never tried designating more than one drive as a TM drive. So I'm guessing in the TM software, if you designate more than one drive, there's a setting to tell it to alternate? I'm seriously not trying to be dense here.

What's the saying "I just wanted to make music, not become an IT expert?" I find some of this stuff confusing at times.

[nk_e]

Given your experience with it and the age, “snookered” is a possibility for sure.

A couple of thoughts FWIW.

USB3 is VERY fast. A USB3 enclosure - or USB3 drop in drive bay where you can swap out drives - may be a viable option. You could have a drive you insert for everyday use, then swap in your backup drive for over nite backups periodically for example. Alternatively, macsales has a nice dual and quad enclosures starting at $89 so you wouldn’t have to remember to physically swap the drives. https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/externa ... 1512306280

I just bought an 8TB Toshiba 7200 RPM drive for $259 from Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074B ... UTF8&psc=1

The system I use is a Drobo with carbon copy cloner. I bought the Drobo used on eBay for about $200 with no drives. The beauty is that you can use any size matching or non matching drives and it creates a a single drive out of what you install with redundancy for back ups. That means however that if you install 8TB of drives you’d actually only have about 5tb of useable space as the rest is used for redundancy. However as it fills up, it alerts you and you swap a drive out for one of larger capacity so it can keep growing. Max size is 64tb expanded. The older ones are not optimized for usage as a media drive as they aren’t particularly fast, so lower cost 5400 rpm drives are just fine. I would not use them to house samples.

Theoretically, you could get the enclosure (4 bay or 5 bay) and use your existing drives or buy some cheap 2TB drives to get started. A bit of an investment, but I started with this system about three years ago and it has been the easiest and most reliable “set and forget” back up strategy I have ever used.

FWIW. Good luck.

[mikehalloran]

Sorry, I was having a hard time following. So when you said "alternating" it means that if you have TM backup once per hour it backs up to Drive 1, then the next hour it backs up to Drive 2, and then repeats this process?

For many years, now (10.8, I think)

So I'm guessing in the TM software, if you designate more than one drive, there's a setting to tell it to alternate?

Nothing to set. It backs up every hour. If there are multiple drives, it cycles through them, one each hour. That’s just the way it works and you cannot change it.

If your array supports JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Drives — really), you could set it to 7 TM drives and it would rotate through every 7 hours.

Ethernet and wireless are the most reliable and stable connections. Period. No sleep issues with Ethernet ever. Since your Mac cannot do the fast 802.11ac wireless, use Ethernet.

[James Steele]

Ethernet and wireless are the most reliable and stable connections. Period. No sleep issues with Ethernet ever. Since your Mac cannot do the fast 802.11ac wireless, use Ethernet.

You know what's interesting, as an aside. I saw a video on YouTube where a guy was able to retrofit a MacPro like mine with 802.11ac. Thanks for all the useful info!

[James Steele]

Funny... when you dig into someone else's hand-me-down gear, you find the idiosyncrasies. The RAID box that was given to me can handle eight hard drives, but only 7 were connected. There was a spare WD Black already in there that hadn't been connected. I discovered the SATA cable for drive #3 doesn't work. Any disk put on that particular cable was "off line". So I took that extra HD that was in there, and even though it was "legacy" from the previous owner's setup, I found the function to add it to my existing RAID and it's now being rebuilt. If the rebuild goes okay this should hold me over.

As for my next step, it's always a case of money, so I have to do this in steps, but I think I'm going to do the following:

1) Get a dedicated disk (hopefully SSD) for my Sample Libraries (it will need to be at least 1TB) and move them off the RAID.

2) Get a dedicated disk (hopefully SSD) for my Projects and likewise move them off the RAID.

3) Dedicate the ENTIRE 6TB RAID 5 to being one big Time Machine disk (for now), and have it set to backup all connected disks to my studio MacPro.

I thank everyone for the patience and input. I'm going to have to go this route I think for financial reasons at the moment as I'm getting walloped with property taxes this month as well as Christmas gifts, etc. The USB 3 idea sounds really good to me. Hopefully this rebuild will be successful and I can buy some time.

[HCMarkus]

That Rocket RAID screenshot looks very familiar... I ran a High Point SATA card in my G5 Quad.

Glad things are working out James!

[James Steele]

That Rocket RAID screenshot looks very familiar... I ran a High Point SATA card in my G5 Quad.

Glad things are working out James!

Thanks man. Yeah, it's old tech, but the price was right. Free. A former client of mine used it for video editing with Premier Windows. He just gave it to me with all the drives when he closed his business. He was going to just drop it off for recycling (complete with the enclosed 7 1TB drives) and I was "Wait a minute! I'll take it!" I had to buy a Mac compatible card but it works... and well... it was free.

The other drive rebuilt without incident and the RAID status is now "Normal." But as I mentioned, the enclosure does put out some pretty good fan noise... not enough to really ruin a mix or anything, but if I wanted to hear really quite passages with no background noise, I'd be better off using the RAID strictly as one big Time Machine disk, and move my Sample Library to one internal disk and my projects to another internal disk, and let the RAID only as a backup device and perhaps turning it off during mixing when I want ALL background noise minimized.

AT least that's how I'll have to do it for now, until I build up some finances. Tapped out lately from some *guitar* acquisition syndrome.

[HCMarkus]

Tapped out lately from some *guitar* acquisition syndrome.

An incurable illness. I'm so sorry.