Spinners

[Phil O]

Just picked up a couple of these for archiving. I thought the price was right.

https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital- ... p_0_1_ec_i

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

[wylie1]

Wow that's cheap, I've got a few of those in my pile of drives don't even want to think what I paid.
I use one of these when I need to connect a storage drive.
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Dup ... hdGY&psc=1

[HCMarkus]

OTOH, today at Amazon, $199 buys you 14TB of External USB3 HDD.... closing in on 1/3 of the cost/byte. So, for less money, you can have two copies of all that old data instead of one. Not to mention, a much smaller stack of HDDs lying around.

I get the allure of the small, inexpensive spinners, but bigger drives are definitely more cost-effective these days.

[mikehalloran]

I use one of these when I need to connect a storage drive

I have a few variations on that unit. Often, when changing out a drive in a client's Mac, I'll hook one up and do a Time Machine backup (if a blade) or I'll stick the old drive in it and use that to restore data via Migration Assistant.

The only one I use on a regular basis is the discontinued Thunderbolt version offered by OWC for a few years. That, through an Apple TB2–TB3 adapter houses a pair of SATA III SSDs with about 10TB of archive and VI libraries.

OTOH, today at Amazon, $199 buys you 14TB of External USB3 HDD.... closing in on 1/3 of the cost/byte. So, for less money, you can have two copies of all that old data instead of one. Not to mention, a much smaller stack of HDDs lying around.

My first thought when I saw this thread. The above works out to $7 per 500GB.

Just picked up a couple of these for archiving. I thought the price was right.

Still, if you have a need for 500GB archive drives, that's a great deal! None of us here know your exact needs.

I just picked up a few 500GB MX500 SSDs for $38 ea to get some 2012 MacBook Pros in service so that I can sell them. I have never pulled a decent HDD out of one—not ever and I test them all.

[James Steele]

OTOH, today at Amazon, $199 buys you 14TB of External USB3 HDD.... closing in on 1/3 of the cost/byte. So, for less money, you can have two copies of all that old data instead of one. Not to mention, a much smaller stack of HDDs lying around.

I get the allure of the small, inexpensive spinners, but bigger drives are definitely more cost-effective these days.

I'm still using those 8TB externals that were on the Costco deal. I totally get the appeal of a 14TB drive, but I'd want two. The only thing that scares me is that if a drive like crashes, you lose a lot... and I mean A LOT of data. So I'd a have to buy a pair for redundancy.

Still that would be wicked cool two have a pair and pretty much be able to back up everything with redundancy. I've still got space on my 8TB drives though. Maybe when those bite the dust they'll even be cheaper? Or perhaps in a couple more years, solid state storage will be inexpensive enough to use as backup (with redundancy again, of course)?

[Phil O]

Still, if you have a need for 500GB archive drives, that's a great deal! None of us here know your exact needs.

I need two drives. 500 GB is exactly what I was looking for (One 1TB drive wouldn't do and two 8 or 14TB drives woul be overkill for my needs). So yeah, it worked out well for me.

These are used for archiving clients' projects. A typical project comes in at about 15GB for me. So I can make two copies of about 30 clients' projects for about $37. And post covid studio work has been slim. So I'm good for a while.

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

[HCMarkus]

Perfect for your needs Phil!

James, I have a full 8tb archive drive. I started a new 8tb drive and copied the old one over to 14tb drive. I put new archived material on both. I’ve got 6tb+ of room before the 14tb drive gets full. This way I’ve got redundancy and ALL archive data on line so Backblaze doesn’t drop it and I can quickly access the old stuff whenever I need it.

[bayswater]

A great deal for drives this size, but Is this a reliable supplier? I ask because a few years back there were a lot of bad Seagate and WD drives around. Wouldn’t want to have one of these from someone who bought a load of them to sell on Amazon. Presumably Amazon will take them back?

[Phil O]

Good point, Bays. I'm not too worried about it, though. This was a $37 purchase. If all goes FUBAR it's not a great loss. I shouldn't ever experience catastrophic data loss with the redundancy that's built in to my backup strategy. So I should be good. Right now I'm transferring all my old data that was stored on DVDs to HDs. In a few years I'll probably be doing it again to whatever the appropriate media is. It never ends.

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

[mikehalloran]

WD drives normally have dates on them. I’ve not done a return in over a decade but their warranties start on the date if there’s no receipt or the date on the receipt if it exists. The length of the warranty depends on the series and when it was purchased. The Red, for example, is three years while the Red Pro that I buy is five years.

[bayswater]

Right now I'm transferring all my old data that was stored on DVDs to HDs.

Reminds me, I have to get on with that.

[Phil O]

Right now I'm transferring all my old data that was stored on DVDs to HDs.

Reminds me, I have to get on with that.

So, I ran into this problem with some older DVDs. I'm using an apple USB superdrive with my M1 Mac Mini and it turns out that some protocols that were used many moons ago are no longer supported by newer macs (I don't know the details). Anyway my wife has a 2011 MacBook Pro and I was able to get data off the offending disks with it. Phew!

Just a heads-up.

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

[bayswater]

turns out that some protocols that were used many moons ago are no longer supported by newer macs (I don't know the details). Anyway my wife has a 2011 MacBook Pro and I was able to get data off the offending disks with it. Phew!

Just a heads-up.

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

Yes, that’s one reason I need to get on with this. I have two older Macs with DVD drives, and they won’t last forever.

[mikehalloran]

Right now I'm transferring all my old data that was stored on DVDs to HDs.

Reminds me, I have to get on with that.

So, I ran into this problem with some older DVDs. I'm using an apple USB superdrive with my M1 Mac Mini and it turns out that some protocols that were used many moons ago are no longer supported by newer macs (I don't know the details). Anyway my wife has a 2011 MacBook Pro and I was able to get data off the offending disks with it. Phew!

Just a heads-up.

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

I've not run into this but I know of others who have—one of many reasons I will keep one of these 2012 MBPs around. An MDP to HDMI cable lets me hook it up to one of my LG 27" 4Ks so that I can see the damned thing.

Other reasons are that I cannot get PowerPoint to export to Presentation quality video on my iMac Pro. Of course, I should spend the time, chase it down, work with Microsoft if necessary… or just throw it onto the laptop where this just works. Waaaay down on my list of priorities.

[Phil O]

Yeah, I have an old Mac Pro cheese grater that I'm thinking of throwing a hard drive in and resurrecting just for situations like that.