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[supernova777]

http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=15_1086_218&item_id=073809

35$ for a 300gb 10,000 RPM 2.5" laptop size drive!!

easily paired with a cheap fw400 enclosure
for some reason its easier to find 2.5" fw400 enclosure now then for 3.5"??
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/External-2-5-SATA-Hard-Drive-HDD-SSD-Enclosure-USB-Firewire-IEEE-1394-4pin-6pin-/281344394332?pt=US_Drive_Enclosures_Docks&hash=item41816ec45c

[supernova777]

search ebay for firewire enclosures - click here

[Ed Redfern]

hey chris, be careful about those 10,000rpm drives they are not standard SATA, they are SAS (serial attached SCSI) designed for dell and HP 2U rack servers, they require a little more energy to run. they are amazing drives though. I've known that SAS drives do run fine as sata drives but just bear in mind the SATA bus might panic.

if you want the ultimate trick on hard drives, do searches for bulk quantity or job lot. especially if you're refurbing older g3 / g4 macs, etc where IDE drives are the defacto standard. also SCA 320 type scsi hard drives from HP, dell and IBM servers 146gb or higher 15krpm are worth the money with an adaptec or ATTO G3 scsi card.

ed

[supernova777]

appreciate the kind words ed but the thing i posted was a WD VelociRaptor 300GB 2.5" SATA
its not a SAS drive !

a 10,000 RPM drive for 32$ is pretty cheap!!!!!!
even if it is only 300gb.. its still a 10k rpm drive

[Ed Redfern]

chris, that's a bloomin good price. even I'd go for them. fair enough, sorry about the error there. most of these 10k drives aren't suitable for normal use because they're SAS class  and won't fit laptops, etc with exception to some of the new dell precision laptops maybe lol. 12.7mm height. they are ideal for pro audio drives though so grab them while they're there lol.

for me, 15k scsi drives are what I'm hunting down. at the moment my g4 mdd's loaded with 4 x 160gb ide's but it'll do for the moment.

external storage arrays for powermacs gets entertaining, so many options. even glyph firewire GT 308 or 103 series help out. my old setup was a stock of 12 scsi external drives daisy chained. it was a nightmare but they worked out. thinking of a rackmount raid array.

ed

[mrhappy]

So have you had good luck with refurb drives?? A lot of my Apple stuff is refurb and has been great!

[Ed Redfern]

for god knows how long, I've either fixed my own G3 beige, or the backup g4 before they were lost to con men, or have fixed macs etc for others bbetween college and uni, I've always bought bulk refurbished drives from certain IT clearance companies for a reasonable price. that way I've got drives in just in case. as an example 160gb IDE drives, pack of 10 refurbed for £45. that covered the g4 here now and the hd24 rack machine. have some spares I'd like to use lol

remembering that all hard drives have a technical shelf life, we just have to have an understanding that our hardware needs more love and care than new equipment.

ed

[supernova777]

well.. i just had a seriously frightening experience tyring to use "old hard drives" as backup.. so i wouldnt reccommend anyone do that.... ive been watching progress bars all day making sure that my main stash of mac/pc apps gets copied properly..
now ill be keeping it on 2 mirrored sets LOL quadruple protection .. and im not joking!!!

turns out my problem wasnt that bad.. i lost a few things.. pro tools 7 dvd image.. diehards 24bit reason refills.. and some duplicate copies of reason i had kicking around thank god nothing rare or irreplacable landed in the 'bad sectors' of this drive.. but if i accessed the files.. the server would halt/crash... and id get some type of ATA error.. command timeout... anyway..  time to move to 1TB sata drives as the lowest common denominator.... (for redundancy that is) 1tb is about 55-60$ now... i can fit 8 drives into my file server.. ive got 4 1tb's already in there.. before i had a funky RAID5 like ZFS setup.. but now im going with basic mirrored pairs from now on.... K.eep I.t S.imple S.tupid!! or K.I.S.S. your data good bye:D

multiple backups is the only safety net!

[Ed Redfern]

lol chris, it's alright you're talking to a guy who's customised and built macs  while doing my professional certification for apple service and repair, now and have been for 7 years a registered apple engineer even though I'm a studio guy, see, lol. Storage is always the most hazardous part of any system install. data is so valuable these days that disk drives need to be guarded against all sorts. guys I've worked with or for, on the field have had different recording and data storage requirements. one guy had a 16 bay SCSI array HP rack linked up to a G5 running Protools HD. all scsi drives were well over the 200gb size frame, so there's a good few tb worth in 15k storage media.

my own experience. Yes, I've had dead drives. I have relied on a setup where the SCSI RAID gave a detailed check of drives on command, if any drives, WHEN any drives failed, if they were part of a raid cluster, I'd set up a backup of that particular failing drive or drives to the host system, rip out the failing drives and install new, fingers crossed that any data hadn't been degraded in the process. For emergencies I keep a set of drives by in cases sealed which have recovery images loaded. anything goes wrong, they're out. when finished, locked up again in my service bag.

The reason I buy older drives is because of the technology I work with, some systems won't allow sata upgrades or USCSI / SAS configs, so with that, I rely on a number of suppliers who are data specialists, I buy in when necessary a job lot of specific drives, keep them stored safe in a climate controlled environment, ready for use. whether it's to load in a powerbook g3 or g4, powermac, imac, etc or even if a friend needs help with a windows machine data wise, I've some assets in cheap but trusted. I test the drives on a 24 hour cycle doing a constant data stream using an advanced data toolkit that only apple registered engineers or service engineers at apple use.

anyway, new drives are more reliable on the guarantee side, but try buying brand new IDE drives. forget it lol.

[mrhappy]

Nothing can turn your stomach like a dead hard drive!!

[Ed Redfern]

I know. well, that and data tape. the days of HP Surestore data tape machines and one day in the middle of an archive session, the master drive starts screaming and chewed up a 72gb tape. gone in seconds. including the drive.

ah well, I don't touch data tape anymore. lol