Firewire 800 Raid drive for Mac Time Machine

<p>I have a LaCie RAID 1 drive that is rapidly filing up and is beginning to make a lot more fan noise than it used to. My requirements are at least 3-4 Tb capacity in a RAID 1 format, a Firewire 800 connection and compatibility with Mac Time Machine. Any suggestions as to a particular brand/model that is reliable and no more expensive than it needs to be for a long, reliable life? Thanks.</p>

<p>Everything's compatible with Time Machine, so you needn't worry about that aspect. Time Machine just wants a physical drive; any directly-connected (FireWire/USB/Thunderbolt/eSATA) drive will work. The "gotcha" is with network (NAS) enclosures.</p>

<p>I'm partial to G-Technology drives. Cheaper than LaCie, nice minimal design, fantastic warranty and support, and nice reliable Hitachi/HGST drives inside. And all the cables are included.</p>

<p>I always liked Firewire, insofar as one likes these sorts of things, but it seems to be going the way of SCSI. I'd get Firewire sooner rather than later...<br>

About a year ago I got 6TB Thunderbolt which has worked really well. If you have a Thunderbolt connection, it would be good for a few more years.</p>

 

<p>Which Mac do you have? If you have Thunderbolt or USB3 available, go with those interfaces over FireWire. Either of those are leaps and bounds faster than FW800.</p>

<p>If you don't, try Macsales.com (aka Other World Computing). They have external drives & RAID drives compatible with FW800.</p>

<p> I clung onto FW800 for a long time, but when I upgraded to a retina MacBook Pro, I switched everything over to Thunderbolt (via eSATA on the drives) and/or USB3, and that made an immense difference in the speed that everything works at (The quad-core i7 didn't hurt, either...).</p>

<p>I wouldn't use RAID for backup. Instead, I would take the money and use part of it for a non-RAID drive, and the rest for additional non-RAID clones of your main disk, using SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy or some such utility. The purpose of RAID is to allow very speedy recovery from the failure of a drive. It provides no redundancy for the drive electronics, power supply, or other shared components, nor does it protect from user error, electrical surges, flood, fire, theft, or other hazards. Spending all that money for protection from one of the less common failure modes is inefficient.</p>

<p>I use multiple NAS based RAID drives for storage and backups on a Mac. However, for Time Machine, I use a single external "bare drive" enclosure (one that allows you to insert and eject a physical HD at the push of a button, example below). I then use 2 identical 3 TB HDs, both named the same, and just rotate them every week (or as frequently as you want)</p>

<p><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3CR6zfb2mxM/TPyfWxFKCnI/AAAAAAAAAB0/1qwZyJZGhb4/s1600/imageview.php.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>Craig, that looks a nice solution for Time Machine back up. </p>

<p>First of all, if you have a LaCie RAID, you are in danger. Those things are poorly designed, especially in the thermal category. One thing goes wrong and you lose everything. </p>

<p>I got a Burly Storage case (macgurus.com) and put a pile of drives in there. It's a less expensive than the Drobo solutions. Every time I buy a drive, I buy two, one for backup... Everything is so fast these days that RAID is no longer necessary for speed. These guys are very knowledgeable and happy to help.</p>