Thread: What was I thinking?

Western Digital external drive?

I hope you bought two of them.

One disk failure and you've lost *everything* in the absence of a regularly maintained backup.

The drive is a Maxtor RAID 0, 1 unit. 1tb in RAID 0, 500gb in RAID1. I have it in RAID 0 until I can sort the mess out .

Fairly quick though, I have it running off firewire.

PS: It is the one-touch backup type.

I've got the 1.5TB version of the same unit, again set to RAID 0 as I need the space to chunk files around, and temporarily store large files until I've finished processing the video.

Wouldn't touch the Western Digital - seen too many of their drives fail to ever buy one.

Things have changed a bit. I remember when a 540MB hard drive was massive and a Megabyte of RAM was something you bragged about.

Originally Posted by munruben

Things have changed a bit. I remember when a 540MB hard drive was massive and a Megabyte of RAM was something you bragged about.

Sadly can remember tinkering in basic on the Apple Europlus II with its 64k hdd

Guys, Raid-0 is a waste of time, especially when it is on one disk drive. ANY RAID, for that matter, on one disk drive is just asking for disaster.

If you lose or break that drive you have lost all your data.

You need at least two physical devices for any level of data protection. It is cheap insurance when you think of the effort which has gone into preparing and organising your files in the first place.

Originally Posted by Ron Dunn

Guys, Raid-0 is a waste of time, especially when it is on one disk drive. ANY RAID, for that matter, on one disk drive is just asking for disaster.

Appreciate the advice Ron. The data is only in RAID 0 while I am moving HDDs out of service. Now that is done I am moving the files back to a separate single large HDD and using the Maxtor unit in RAID 1 - which is a twin physical 500gb disk configuration.

Maxtor Onetouch III has gone pfftt!

Bought 22 Oct, failed 19 Nov.

Had nearly 1TB data on it, and even though it is a raid box the controller failed.

Maxtor Seagate say " it's under warranty, send it back and we will replace it".

Me "what about my data, will I get it back?"

Them "No sir, we just replace the box, you should back up your data somewhere so you can recover it"

Me "What? Why do you think I bought the unit? It is a Onetouch backup, for goodness sake! Can I open the case and extract the data from the disks before I send the unit back for replacement?"

Them "No sir, that will void your warranty"

Me "You are kidding - right?

Them "No sir"

Me "So you sold me a unit to put my data on, specifically so it would be safe. The controller failed so I cannot get the data off unless I get it directly from the HDDs. But you won't let me get the data off first because it will void my warranty which is to protect my investment in the disk, which is worth a fraction of the value of the data? Is that correct?"

Them "Yes sir, we do not do data recovery."

Me "I said that I would recover the data"

Them "But that would void your warranty"

Is it just me, or is this completely nuts? Besides having to call Singapore to get this lack of support, it took over four hours and a hundred web pages to FIND a support number. After work I went back to the place where I bought it and they are going to try to get permission to open the unit so I can get the data off the HDDs. If they don't get permission for me to try I am going to have to go ahead anyway, and void the warranty.

So what you are saying Groggy, we should have a 1TB HDD to backup the backup 1TB HDD?

I feel for you mate, times likes this the expression "nailing gelly to a tree" springs to mind!

I can't see why they can't either let me open it to get the data or fix the controller and send the same HDDs back. I'll never get another one of these again, that's for sure.

If it is set up in raid 1 and a HDD fails, they are saying that you will still lose your data because they replace the whole unit. To replace the broken drive you are forced to void your warranty. The more I think about this the more determined I am to make a stink about it. I think I'll write to a few magazines and tell them what happened.

Nothing less than raid 5 and then it only covers you for a single disk failure.

I back up over three separate PC's in three different locations. (a script runs).

Loss of any one PC/drive is a Ho Hum incident.

Just lost one of the PC's. Power hit took out the mother board, hdd, etc.

Dropped in another PC and did a build.
Run the script to put everything back. Ho Hum.

Backup means at least two separate stores, not backup to the same physical device.

Originally Posted by munruben

Things have changed a bit. I remember when a 540MB hard drive was massive and a Megabyte of RAM was something you bragged about.

Ram at $10,000 per meg
Hdd 5.0 Mb at $4,500 ea. (yes that is a 5 'point' 0Mb)

Them's were the days