Posted: 2/18/2017 1:46:04 PM EDT
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I'm setting up a new computer for audio / video duty. I mainly use it for recording and mixing music, although I will be using Premier for some lighter video editing. I still have my old media HDDs, but they are on borrowed time. They are actually around 7 or 8 years old. They work fine, but I know I'm really pushing it. So, I want to replace them before things go tits-up.
The drives I have been using are the old 500 Gb WD Caviar Black 7200 RPM drives with 32Mb Cache. Part of me says "just get those again", but like a lot of older components, they actually cost more now than what I paid for them years ago. Also, I have an older WD USB external that I have used for backups, but it is about full, and also very old. So, I need something to replace that. I've never had any real issues with the HDDs as far as performance goes. So, I don't see the need for 10K or anything, given all of the drawbacks. The external is UBS 2.0, so that is obviously not the fastest. So, does anyone have any suggestions on good, reliable drives for both use as HDDs that will be doing a lot of reading and writing, as well as a good external in the 1Tb range? My board is a newer Gigabyte z170 UD3 ultra with the USB-C / Thunderbolt. Let me know what you think. Finally, for long-term archival, what are the best options. I have some audio files that I don't see erasing any time. Have those M-Discs gained any traction. I don't want to shell out thousands of dollars for archiving. What about cloud options? Some of these sessions are quite large. |
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Depending on age of the usb drive, you might be able to just pop it open and swap in a new drive. They are just housings to hold regular hard drives, age depends on whether you can use a sata drive, or the older ribbon type
As for regular storage, get two and set them as a raid array (raid 1), one cloning the other, far less risk of losing your shit. Type of hdd? Fuck it, find a reputable brand in your price range, nothing really differentiates them for your usage, especially if you clone. |
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Personally, I'd just buy what's cheap. Big USB 3.0 hard drives. Use one per session. Plenty of bandwidth for most anything unless it's truly nuts.
Put it on shelf when it's done. It won't last forever, but it will probably last for a decade or more if it's just sitting on a shelf. Option: Do your initial recording work to an SSD, and then just archive off to USB spinning rust when you are done. If you do one project at a time that might be a good option. If you are working on several things at once, maybe not as much. |
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WD Black is as reliable as it gets for HDDs. But I also suggest that you at least take a look at SSDs, as you may be unaware of how far these have come in the last 5 years. If you haven't kept up with them, you'll be absolutely flabbergasted at how fast they are.
For small random reads (which is a type of operation that occurs when booting up), a 3 or 4 year-old SSD can be hundreds of times faster than a traditional HDD (such as your 500 GB WD Black). Some newer SSDs using NVMe technology are capable of sustained read speeds of over 3 GB/sec. So, it is something worth looking into -- but if you decide to stay with what you're familiar with, WD Black is the way to go for sure. |
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Quoted:
Personally, I'd just buy what's cheap. Big USB 3.0 hard drives. Use one per session. Plenty of bandwidth for most anything unless it's truly nuts. Put it on shelf when it's done. It won't last forever, but it will probably last for a decade or more if it's just sitting on a shelf. Option: Do your initial recording work to an SSD, and then just archive off to USB spinning rust when you are done. If you do one project at a time that might be a good option. If you are working on several things at once, maybe not as much. this |
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so having had lots of hd's die both personally and professionally, here is my take.
Generally speaking, I keep my OS and files I use on 2 different HD's on my main machine. for files I use/churn a lot on, I use 1 TB WD black drives. When you go past 1 tb I noticed more failures. I believe it is also when they turn the bits 90 degrees to get more space. For long term storage I do 3 things. I use 2 tb drives or 4tb wd books/external drives as back ups. Using sync toys 2.0 to auto copy everynight any changes I make on my main use drive, I can keep things "backed up" on the same machine. Part 2 of that is that "back up' drive gets synced to a NAS on my network. Here is the step you might skip, as it was a little over 1k to set up the nas. like 400 bucks for just the enclosure, and another 500 or so for drives to put in it, and another 100 bucks for the battery backup. part3- this is probably something you should consider. About once a qtr or in this last case a year, I burn stuff to blueray. Blue ray is pretty inexpensive now. about a buck a disc and it holds 25 GB. IT does take a lot of discs to back up changes over that time. but doing it incrementally makes it hurt less. But it is time consuming. But no risk of a drive dumping and loosing everything. As to raid being a "backup", it is not. I have had enough failed rebuilds to say don't trust it with all your stuff. Best case is having a raid 5 with say 4 drives plus a hot spare. I can say the only time I have lost data on that setup was the guy dropping the enclosure and crushing the backplane. But that is also an expensive setup. But lets say there are things that can take out multiple drives, or the array controler etc.. that make that a poor choice for backup. I would not bother to reuse the drives. Fire them up long enough to copy everything off, including the enclosure you have and just pick up new stuff. oh and past 2tb and up to 4tb you need 64bit OS or you can't see or use it. can't remember which. but there is a hard limit. https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=wd+book&N=-1&isNodeId=1 replace your external with one of these. looks like they have 8tb externals now. https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=wd+black&N=-1&isNodeId=1 1tb blacks are under 100 now. I would store on the 4tb black, even though 6tb is better bang for your buck. But I have never tried anything larger than 4tb. If you have that much data, I would do multiple drives anyway, to lessen the risk of a single point of failure taking you out. |
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Sorry I haven't been back for a few days. I forgot about this thread.
Anyhow, I think it is worth clarifying a couple of things. Firstly, I am using a fresh system, with Win10 right now. So, I'm running a 64-bit OS, and capacity limitations aren't going to be an issue. The MOBO is a Gigabyte Z170 model (UD3 Ultra), so I have SATA3 and Express on the board. I'll have no issues with new drives. Secondly, I am booting from a Samsung 850EVO. I have that as my system drive, with a partition for all of the downloads and installers need. Then, I'll have another drive for my Pro Tools and Premier sessions (including the audio and video files). Finally, I'm probably going to get a third drive for sample libraries. I have a lot of drum samples, and impulse-response files, which take up quite a bit of space. Those are usually read-only, and don't get edited. My biggest concern with the SSDs for audio work is that I still see all sorts of reports about how they can have serious longevity issues when used for it. Thirdly, for some reason that I can't remember, people were recommending to skip RAID for this particular type of work. Now, the reason for the above setup is that it typically produced the best results. The system drive did its own thing, while the audio streamed from another disk, and samples from yet another disk. Of course, that was coming from a time when you really couldn't use more that 4 gigs of RAM and SATA was still relatively new. Right now, I'm working with 64 gigs of RAM. I'll have to load up a large session, and see how much of that I actually use. Thanks for the replies so far. Let me know if the above changes anything. |