Best 1TB Backup Drive
 

I need a new 1 TB Drive for timemachine backups. Should I spend the extra money for the G-RAID 2 drive? Am I safer with a system that is 1 physical drive rather than 2 in RAID-0 (like the G-RAID)? I looked at building my own based on a 1 TB Seagate SATA drive but I can't seem to find a good firewire 800 enclosure.

Any advice?

BE

We have used a couple Maxtor firewire 800 drives with no problems. We have other Maxtor drives and never had a problem with them either.

This doesn't answer your particular question, but as a TB-HD technology overview it might be useful...

http://gizmodo.com/366490/seven-one+...ne-is-the-best

Benjamin,

If you look at the enclosures from OWC (http://www.macsales.com) you'll find a host of DIY enclosures that we've always relied upon with only one defective unit in the past 5 years.

Just keep in mind that the concept of a "backup" or archive drive means it's not constantly running and is only powered on for creating new backups or, pulling off data you need to restore and when not in use should be powered-off and left alone.

I'd also be very wary of using Time Machine on your main edit system. There have been many posts where the Spotlight database combined with TimeMachine's indexing has caused problems with media management in FCP. I'd highly recommend *not* using Time Machine on the same system you are editing on.

Keep in mind, TimeMachine was not designed to be used in a professional environment; it's a consumer "goodie" or add-on feature to the OS just like the widgets in the Dashboard - they have great "cool" factor but absolutely no purpose in a professional system. In fact on our edit systems we've turned off Time Machine and disabled the Dashboard to prevent those widgets from making background communications, which we found to cause problems for Compressor.

For system-wide or project backups there are other, more robust and time-proven backup methods and software packages that would be a better choice. Hit up the forums sponsors for the best solution for your system and needs.

Thanks Robert. Good to know about TimeMachine. I always used Synk which worked well, but then I just got Leopard so I figured I'd use TimeMachine, but maybe I'll just continue to use Synk (or Retrospect).