Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Opinions on future of standalone music hard drives

Just as a word of caution, in case anyone is thinking about getting a large (external) drive to store their music, avoid the LaCie Big Drives (or similar). They've been getting a lot of press of late, because they have huge capacities (400 GB - 1 TB) all in one box without a fan. Except...
It's really 2 or 4 drives crammed in a tiny case without a fan and RAIDed together in firmware. RAID 0. As in striping. As in, "Yes, I'd like to double or quadruple my chances of losing ALL of my data at any point in the future, thanks!" Don't succumb to temptation. You have been warned....

In reply to:

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"Yes, I'd like to double or quadruple my chances of losing ALL of my data at any point in the future, thanks!"

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Been there. Done that. Had it happen.
Luckily i figured the drive was going so i backed up my stuff constantly. Only lost 2 weeks of emails.
I really did not notice much difference at all in computer performance so i've gone back to non-RAID. However, the extra onboard IDE channels are an absolute necessity now. So many components...so little space...

unless you go with a RAID1 - simply for the mirroring - it's overkill for audio files. Getting a good firewire drive and daisy-chaining as storage requirements increase would probably be a better idea...

^billy

Stbean - that sounds very cool. What is the M-Audio 410? How much does it cost? Are you able to transfer analog source material like LPs to digital via this card or device? Please give more detail on how it works and what you do with it.

Birdman

Here are the details on the Soundblaster Extigy and Audigy

http://www.creative.com/products/welcome.asp?cat=2

Sean