External hard drives for Mac & PC to share

I was just looking yesterday at network hard drives for my Mac and my wife's
PC. I know nothing about them other than what online reviews said, but the
Buffalo Linkstation drives and the Maxtor Shared Storage Drive Plus (both in
various sizes) look interesting.
--

Allen Watson . Writer/Webmaster [ p. 503 .281 .0250 m. 503 .916 .9411
e. watson.allencomcast.net
homepage.mac.com/allen_a_watson/

On 7/3/07, bignoseduglyguy <bignoseduglyguygmail.com> wrote:
> I'd appreciate advice from list members on using an external hard
> drive as a backup destination for both an iBook & an HP Windows XP
> PC.

Brands/models: Hardly matters. While there are some folks who swear by
Brand A or B, it really is six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Are you planning on serving this HDD from a given computer (as a
backup server) or swapping it from computer to computer?

If the former, hook it up to a Mac for easiest use. It'll share to
Macs and PCs natively, and you'll get the best possible performance.
If the latter, then you're stuck deciding whether to format as FAT32
or NTFS (the latter performs better and is more reliable, but you need
additional software for your Macs to access it).

If you HAVE a computer available to use as a backup server, I highly
recommend that option. It ensures that the backup drive is available
24/7 to all your computers, so you can automate the backups. (An
un-automated backup is not a backup at all in my experience.)

--Nik

On 4/07/2007, at 3:07 AM, bignoseduglyguy wrote:

> I'd appreciate advice from list members on using an external hard
> drive as a backup destination for both an iBook & an HP Windows XP
> PC.

        I'd go with a YES box from Thecus.

<http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=1&pid=1&PHPSESSID=7a2894f630ed5f3a0305a8914c2e7491>

        We have a couple here at work and they work really well. They have
dual Gigabit Ethernet ports and even include an iTunes server if you
so desire. Basically you just plug a couple of drives into the box
and then configure it up using the web interface. It is capable of
Mirroring, Striping and JBOD. It's really robust too, we have ours
set up in mirror mode and if you pull one drive out, erase it and put
it back in again it will re-mirror the data from the other drive.
You can also set it up to e-mail you etc if something goes wrong and
it has a REALLY annoying buzzer that goes off when there's a fault.
(You can disable the buzzer too by the way)
        Because it's attached directly to your network, it's available from
any & all of you computers. I think they use some sort of imbedded
linux to run it, I don't remember coming across any files that it
wouldn't handle.
        I seam to recall there being a cheaper model that didn't have the
ethernet ports.

Jason

To pick a backup drive to share, there are several considerations.

1) How will devices connect to drive? Will it stand alone on network or will it be directly connected via Firewire or USB? Will it be unpluuged from one kind and then connected to the other?

Firewire is generally faster than USB but most PCs do not have a Firewire port.

Macs can read drives formatted to Windows standards however PCs need extra software to read and write to a Mac-formatted drive.Most drives come pre-formatted for Windows.

It might be useful to partition a large drive into volumes called something like Winbackup and Macbackup.

2) Do you plan to connect drive to one computer and enable file sharing so the other can connect?

3) Do you have software like Retrospect (not the Express version) that can install Mac and Windows client software so that you can backup multiple computers from one central machine?

Pretty much any reliable drive will work. Don't use RAID 0--it doubles your chance of a failure.

Ultimate solution--get two drives if direct connect is planned or an external case that holds two drives that can be separately connected. I have an e-SATA case from OWC that has a pair of 500GB drives. I can connect one drive to a Mac and the other to a PC. Its only one case but the data never mixes so no format problems, nothing one computer does to its backup drive can affect the other. If needed, I can replace one or both of the 500GB drives with bigger ones without taking up another inch of desktop.

As always, make sure both the computer and the backup drive(s) are both connected to UPS power.

--Jim

Maybe it is just me, but in my experience, I have had several external hard drives that had been used exclusively on windows computers. When I switched over to macs and took those external hard drives and hooked them up to my apple computer, a majority of the files on those external hard drives were locked according to the finder. They were formatted as FAT32, and there were hundreds of thousands of files and tens of thousands of them were locked. Why, I don't know, but thankfully golden key existed which allowed me to unlocked all of them in one fell swoop. I have always wondered if other people had the same problem with windows only external hard drives which are then hooked up to a mac. To me, this would be the only problem with an external hard drive that would be switched back and forth between macs and pc's. --Michael Hallsted

I have 3 extenal hd connected to two macs on my small network. I'm now considering adding a simple server machine (Ubuntu linux) to replace them and rather use the external hdds to backup the server. While I have found the external hdds very fast (connect via firewire), reliable, and don't take up much space, the do go to sleep and takes an annoying 10-20 seconds to to spin up. Although it is not a huge inconvenience, it does start to bug one after a while. No sooner has the drive spun down, then you need something off it and then you wait.

One huge benefit of the external hdds is you can lock them in a relatively small safe when you go away. Even if your machines get damaged or stolen, your data is safe.

Damian

At 2:57 AM -0700 2007/07/10, michael614 wrote:
>Maybe it is just me, but in my experience, I have had several
>external hard drives that had been used exclusively on windows
>computers. When I switched over to macs and took those external hard
>drives and hooked them up to my apple computer, a majority of the
>files on those external hard drives were locked according to the
>finder. They were formatted as FAT32, and there were hundreds of
>thousands of files and tens of thousands of them were locked. Why, I
>don't know, but thankfully golden key existed which allowed me to
>unlocked all of them in one fell swoop. I have always wondered if
>other people had the same problem with windows only external hard
>drives which are then hooked up to a mac. To me, this would be the
>only problem with an external hard drive that would be switched back
>and forth between macs and pc's. --Michael Hallsted

        "chflags -R nouchg /Volumes/windrive" will clear the Finder
lock flag on all files on a disk named "windrive", but FAT32 files
shouldn't be locked on the Mac, so I think something else was going
on in your situation.


                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
SSL for Surfers & Sys Admins: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/ssl/>

Nik, Jason, Jim and Michael

Apologies for the tardy response; first work and now 150kph winds,
power cuts and loss of connectivity have prevented me from doing so
until now.

Many thanks for your answers and advice. It looks like two drives or
one partitioned might be the way to go for now as the budget is
fairly tight, though a server might be a better solution long term.

Cheers from cyclone-circled Auckland!

bnug
--
http://bignoseduglyguy.tumblr.com
http://bigboysbrunch.wordpress.com/

The Thecus YES Box mentioned above looks and sounds very cool, even if it is very expensive ($499).

I use a Western Digital NetCenter 320GB Network Drive (Item # WDXE3200JBNN) that runs around half that price, shipping included.

I use it with 2 Macs and 1 PC that back up to it nightly. It came with some installation and admin managment software, and also a free copy of RetroSpect (their "lite" version) but I prefer to use different backup oftware, which is no problem - once you have it attached to your network and partitioned/formatted it is just like any other drive on your network - you can read/write to it the same way you'd read/write to any other drive or folder.

I have mine partitioned into 3 segments - 1 for each computer I back up from, primarily because of my own sense of organization, but you could just as easily keep it as one large partition, and just use folders to segments your backup sets.

I didn't have any trouble using my Mac to format each partition in a way that could easily be read from/written to by any of the computers - Mac or PC.

Good luck!

Damian wrote:

> I have 3 extenal hd connected to two macs on my small
> network. I'm now considering adding a simple server machine
> (Ubuntu linux) to replace them and rather use the external
> hdds to backup the server. While I have found the external
> hdds very fast (connect via firewire), reliable, and don't
> take up much space, the do go to sleep and takes an annoying
> 10-20 seconds to to spin up. Although it is not a huge
> inconvenience, it does start to bug one after a while. No
> sooner has the drive spun down, then you need something off it and
> then you wait.

If sleeping drives is the only problem, set the machine they're
connected to to 'do not allow HDs to sleep'.

If you still want to move the HDs off the computer, you could buy a NAS
enclosure instead of a whole computer.

Harro de Jong

On Jul 12, 2007, at 5:53 AM, Damian wrote:

> I have 3 extenal hd connected to two macs on my small network. I'm
> now considering adding a simple server machine (Ubuntu linux) to
> replace them and rather use the external hdds to backup the server.
> While I have found the external hdds very fast (connect via
> firewire), reliable, and don't take up much space, the do go to
> sleep and takes an annoying 10-20 seconds to to spin up. Although
> it is not a huge inconvenience, it does start to bug one after a
> while. No sooner has the drive spun down, then you need something
> off it and then you wait.
>
> One huge benefit of the external hdds is you can lock them in a
> relatively small safe when you go away. Even if your machines get
> damaged or stolen, your data is safe.

I use a Buffalo Terastation 1GB as my home server. They're now
available for $600 or less. It's a RAID device using 4 drives. It
comes configured for RAID5 but you can change the configuration. It
supports SMB and AFP, although I find SMB actually works better on a
Mac than AFP, which limits file names and sizes. I modified mine to
support NFS, which is much faster.

> 4. Re: External hard drives for Mac & PC to share
>
> Message #5: Re: External hard drives for Mac & PC to share
> Posted by: michael614 Date: Jul 10, 2007.
>
>...To me, this would be the only problem with an external hard drive that would
> be switched back and forth between macs and pc's. --Michael Hallsted
>

Could this switching be avoided by having a HD partitioned into Win &
Mac partitions and then accessed by both at the same time? My
minipartner from Macway has a Firewire & USB interface & the
documentation claims that it can be hooked up to 2 machines
simultaneously on each interface. They can be a Mac or PC. I've just
tried it & while I haven't got a FAT32 partition on it, the (Win2K
SP4) PC instantly recognized a new USB hub with the attached devices,
so I imagine it would work if it did (have a Win-friendly partition).

Apart from coming from a French vendor (language difficulties in
support & purchase) the MiniPartner is serving me well as a backup &
archive volume.

Regards,

GAM

You should definitely watch this video... If you are looking for a storage solution, this might do it. This, in my mind, provides the advantages to raid (protection against single drive failure) while overcoming some of the limitations of raid (moderate complexity, all drives needing to be same size and speed, needing to forklift upgrade the disks to get more capacity)

http://www.drobo.com/products_demo.aspx

It works with the airport extreme N, so you can connect it to that and share it to local network of machines.

You will probably want to format it fat32, so that both macs and pcs can easily write to it. Here are some facts about it USB2 interface Looks like a 2 TB drive to your machine, once formatted, you don't need to reformat the drive when adding more disks or bigger disks Has LEDs and a mac and windows gui that let you see how much disk space is really available Understands both HFS and FAT32 file systems. Copies files between or to multiple drives for redundancy. RAID does not understand files, it just copies blocks of data. Hot swappable drives Wicked smart.

I have 3 external enclosures, each with a 250 GB HD. My files are spread out over all the disks. It is not easy to back up files between them.

With drobo, I would have one directory structure to organize all my ilife content (over 100 of my dvds ripped, a couple thousand cds ripped, hours of DV camera footage, thousands of digital photos). I will put the content on the drobo which will protect me from single drive failure. Put the drobo on a UPS for protection. Connect it to my airport extreme.

When the new mac os comes out, I will set up the drobo to be my time machine drive for my laptops. That will provide my backup to my other systems.

The only thing better I could do would be to backup the drobo data offsite to protect against fire/flood types of events. Perhaps I will stick a 500 GB drive in my current enclosures and use that to copy things that can't be recovered. On a PC, you could set it as a backup target.

A local NZ store is running a good deal on Seagate FreeAgent 320Gb
HDs at this time. I'd appreciate some advice on setting up Mac and
PC partitions on the same HD or a link to an online resource that
provides such details. Likewise, any recommendations on backup
software/regimens would be appreciated.

bnug

>You should definitely watch this video... If you are looking for a
>storage solution, this might do it. This, in my mind, provides the
>advantages to raid (protection against single drive failure) while
>overcoming some of the limitations of raid (moderate complexity, all
>drives needing to be same size and speed, needing to forklift
>upgrade the disks to get more capacity)
>
> <http://www.drobo.com/products_demo.aspx>

Drobo does sound awfully cool. However...

>The only thing better I could do would be to backup the drobo data
>offsite to protect against fire/flood types of events. Perhaps I
>will stick a 500 GB drive in my current enclosures and use that to
>copy things that can't be recovered. On a PC, you could set it as a
>backup target.

This strikes me as the real problem - it can provide a lot of
storage, but it doesn't in any way ease the offsite backup problem,
and it may in fact complicate it by making it easy to store lots more
data.

cheers... -Adam

On 16-Jul-07, at 12:43 PM, Adam C. Engst wrote:

> Drobo does sound awfully cool. However...
>
>> The only thing better I could do would be to backup the drobo data
>> offsite to protect against fire/flood types of events. Perhaps I
>> will stick a 500 GB drive in my current enclosures and use that to
>> copy things that can't be recovered. On a PC, you could set it as a
>> backup target.
>
> This strikes me as the real problem - it can provide a lot of
> storage, but it doesn't in any way ease the offsite backup problem,
> and it may in fact complicate it by making it easy to store lots more
> data.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it is not just the drives that
can fail. At work, about a week ago, we had a RAID card fail, which,
of course, took down the whole RAID. Because the data was a data base
that we were phasing out, we decided to just restore a backup to
another drive, but the other solution would have been to replace the
RAID controller. I wonder how difficult it would be to repair the
Drobo if something went wrong with it (but not the drives). I don't
think that I would be comfortable not knowing if I could recover in
the event of a hardware failure.

>I wonder how difficult it would be to repair the
>Drobo if something went wrong with it (but not the drives).

I couldn't find figure out from their site whether there is readable
data on these drives.

That is, if one were to try take one of the drives out and try to
read data off it directly, would the data be readable without the
Drobo?

--
=Alex Hoffman
Leadership, Policy & Politics
Teachers College, Columbia University

This might help: "10.4: Create a simpler PowerPC and Intel boot drive" <http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006061610374449>