Need help with hard drive decisions... (a dull, dry dilemma)

[antbar]

I'll try to be as uncluttered as I can, but I've got the very sort of situation that makes me make messes! Hoping someone here can lay down the law...

I've got two laptops, a PowerBook G4 (10.4.11, 1.25GHz, 1GB SDRAM) on which I run PT 6.9.2 and a MacBook Pro (10.6.8, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB), running PT 8.0.5. Ok, that's the boring stuff, now onto the boring stuff!

I need to buy a new external drive and I'm hoping to get something big that I can back up all my PT files to plus all the other stuff of life on both laptops. I currently have a Lacie something or other, a 320G drive, that I use for running PT 8 sessions from the MacBook. I use this same drive when I run older PT 6 sessions off the PowerBook. I also have an Iomega something or other that I then use for backing up from the Lacie.

My bassist/co-producer, who has seen how messy I am with files/drives etc, suggests I buy a nice big drive onto which I can backup everything, then wipe my two old drives clean (after backing everything up, of course) and starting fresh with those drives still used for sessions.

I know I'm using Firewire800, but beyond that my techhead runs dry. Ought I look for something like a 1TB drive with Firewire800 and grab that, working with the bassist's idea of keeping the older drives for daily work? And does anyone have any suggestions as to which drives are best for Mac/PT etc?

I know that in the midst of all my attempted facts and figures is a very basic question, but I've found myself putting off buying a new drive just cos it's confusing for my simple mind! Yet I've certainly had my share of crashes in recent years and should be making this a priority. Hence my turning to the Tape Op gang!

Thanks much!

Ant

[Nick Sevilla]

Hi,
Three options:
A LaCie Big Drive. Great company. Good drives.
A Glyph Quad drive. Excellent quality and great service and warranty.
A network drive, if you are only going to do backups into it. This is only if you also have a network router, and preferably one that is 1GBit speed.

It is a great idea to always have three copies of anything you are working on.

ALWAYS.

And back up every single day.

[death by chandelier]

I'm not a professional, but here's what I do.

I run Logic from my MBP internal drive and record to an external FW800 7200 RPM drive. I back up the external drive to my internal drive after I record (1 backup). I also back up my internal MBP drive to a Time Capsule giving me two backups of my recording files.

Having two laptops does complicate the matter a bit, but I would share one large external for recording and back up those files back to each laptop. If you have a system of backing up your laptops, then you will have two backups for your recording files.

I've used OWC Mercury Elite drives for years: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire ... _FW400_USB

I also use a program called Chronosync for managing my backups: http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/c ... rview.html

[antbar]

Hey guys - thanks for the suggestions. Really helps, as I get a bit overswamped whenever it's time to upgrade much of anything! I'll check out the drives you've mentioned. As messy a tech-dude as I am, I've always tried to make sure my multiple backups are kept current, at least with my PT files, but with the MacBook Pro being Timemachine compatible, I'm gonna dig into that as soon as the new drive arrives.
Again, cheers!
Ant