2. pc-audio
  3. 1425926286

External Drive Help

Hi All,

I had a surprise yesterday when my external drive - a Western Digital 1TB My Passport suddenly refused to recognise certain of my music folders (high-res and DSD downloads). I also received an error message - cyclic redundance check. Fortunately after running tools and check disk, the drive started working again and I re-imported the missing music files in JRiver.

This external drive is connected to my Baetis Server and plays music (mainly CDs ripped to FLAC using DB Poweramp) through the JRiver software. However, I am also starting to download more music over the web and this issue got me thinking as to how I might improve my back up system as these downloads have no physical media back up like a CD.

Currently as per Baetis` recommendations, I rip music to a separate external drive on my laptop using DB Poweramp or I download directly from websites like HD Tracks - in each case this music is transferred to My Passport External Drive. In addition, every time I download new music I manually copy across these files to a Seagate 4TB back-up hard drive.

Do you think I could be doing anything better in terms of handling files? I suspect it becomes a matter of how much redundancy I am prepared to pay for but interested to hear from people with more experience. It would also be great to be able to configure the Seagate back-up drive to copy certain files automatically from the My Passport drive but not sure this is possible.

Thanks in advance

James
vicks7

Showing 4 responses by zd542

zd542
5,339 posts
 
The first thing I would recommend you do is get rid of any WD drives. They're very slow and extremely unreliable. There's not too many people that make HD's anymore, but of all the common brands, I think Seagate is the best. So, If it were me, I would just get Seagate drives, both internal and external. I would also get an good surge suppressor with a battery back up. You can get a nice one for about $100 to $150.
zd542
5,339 posts
 
"03-09-15: Sufentanil
Zd542, I disagree with the blanket statement that WD are unreliable. They make some great drives (as does Seagate). The key understanding is that all hard drives will fail eventually."

Actually I said slow and unreliable. If I said anything else, I'd be lying. Those are the results I got. But I will say that I haven't tried all of their different models. I've used the red, blue and green ones, but not the black and purple ones. The black ones are supposed to be the best, but given my experience with all the other ones, I'm not anxious to try them. Not only that, they're a lot more expensive. Seagate, at least in my experience, last a lot longer and run at better speeds.
zd542
5,339 posts
 
"Strangely enough the second WD drive cost me 20 mote than first one,5 months ago."

Its probably a fake. Did you get the HD from an authorized WD dealer?
zd542
5,339 posts
 
"Same might be true with WD. I don't know if it is just particular batch or luck.
Kijanki (System | Threads | Answers | This Thread)"

WD used to be one of the best HD's you could get, and then, for whatever reason, the quality went downhill. I used to by custom PC's from this one company, because I used to be into flight simulators, and I remember when they were forced to drop WD altogether. But you're right. Even if the quality has gone down, that doesn't mean that every HD they make will fail.

Vicks7,

Sorry. My comment about the HD being a fake was a joke. There's been a current rise in the number of counterfeit audio products. Cables mostly. I didn't think anyone would take it seriously.
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