Western Digital Hard Drives?

[M Hawkins]

Hey,
I wondered if anyone here could help me out? The company I work for have their first RED ONE arriving November/December time. Their main reason for getting the camera is to shoot a 30 minute sitcom.
The producer has budgeted in a few G-raids. He emailed me today after finding this Western Digital My Book 2 Home Edition 1TB USB 2.0 Firewire & eSata External Hard Drive:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Firewire-eSata-External/dp/B000W9KHOI/ref=pd_cp_ce_0?pf_rd_p=136153791&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000WP5VMU&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=0D0NBFX3Z5B8Q5KARG4F

We're based in the UK, and since the pound getting hammered at the moment, the cost of our set-up is going up by the second. He's looking to save money anyway he can, hence his desire to go with the Western Digital Drive.

Would this be possible with RED footage? Are the drives any good? Are we asking for trouble?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Matthew.

[BigLu]

NO MY BOOKS.
No Western Digital drives ever.

I have with my own eyes seen 2 brand new ones go down on the same D.I.T. shoot.
and in an edit bay drive the post production supervisor nuts.
Different jobs different years.
Same drives.

I have had good luck with G-raids, Maxtors, Seagates.
Bad luck with Western digital, Lacie and OWC.

Just my experience.

Above all dont be cheap on your drives its not worth the money saved.
1 problem that sets you back just 1 day alone is not worth it.
If it sets you back more.
even more costly.

and always backup always all drives will go out 1 day.

[M Hawkins]

Big Lu,
thanks for the tip. I will pass it on post haste.

[BigLu]

Ya saving money in the hard drives is a sure way of having problems down the road.
Good luck.

Cheers.

[Ed Watkins]

Also, OSX Leopard can't keep them awake when they are connected via esata.

The drives have a stupid bit of firmware in them that send them to sleep when idling, works great with PC, but WD didn't think to make it work with OSX.

You have to unplug the power of the drive and then plug it back it to get to to work properly, it is unbelievably annoying and will no dobut drastically reduce the lifespan of the drive. I'm never buying another one again.

[Steve Murray]

I have about 20 Western Digital drives (mostly the 1TB Pro raid versions with FW800) and they are fine for backup copies but I agree, do not use them for daily use in an edit suite. I have actually had more problems with my dozen Maxtor drives than WD.... the funky shaped Seagate eSata's seem OK so far. I think you must get one of the more pro raid setups for edit. Search the other posts as this has been discussed several times.

[Curran Giddens]

I recommend using external enclosures and buying bare drives to put in them. Many times when an external drive fails, it is really just the enclosure that is the problem. You can just buy another enclosure when that happens.

[JanneJansson]

This: Western Digital My Book 2 Home Edition 1TB USB 2.0 Firewire & eSata External Hard Drive

Works good for backup, not good for doing jobs on (edit to).

[Joel Kaye]

Also, OSX Leopard can't keep them awake when they are connected via esata.

Wait, the boot drive that came with my 2008 8 Core Mac is Western Digital.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=305

Somehow I think Apple tested that drive as OK with Leopard since that Mac shipped with Leopard.

I've had every brand of hard drive fail over the years.

[Paul Hazlett]

get the external RAID box and use hitachi Enterprise class drives.
they are a little more expensive but better for mission critical data.

all hard drives fail, not if but when. If you can delay the inevitable
your better off.

[RivaiC]

Which software to do RAID 5 if we purchase external enclosure and stripe 2 HDD together (well, if such enclosure exist at all).

[Mike Prevette]

I have 4 of the 1TB ones, and a bunch of Lacies. So far no problems with any of them. I moved to the WD ones after Lacies reputation started to go down hill.

I also agree that an external enclosure and your own drives is the best rout. For my Edit suites I use a bunch of Esata Raid enclosures, and rotate the drives out every 6 months. The old drives then get shelved with backups on them.

[Paul Hazlett]

Which software to do RAID 5 if we purchase external enclosure and stripe 2 HDD together (well, if such enclosure exist at all).

http://www.cooldrives.com/qu5harasaens.html (http://http://www.cooldrives.com/qu5harasaens.html)

hardware raid takes the burden of the cpu

[jimhare]

I use dozens of WD and have never had one fail. I think ANY drive can fail and as soon as a couple do for an individual, they get written off.

Then again, I just use high quality bare drives in RAID enclosures so I can't speak of how these fare, just the drives themselves, which have been great.

The only drives I've heard absolute horror stories over is LaCie. EVERYONE I know who has used one, has had a major failure.

[Ryan Patch]

I've used WD for about 3 years and never had one fail. That said, everyone out there seems to have their one drive that they DON'T work with under any circumstances, and I've found that it's generally a matter of experience, and everyone eventually has one bad experience. For a while, LaCie was the hip solution. Everyone bought them, so larger amounts of people had them crashing. Same thing with G-Drives these days.

The lesson is- backup. Secondly, store your project file on your external drive, then copy to your internal HD for editing. This takes the stress off your external, because the NLE "pings" (not the right term, I know) the project quite often. If the HD is alternating between the project file and the media files, it wears out very, very quickly. So, store it on your external, then copy it to your internal for editing. Then, copy it back for storage/backup.

We never expected the work print to be the print that we made the final print from, so we shouldn't expect the same from HDs.

[MJ KERBER]

For what it's worth,

I bought a 250GB LaCie drive a couple of years ago...nothing but problems. Sent it to them twice for service and it still never worked properly.

Researched and found out many were faulting the bus, not the drive. So, I opened it up and to my surprise, it was a WD drive inside the LaCie enclosure.

I bought a 3rd party enclosure for the "LaCie"/WD drive and it has worked fine since then.

Knocking on wood,

Kerber

[Joseph Hutson]

I have got a 1TB, and a 500GB WD drive, and have not failed me for almost 2 drives.

It might be stupid, but I haven't ever had anything really "backed up" before, on multiple drives.

LaCies have been problems with me though.

[jimhare]

I have got a 1TB, and a 500GB WD drive, and have not failed me for almost 2 drives.

It might be stupid, but I haven't ever had anything really "backed up" before, on multiple drives.

LaCies have been problems with me though.

I know what you mean. When working with taped based projects, I generally only back up my FCP project, relying on the fact that I could recapture if needed.

Rules are different with RED. You lose the file (and have already reused the CF/RED DRIVE) then you are really screwed.

I'm taking backup much more seriously now.

[JanneJansson]

Inside LaCie are Samsung drives. I have had 2 LaCie drives and both where allot of problems. I rate drives reliability this way:

1 Seagate (best - least failure for me)
2 WD
3 Hitachi
4 Samsung
5 Maxtor (worst highest probalility of failure)

very non-scientific, just my experience :)