Best External HD for Massive iTunes Library

What is the Best External HD for Massive iTunes Library?

Hello,

I recently lost my entire 140 GB iTunes library (along with hours of raw and edited video and audio recordings) when my cheap Iomega 500GB decided to start making a ticking noise and crap out on me. I had my library backed up through iTunes on 9 DVDs a year ago, but i still lost everything I had accumulated over the past year and a half.

I am looking for the best external HD with the fastest transfer rate (USB/Firewire 400). My top priority is reliability and I need my data to be secure and safe, not necessarily disaster proof like ioSafe drives, although I would like it to be able to take a simple fall in case something were to happen while moving it. I just don't want to have to go through this again.

I have also heard about making my own external HD but am clueless about the process. Might this be a better option?

I am also entertaining the thought of buying an Acer One 160GB to use strictly for my iTunes Music (no video) since I would like to make my library more portable. I read an article about moding one to run Leopard, but the directions were a bit over my head. I guess I could put up with Windows (EEEK!) just for iTUnes Music purposes. Help!!!

I have a Macbook 2GHz Intel and 2 GB DDR2 and use an 8GB iPod Touch (in case this makes a difference).

Being a new user to macs (previous windows person) you may wish to try a WD My Book Studio II 2Tb dual-drive storage system (with Raid). It uses either Firewire 400/800 or USB2.

Western Digital is my choice also. My Book's are great!

This is what I would recommend:

FireWire RAID 1 Redundant Mirror Performance FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0 Storage Solution NewerTech Guardian MAXimus at OtherWorldComputing.com

Any external drive with a single mechanism has a single point of failure. With a dual-drive external, running in mirrored mode (also known as "RAID1"), if one drive fails, you're still OK. You can simply replace that mechanism and keep on going.

Single drive externals are great for backups. If you want to use it as the sole location for important data, you should seriously consider something like the above.

My inclination is always a NAS (Network Attached storage) with at least 2 HDD, for RAID capabilities.

Here an explanation:

YouTube - NETGEAR ReadyNAS Duo


Here some options:

Lacie 2big NAS:

Link: LaCie - LaCie 2big Network - Professional 2-disk RAID
Advantages: quiet, pretty good aluminium box, similar to Apple style. Nice support.
Disadvantages: price, performance, lack of some features

Synology 209+:

Link: Synology Inc. - NEW NAS Experience - Products :: Disk Station DS209+II
Advantages: one of the quietest NAS, lot of features (one of the best), high performance
Disadvantages: price, ugly and fragil plastic box

Neatgear ReadyNAS Duo:

Link: ReadyNAS Duo - NETGEAR.com
Advantages: nice solid box, high performance, many features
Disadvantages: noisy unit, price

IO DATA HDL2

Link: IO DATA HDL2-G: New Fanless NAS with 1TB-2TB of Storage : Akihabara News .com
No idea where to get, how it work, anything.

CONCLUSIONS:

From my point of view, there is no a perfect solution out there (don't know why): fanless unit (so, completely quiet), solid box, plenty of features.

-- NAS comparison

I think the quiest unit is Synology one (very important feature, actually) and includes many features for adapting the unit to any environment. But, the plastic box, man it is really bad, you have to use a screw driver in order to change a failing HDD.

Lacie is so beutiful, but reviews of the are not so good.

REadyNAS is a nice choice, if you don't care the noise of the fan.

-- External HDD? best bet, laptop HDDs

I wouldn't recommend an external HDD alone, since they tend to be unreliable, due to mechanical heating (usually, do not come with proper cooling solutions), movement tend to break them and so on. As student, I saw at least 4 external HDD with troubles, so people looses their information.

Laptop HDD are better for such purposes: smaller (so, you can bring them anywhere), lower power consumption (comes fro USB, no need to plug it to the network), less heating problems.

Hope that helps

César