External drives, LaCie vs G-Technology?

[bonesandskin]

Hey all,

Wondering if folks have experiences with LaCie vs G-Technology?

I'm a bit tired of the piles of SSDs for editing and looking for a big thunderbolt 3 raid drive for archived projects that I may still need to access, e.g. 20TB +

I've always had a bias against LaCie for some reason, but they are cheaper and more available (3rd party enclosures are also pretty limited) in the country where I've moved, so wondering if it is something I should just get over w/ respect to the T3 2Big Dock drives vs G-Technology G-Raids? Or stick with the more commonly recommended G-Tech and pay an extra 15%.

Thanks!

[jpleong]

The tech industry moves fast so, please take my experience with a grain of salt:

Fifteen years ago I used La Cie desktop drives without issue. I bought these despite a spotty reputation, at the time, for their bus-powered drives.

Ten years ago I started using Glyph drives because they were rackmountable. I've had two issues with cooling-fans beginning to fail (same model, close serial numbers). The company sent me replacement fans with 48-hour shipping, free of charge. They also offer some basic data recovery as part of their 3-year warranty. I continue to use their platter drives as my primary working storage. All their bus-powered drives have either sufficient USB cabling to ensure full power or come with an external power supply. I have also purchased a couple of their SSDs. I am happy to report that these have not suffered any typical SSD degredation (as I have experienced with MULTIPLE SanDisk Extreme external SSDs). They are HELLA expensive, though, so I only spec them for mission-critical work and make sure their cost is included in any scope of work I send to a client.

Seven years ago I started using G-Tech drives because they were significantly cheaper than Glyph and marketed to the same Audio/Video industry. All the bus-powered models I purchased suffered read or write failures which I could only attribute to the fact that their hardware required more stable juice than the typical USB spec available on production laptops. They didn't come with external PSUs or double-voltage cables and I actually ended up using cables/powersupplies from my Glyph drives to mitigate this issue. I believe this is the result of poor engineering (drives intended for portable/laptop usage should, indeed, work on laptops). Their desktop drives, on the whole, are fine. I have had a serious incident with one (my last G-Tech desktop drive I purchased) where the PSU started smoking at the connector and partially melted the strain relief. I was not pleased with their support's reaction (pretty much a check-for-warranty and a shrug). This is the only problem I've had with G-Tech desktop hard drives and I have, maybe, a dozen of them.

Five years ago I jumped on the SSD bandwagon and began using SanDisk Extreme portable SSDs -first the black squares and then the blue rectangles. Six of the ten I've bought have degraded read/write performance over time. Though SanDisk has replaced the first few that I reported, it was such a hassle and wait for replacement that I've given up on them and gone back to Glyph-only for portable SSDs. I DO still use their SSD Ultra 3D SSD drives in enclosures and with my Atomos Fires.

JP

[jpleong]

Forgot to mention that I also use Seagate Backups Plus Hub drives to backup and archive work. The internals are worth more than what you can find them individually (the internal drives are some of Seagate's best enterprise-grade server drives) with a big cache and a built-in two-port USB hub.

JP

[pixelpreaching]

FWIW, I have a Sandisk external SSD which is my working hard drive, so it's always plugged into my computer, and it's wonderful. Then I have a G-Tech which is a backup of the Sandisk... it's great as well, but has only seen a fraction of the use since I only plug it in to do a backup.

I use Samsung T5's with my BMPCC4K & 6K and they've never done me wrong.

I did have a Vectotech Rapid, which was originally my backup for the Sandisk. But one day I plugged it in and just... nothing. I will say though, that I emailed them and they had me send it in and quickly sent me a brand new one, no hassle at all. So that could easily have been a one off, but all I can say is their warranty/customer service was excellent.

Sandisk, G-Tech, and Samsung are the brands I'd feel most comfortable with. I do have a Lacie (regular hard drive, not SSD) as my Time Machine backup and it's been great.

Seagate is the only company I'll never buy from again - way too many second chances given to their hard drives.

[Robert Collins]

45 minutes ago, pixelpreaching said:

FWIW, I have a Sandisk external SSD which is my working hard drive, so it's always plugged into my computer, and it's wonderful. Then I have a G-Tech which is a backup of the Sandisk... it's great as well, but has only seen a fraction of the use since I only plug it in to do a backup.

I use Samsung T5's with my BMPCC4K & 6K and they've never done me wrong.

I did have a Vectotech Rapid, which was originally my backup for the Sandisk. But one day I plugged it in and just... nothing. I will say though, that I emailed them and they had me send it in and quickly sent me a brand new one, no hassle at all. So that could easily have been a one off, but all I can say is their warranty/customer service was excellent.

Sandisk, G-Tech, and Samsung are the brands I'd feel most comfortable with. I do have a Lacie (regular hard drive, not SSD) as my Time Machine backup and it's been great.

Seagate is the only company I'll never buy from again - way too many second chances given to their hard drives.

LaCie is owned by Seagate and your LaCie will likely have Seagate drives.

[Robert Collins]

LaCie is owned by Seagate - GTech by Western Digital. These are effectively the only 2 major spinning hard drive manufacturers in the world. I doubt you would go far wrong with either one but if you have a preference it should be based on the original manufacturer.

In my case, I chose LaCie because support/product availability/price all seemed better in my country (Thailand).

My advice (and what I have done) is to buy TWO enclosures (2x2Big T3s). ONE enclosure simply syncs with the other providing back up. That way you can have RAID0 for fast speeds/maximum space over 2 drives as well as redundancy for BOTH hard disk failure AND enclosure failure.

This might sound a very expensive option but if you price it out on a 'per TB' basis it doesnt work out too bad at all.

[jpleong]

1 hour ago, Robert Collins said:

LaCie is owned by Seagate - GTech by Western Digital. These are effectively the only 2 major spinning hard drive manufacturers in the world. I doubt you would go far wrong with either one but if you have a preference it should be based on the original manufacturer.

In my case, I chose LaCie because support/product availability/price all seemed better in my country (Thailand).

My advice (and what I have done) is to buy TWO enclosures (2x2Big T3s). ONE enclosure simply syncs with the other providing back up. That way you can have RAID0 for fast speeds/maximum space over 2 drives as well as redundancy for BOTH hard disk failure AND enclosure failure.

This might sound a very expensive option but if you price it out on a 'per TB' basis it doesnt work out too bad at all.

I think WD owns SanDisk, too, right?

[Robert Collins]

2 hours ago, jpleong said:

I think WD owns SanDisk, too, right?

Yes, right. Bought them in 2016.

BTW someone told me that Glyph was suffering from financial problems

[pixelpreaching]

11 hours ago, Robert Collins said:

LaCie is owned by Seagate and your LaCie will likely have Seagate drives.

It may well. It doesn't run often and is just a backup, so that's fine. It's the only LaCie I've ever had.

On the other hand, I've had a dozen+ Seagates over the past 15+ years and the failure rate of those has been insanely high compared to Western Digital, Buffalo, and Toshiba. I think I had one or two portable Toshiba fail after four or five years of use, I don't think any of my WD MyBooks or Buffalo drives ever failed.

The only mechanical hard drives I still use are WD MyBook RAID, a Synology NAS DiskStation and a Buffalo TeraStation NAS. Any of my working drives are SSD.

[filmmakereu]

SSDs work fine at my side.

[jpleong]

11 hours ago, Robert Collins said:

BTW someone told me that Glyph was suffering from financial problems

Ugh. I believe it. Their business model doesn't strike me as disposable -which is what most of the tech industry has leaned into to make shareholders happy.