I have a blend of brands for my external HDD units that I use for disk image

and file backup purposes. But not being the trusting type I also back up

the backup HDD units to a 2nd set of external HDD units, connected to a Dell

840 Server via eSATA. Since having gone to a 2nd layer of HDD protection

(which is backed up weekly to an LTO3 tape drive unit, on any one of 3 sets

of tape media) I have only lost one primary backup HDD. I bet if I did not

have the backup HDD units backed up at a 2nd level, much less via LTO3 tape,

I would have lost a lot more <g>...

That said, a friend of mine in SoCal had a Lacie 500Gb RAID external USB2

unit. He told me last year that he could never lose data on that unit

because of its RAID configuration. "Wanna bet?", asked I. Sure enough, the

other month he lost the Lacie unit. He could not find anyone who was

willing to touch it for less than $1,000 to try to recover data. And I was

not out there to try to help him out. Luckily he moved it from being used

as a primary storage device to file backup only, otherwise he would have

lost a lot of client video he was storing.

He has now gone to the primary/secondary external HDD backup strategy. Once

he has the bux to do so he is going to get an LTO4 Tape Drive and start to

behave in a responsible manner. Some of the video he shoots is for the

medical community for training. Once in a while they ask him to splice in

or out changes, then recompile the output file. So if he ever lost the

source files used for his compilation he would be "almost" screwed. He

tells me he has the original tapes, and can rebuild the projects if he has

to. I advised that I would not put that much faith into tape, and pointed

out the hours of tape restoring and recompilation he could save by not

taking chances.

I have been using the Seagate FreeAgent External HDD units for the past year

(5 year warranty) with good results. If you want to use these with anything

other than XP or Vista you will need to connect the HDD via US2 to an

XP/Vista machine, then run the Seagate software to turn off the sleep mode

(default = 15 minutes, I set it to never sleep, gets saved in the HDD

firmware). That way on a Linux/Mac/Windows Server 2003 machine the HDDs

never "disappear" when they go to sleep. It is the only flaw I have

experienced thus far with that model. BTW, I found their utility software

works fine with USB2, maybe with Firewire, but certainly not with an eSATA

connection.

Gil

> -----Original Message-----

> From: profoxtech-bounces@leafe.com

> [mailto:profoxtech-bounces@leafe.com]On Behalf Of Kevin Cully

> Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 7:47 PM

> To: profoxtech@leafe.com

> Subject: Re: [NF] Heads up to Buffalo NAS owners

>

>

> Thanks Michael. I've got a Buffalo LS (250G) that's been running

> reliably for about 5 years now. I'd hate to lose her.

>

> -Kevin

> CULLY Technologies, LLC

>

>

> Michael Madigan wrote:

> > I just had a problem where my NAS wasn't recognized by the

> network anymore. I could ping it, but I couldn't see the shares

> and I couldn't get into the web admin.

> >

> > In my case, and I suspect in many cases, the flash memory got

> trashed. By just running a firmware update downloaded from

> Buffalo, that fixed all my problems.

> >

> > Keep that in your memory banks.

> >

> >

[excessive quoting removed by server]