petego4it Loc: NY

Don, you're right and not right. Apple was embarrassed that TB, tho fast, didn't work reliably. They re-did it to Thunderbolt 2 which was better but still gave out inexplicably after a time. Thunderbolt 3 is actually as I understand it reconfigured USB3 as you say, with different connectors that won't work with my Thunderbolt 2 boxes. At least so I was told. So I was advised a year ago to get a "new" iMac off Apple's rebuilt but guaranteed as new list that still had the TB 2 connections. So that's what I have. It's interesting that the TB has worked reliably for you. I've heard of other horror stories. I suppose the fault could be with the Lacie drives as takes 2 to tango! You don't say but were you able to keep your old TB1 or 2 HDs to work with the TB3?

petego4it Loc: NY

Don, also, I've used an Apple cinema display happily as a second screen with TB...until recently when it too inexplicably sadly stopped working, perhaps after a recent Apple software update.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

I can say from my years using TB1 & 2 I have not seen any issues. I have a mix of TB and USB 3.0 drives connected 24x7 and do not see any problems.

You can also get a Tb3->TB2 adapter so your TB 2 devices can still connect to a TB3 port. $49.00 on Amazon, Apple or other sites.

https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Thunderbolt-USB-C-Adapter/dp/B01MQ26QIY - I ordered one of these to accompany my new iMac as I want my 2nd display over TB to continue as well as my TB1 & 2 drive docks.

FWIW - I use a WD Duo drive that connects via TB1, a OWC dual sata dock that connects TB2 holding a pair of sata SSD's and an old 27" imac used as a second display connected via TB2, but the old imac is TB1. My TM disk is in a Mediasonic probox that holds 4 drives and connects USB 3

All my images are stored on the WD Duo drive with the most current 3 years worth on the OWC dock on SSD. The other SSD in the OWC dock is my start up disk.

My reasoning for the 2020 imac was the faster internal PCie ssd, and an 8GB vram card... of course a few more cores can't hurt either ;)

Edit: Just ran across this article about Apple and TB on new apple silicon....https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2020/7/8/21317980/apple-silicon-intel-thunderbolt-arm-macs-support-usb-c

jrm21

I'm hesitant to recommend anything specific or call anything the "best."

About 2 years back I made the switch from Aperture to Lightroom. I also had some photos in Apple Photos at the time. Basically 20 years and tens of thousands of digital photos with little to no organization. A complete mess.

At the time, I used two pieces of software to clean up and get organized:

Photosweeper (by Overmacs Team) and Duplicate File Finder (by Nektony). I recall Photosweeper being the most helpful for me. Duplicate File Finder (not the "pro" version) was also useful. Honestly, I don't remember too much of the details for either. It was a crazy few days that taught me a lesson about keeping organized. :)

There have been major OS updates since then as well as changes to Photos and Lightroom. While both have had 2020 updates, I couldn't make claims as to how well the current versions might perform for a given use case.

Duplicate File Finder has a free version. Photosweeper has a trial version (I think you have to go to their site for the). I suggest you try both and see if either meets your needs. Both have a 4.7 rating in the Mac app store.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Uncool! I would be a little upset if an update did that to me!

jrm21

Everything has a chance of failure. M-disc claims a much longer shelf life (for media) than hard drives. That doesn't make them infallible either.

Load up 40 x 100GB m-discs and load up a 4GB drive with the same data. The disc bring a few advantages. Even if you have to plug in an external reader with a USB cable, it's still quicker than installing a bare HD. (Sure, you can pay extra to store your drive in an enclosure, but that's a waste for an archival drive.)

Also, if a disc goes bad you still have 3.9 TB of saved data. That 4TB drive goes down and it's game over for all the data.

The HD is also a mechanical device with more to possibly go wrong. A disc has no moving parts to wear out or break. If your optical disc drive fails, you data is still secure and can be read in any other optical drive.

I am also running a QNAP NAS. It's great when it works. I have 4x10TB enterprise drives in a RAID 10 configuration. Two of the four drives have failed in the first year. A third one looks like it will fail in the next few months. Aside from the security of RAID, all that data is also backed up to other devices (including optical).

The real answer is to use more than one media for long term storage. A hard drive is great, so is optical. If you really want the "best" go with tape. Each has its plus and minus. There is no perfect solution.

I have looked at cloud services and they are not practical for me. Two services have already told me "don't bother" because it isn't practical to upload 10+TB of data. I went a different "cloud" route. I have a second NAS setup at an offsite location. Initial sync was done on a local connection, then the box moved offsite. Now I only have to worry about incremental updates.

Of course, 2 of those drives have also failed in the past 3 years. All replaced under warranty, but I am still very skeptical of hard drives, enterprise or otherwise.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I’m curious as to what manufacturer and model of the hard drives that are failing so regularly. If I were having that many failures, I’d be looking carefully at whose drives I was using and the cooling of those QNAP NAS enclosures. There are several good aps that not only will monitor the heat of each drive, but also read the SMART data to predict incipient failures by looking at the trend of the number of bad/relocated sectors. For reference, I had two trays of 8 Fujitsu SCSI (enterprise class) drives each run for 10 years without a drive failure, and they had already run for several years at a customer’s site when we took it in on trade, while you have had 4 of 8drives fail if I’m reading your post correctly.

In terms of archive, tape is still used for backup by many enterprise companies, but it suffers from degradation over time caused by print through and failure of the media backing. Those companies that do use and and employ good practice, read every tape, correct errors and re-record it periodically. I would estimate a useful life of 20-30 years depending on the format, but it isn’t fast, and unlike any of your other available types of storage, it is sequential access, so if you want some data at the other end of the tape, be prepared to wait many seconds if not minutes.

Regarding MDisks, they have actually been extensively tested by the DOD under all sorts of adverse and accelerated failure conditions, and they are, without doubt, the most reliable long term archive media available. It is HIGHLY unlikely that an MDisk will fail - what will limit its life is the availability of a drive to read it.

Finally, the cloud can be problematic if you have lots of data and a slow upload speed, BUT many of the services will accept a HD with the data to do the initial “seeding” and also provide you with a HD to download from in the event you ever need to restore the entire file system. That way you just need to upload incrementals, which can be done at night or as a background task.

jrm21

All affected drives were purchased at the same time and I think I just got a bad batch. All failed drives are Seagate Ironwolf. They are designed for NAS use. The enclosures are in a climate controlled well ventilated area. Regular SMART and health scans are run to stay ahead of any failures.

The problems are somewhat temperature related as the drives continually overheat prior to receiving failure warnings. All surrounding drives will show a normal temp, but the bad drive will often run up to 10 degrees warmer. Once I get the warnings, I contact Seagate and get a replacement under warranty. Never had data loss (knock wood) but it's never fun waiting for the raid to rebuild.

The takeaway is that while some solutions may offer convenience and flexibility, they also come with a maintenance responsibility.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

No disassembly? Just out of curiosity?

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Why disassemble if a hole is put through the platters?

Just out of curiosity.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

And there are powerful little magnets inside.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Yes there are. And?

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I usually take a Maul to mine. The DOD degausses theirs by subjecting them to ultra strong magnetic fields which destroys everything internally. The Navy cuts theirs into pieces with a metal bandsaw and throws them overboard. We all have our favorite methods.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/magnet

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Degaussing destroys the IC's and discrete components (transistors, capacitors, resistors) inside???