External Hard Drives - to save my LO and other content

users
#1

Hi All,

I have a SONY external hard drive that just died one day within it's
warranty period.

SONY won't recover my drive contents so the next time I've got an extra
$500 I'll have to find a data recovery firm.

I need to back up my contents - music, videos, data but I can't seem to
find an objective, independent evaluation of which external hard drives are
most reliable.

Have you found any such article?

Or have you found through experience certain brands more reliable than
others?

Thanks so much!

Charles.

#2

Hi,

Hard drives will die (even SSDs). While MTBF indicates long periods of
time, some will still experience drive failures with corresponding loss
of data (been there, done that). If you want to use something external
to store your data while still having very low probability of data
loss, I would recommend buying a NAS. Most of these units will have
multiple disks used to ensure the loss of one hard disk will not
negatively affect you. Get a two-bay unit operated in RAID 1 at a
minimum; this means you can loose one disk and keep on going until you
replace the faulty disk. Units with more bays will provide additional
levels of protection, but at a higher initial investment (ASUSTOR 2-bay
units go for about 500-600 CAD$, 675-1000 CAD$ for 4-bay plus hard
disks - my IT buddy would probably tell you to go for WD Red). Look at
the offering in large surface stores, read the reviews, and then do
some price matching searches to get the best deals. As an added bonus,
these units will also host a media server so you can stream music or
videos to your entire network.

Oh, and also get an external disk drive to backup the more important
stuff on your NAS, to recover from accidental deletions - just in case.

I hope this helps.

Rémy Gauthier.

#3

Hi Charles.
I have just had a new WD Black (supposed to be high(er) reliability) die within a few weeks. Replaced under warranty.
The probability of that is low, but it does happen. If the backup is only a copy of what is on your PC/laptop then you are not needing such high reliability as you always have at least one copy on a failure.

I archive (backup and delete original from PC) so use a little DS216 NAS storage unit  with 2 drives configured raid. Less frequently I backup that to a single 4TB HD for off site safety (house burns down).

I also bought a drive on Amazon recently and noticed that there was an option for $10 extra to cover data recovery in a failure.

I think your best solution will depend upon how much data you need to back up and how often, an on-line solution may even work for you.

Steve

#4

If you cannot find a good article that you can trust, then you must take opinions of others.

So, this is my opinion about best drives to buy.

Even 1 month old Military specs 2-TB USB Drive can go bad.  Mine did.  At least most of it was backed up on a different drive/system.  It only cost me $100 plus shipping for the original drive - from Walmart of all places.

I always buy the best extended warranty I can get, for all my electronics.  At least this replaces the device that died.

First, I personally would not go larger than 2-TB for a drive as your MOST needed data, unless you have drives that are designed for NAS or file server equipment.  That is my opinion for the drives I can afford to buy, for the money I had when I need them. I use a desktop, and its drives as the backup for my laptop data. It will end up as a file server - one day.  I believe in a many device backup system - as follows;

    I backup the laptop[s] data to my "Silicon Power 2TB Rugged Armor
    A30 Shockproof Standard 2.5" USB 3.0 Military-Grade Portable
    External Hard Drive".  Then take that drive and copy the files to my
    file "server" desktop's 3 different 2-TB internal drives. The are WD
    brand.  Then I use a syncing backup script to the 3 external drives
    - again WD drives - 6-TB internal and 6-TB external.  So, I have at
    least 2 different drives hold the "backups" of the data, if the
    laptop drive goes bad.  It could be easier if I had more money.

I looked at a few places and the "best" drive type I found so far may be the WD Red Pro drives for NAS storage.  They cost more than the WS "Black" type, or other brands of drives.  They are designed for long life in demanding needs.  I have seen the "red" drives as large as 8-TB for $400 USD.  The 4-TB run about $150.  If I have the money, I would replace my current drives with these drives.

I currently do not have a NAS storage device - due to the fact I could not figure out how to get my Linux systems to work with the current router/NAS device I have, or any NAS storage outside of a desktop setup.  That is why I hope to get one of my desktops to be a true Ubuntu file server.

#5

needs. I have seen the "red" drives as large as 8-TB for $400 USD. The
4-TB run about $150. If I have the money, I would replace my current drives
with these drives.

I'm on the extreme side of safe-data paranoia. :slight_smile: For my documents,
photos, and source code (basically stuff I create):

1. It lives on a SSD in my primary laptop
2. It's copied to an external 1TB WD RED drive that I keep in a safe
bolted to the floor.
3. Once a year, I create a Blu-Ray M-DISC of that year's stuff. You
can get a 100GB M-DISC (that can go from boiling water to dry ice
without damage) for $20.
4. I have a home server that runs a dozen or so VM's. It has two 4TB
WD RED drives in a RAID-1. I sourced the drives separately- one from
Micro Center, the other from Amazon. This is because statistically,
the chance that any two drives will fail at approximately the same
time is MUCH higher if both drives are from the same batch. So I
ensured that each drive is from a different batch. I have a LUKS
encrypted partition that I will occasionally mount and rsync my newest
stuff to, then unmount again.

#6

There are so many opinions on this topic that a decision is not easy.
I have some Seagate ironwolfs in my NAS (DS216). It's internal OS is linux and it talks nice to linux, mac and windows. For my desktop data (/home) I got a WD Gold, and am stunned just how much faster than a red or black it is.
I think the important factor is being able to allow at least 1 drive failure without data loss.
steve

#7

hello.
i suggest recovery softwares for now to rescue your lost data!
recuva from piriform has one free version, but i heard from one very
expert computer security engeneer that told me active undelete is very
strong and reliable for recovering data, but i forgot its price.
hope that help, God bless you all!

#8

https://www.backblaze.com/hard-drive.html

Wandering through the linked articles in that post, and their old blog
posts, you can find one company's experience with hard drives.

In one of their blog posts, is an explanation of why WD Black is a
better buy than either WD Red or WD Gold.

Note: Their blog posts are written to encourage people to use their
backup service. Try to ignore that sales pitch, in reading the articles.

jonathon

#9

Automatic backups are nice, but I found out the hard way that files backed up from one computer can not always be restored to another computer, or even to an updated drive or operating system on the same computer.

And since I know that any electronic device will fail at some point, I usually just buy whichever one is on sale. Drives are cheap enough that it’s not a big deal if I have to replace one, although if I think the drive didn’t last long enough, or didn’t perform very well, I will definitely choose a different brand/model for the replacement.

I do not have a huge amount of pictures or videos to back up, so my method is a little easier than some:

I have a folder on my computer called “All”. Any data I create is saved to “All” or one of it’s subfolders.

I have a 3TB external drive attached to my MacBook, which uses it to store the Time Machine backup data.
Time Machine makes hourly backups of any files that have been changed.

In addition, on a regular basis, I copy “All” to the external drive, renaming it to reflect the date/version.
Also, on a regular basis, I copy “All” to an external flash drive or memory card, and then rotate through the drives so I always have several previous copies available.

If my “All” folder gets too large to fit on the flash drive, it’s easy enough to split it into two folders…..
The more changes I make to my files, the more often I back them up.
Works well for me.

#10

It was those articles and the linked discussion that led me to the WD gold. It is my primary desktop running 24x7, replacing a Constellation ES drive. It runs a couple of degrees hotter (so working on boosting the air flow).
In the page you refer to above, the most reliable were HGST, thats now a WD company so you had to follow the discussions through from the start in 2013 to discussions on today's products. I was surprised how much the landscape has changed with many SSD drives now with 5 year 24x7 warranties, still a bit pricy for 4TB.
steve

#11

Steve,

You may find following two articles interesting regarding drive failures. I find the Backblaze info useful but to provide balance, a contrasting view in second link.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q1-2017/

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/17/backblaze_how_not_to_evaluate_disk_reliability/

YMMV.
B.

#12

I get away from the potential compatibility issues by not compressing the data.

I copy the data to a Windows formatted USB drive [2 TB] and then copy the data onto my Ubuntu desktop.  Since I actually have three 2TB drives internal, that is the primary storage/backup.

The next thing I do is use "rsync" to copy the data to the 6TB worth of external storage.  I do not use any compression or backup keyed to a specific system.  I just start up the script, when all of the drives are mounted, and walk away to do other things, like sleep.  That is the best solution for me.

I use to keep the "file storage" system running 24/7, but no longer.  Since 2010, I have replaced 3 of the 2TB drives.  I have 6 of these drives and a few smaller ones as replacements for other systems.  Plus, my military shock resistant grade of a 2TB USB3 drive.  That is the only 2TB drive that is not ext4 formatted.

I too have specif folders for specific data types.  Music, Movies, and other videos go, on two drive.  Photography, Images and Graphics, Fonts, plus anything else, goes on the last 2TB drive. If I need the data on a Windows system, I copy the data, etc., onto the 2TB drive Windows formatted drive or 16-64 Gig flash drives.

As an extra safety step, I have my storage system's OS on a separate 250GB drive.  So if it goes bad, I would loose very little data.