OT - External Hard Drives [Archive]

Ozz

10-22-2007, 01:10 PM

I am looking at getting a back-up system for our PC. We have enough digital photos and such, I'd hate to lose them. Besides, "Dan Le Foot's" thread got me thinking.....

Two that I am considering are:

Seagate 500GB FreeAgent Pro
Western Digital 500GB MyBook

Both are available thru Costco for under $200

Any thoughts from the tech savvy are appreciated.....I just got DSL at our home last week, so I'm a bit of a luddite in this arena. :rolleyes:

Thanks much.

maunahaole

10-22-2007, 01:20 PM

I vote for the Seagate based on better warranty (IIRC). I have used WD drives in the past and my experience is that when they fail, they fail quickly.

gt6267a

10-22-2007, 01:26 PM

Any external drive should get the job done.

One thing to consider, in the case of a fire or some such event ... there is a high likelihood that you will either forget the external drive OR what happens when disaster strikes when you are not home?

If you want to get a bit more serious ...

If you don't have a crazy amount of storage, get a DVD burner. burn a dvd and mail it once a month or two months or so to a friend, family member, put in a safe outside the house, a safety deposit box ...

If you have a ton of data and DVDs are not practical ... get two external drives. Backup everything completely and put that drive in a safety deposit box or friends house or you get the idea. Backup to the second external drive frequently and then once a month or six months trade the drive from the house with the one in safety deposit box.

Some people like the idea of incremental backups, where you take a full backup and then just backup what has changed. To me, this is a nuisance and it is more likely that you will wind up with problems if you don�t practice your recoveries. Best to focus on full backups.

There are some on-line resources for these things, but there are serious security concerns and I am not ready to recommend any of the online resources just yet.

Too Tall

10-22-2007, 01:26 PM

Good timing. I just got a really nice "My Book" on sale from Comp USA. So far so good. Heck of a deal $135.

Ozz

10-22-2007, 01:39 PM

Any external drive should get the job done.

One thing to consider, in the case of a fire or some such event ... there is a high likelihood that you will either forget the external drive OR what happens when disaster strikes when you are not home?.
My primary concern is my PC crashing and such...it's about 4 years old and makes funny noises....I had it checked out earlier this year and the CompUSA guys said it was fine.....good points though.

If you don't have a crazy amount of storage, get a DVD burner. burn a dvd and mail it once a month or two months or so to a friend, family member, put in a safe outside the house, a safety deposit box ....
Good idea...next PC will have a DVD burner....pictures, music and tax data are my main concerns....a DVD should work for this.

If you have a ton of data and DVDs are not practical ... get two external drives. Backup everything completely and put that drive in a safety deposit box or friends house or you get the idea. Backup to the second external drive frequently and then once a month or six months trade the drive from the house with the one in safety deposit box..
Kinda like a belt with suspenders? I like it..... ;)

There are some on-line resources for these things, but there are serious security concerns and I am not ready to recommend any of the online resources just yet.
I was thinking there has to be something like this....I appreciate your thoughts and will steer clear for now! :beer:

itsflantastic

10-22-2007, 01:46 PM

davep

10-22-2007, 01:54 PM

I have had bad luck with Maxtors, but have a WD that has had no problems. It is also the quietest and coolest running of any external drive I have had, and Ive had a bunch.

Besides an external HD I would also recommend on-line backup. There are many such services: Amazon S3, Mozy, CrashPlan, many more. Initial backup takes a while, but you then have protection against fire, theft, etc.

rwsaunders

10-22-2007, 02:06 PM

Good timing. I just got a really nice "My Book" on sale from Comp USA. So far so good. Heck of a deal $135.

+1 for TT's timing, as I'm heading out tonight for a back-up device for my Mac. TT, did you finally retire your Texas Instruments 64?

whitecda

10-22-2007, 03:24 PM

LACIE makes a good drive. No, a great drive.

I say get a Lacie

but, then again, this is just imho.

Cheers,
DAn

It's MHO also. I've been using a LaCie Rugged for about a year. FAST, quiet, solid, dependable. Recomended highly!

Don

Ozz

10-22-2007, 03:34 PM

...MHO...
????

What's that?

Too Tall

10-22-2007, 03:51 PM

+1 for TT's timing, as I'm heading out tonight for a back-up device for my Mac. TT, did you finally retire your Texas Instruments 64?
SPY!!!!

What are some good utils / software folks use to sync their data to a backup destination?

gt6267a

10-22-2007, 04:17 PM

control c, control v

Not to be contrary, but when it comes to backing things up without the resources of multiple computers and some sophistication, I am anti-product. Products are fabulous for getting data off computers AND the practice restore to the same machine where the software is installed usually goes pretty well. BUT, do you ever use a restore on the same machine? Rarely. And to be fair, most companies with multiple machines and sophistication screw this up, and they are supposedly proffesionals.

Let�s think how this really works out � you smoke your computer and get a new one. Do you have that utility that did some fancy thing that you now need to get your data back? No, the new rig has some new utility or maybe the meta data from microcrapola 2000 isn�t working with your sweet new Vista rig, or what if you decide to try a Mac? Now you are in file by file, not in your original directory structure hell.

I say fudge all that. Remember the first words of backup and recovery, �A backup not tested is no backup at all.� And �Testing a backup to the machine you just got the files from ain�t no recovery test.�

Make a directory on your machine c:\TooTall and put everything in it. Make sub-folders for all your crap and subfolders below these subfolders as needed:

C:\TooTall\outlook - put your pst in here. it's worth it.
C:\TooTall\coaching
C:\TooTall\work
C:\TooTall\pers
C:\TooTall\whatever

control c, control v the TooTall directory to your spiffy external drive and you always have your crap. And you�ll have it on Mac, Linux, Windows, Solaris � whatever � no tricks and nothing to screw up. That�s hot.

Oh, one other thing. On the external drive, when you decide to copy the TooTall directory from your main squeeze do NOT simply copy over the existing TooTall directory. Re-name the TooTall directory on the drive TooTall-OLD. Do the copy. When it is complete successfully, then remove TooTall-OLD.

Too Tall

10-22-2007, 05:08 PM

GT6267aye - I with yah 110% thanks :) Spent much of today consolidating all my date under one dir. structure. GOOD CALL on the .pst omg forgot that ouch.

BoulderGeek

10-22-2007, 06:56 PM

I just got one of the WD 320GB MyBook units for $99.

Not bad. Not the best I've ever used. But, I am sure it will be workable. Loading it up with movies and games to take to the South Pole.

I'd prefer an 8-disk 2TB RAID0+1 array, but I don't think it will work as a carry-on.

terrytnt

10-22-2007, 07:59 PM

What about: G-Tech G-DRIVE 320GB Fw400/USB 2.0 Hards - which seem to be somewhat recommended.

I too and looking for a drive... Just about ready to 'dump' my 7 year old Dell desktop :banana:and purchase - once Leopard releases - a MacBook Pro - returning finally to the Mac world. So I too am looking for the quietest, most reliable back up drive.

who has used G-Tech drives?

SoCalSteve

10-22-2007, 08:32 PM

whatever you do, do not get a western digital. Seagates are ok.

WD have been known to crash and are not very reliable.
I have a 250 gig one sitting on my desk useless right now.

LACIE makes a good drive. No, a great drive.

I say get a Lacie
but, then again, this is just imho.

Cheers,
DAn

I own 2, both are amazing. Quiet, cool, fast and very, very stylish (this is a very important feature in a hard drive)...Plus, as an added bonus they are stackable...

Good luck,

Steve

PS: FWIW, they are designed by PorscheDesign (very important in a hard drive).

SpeedyChix

10-22-2007, 08:56 PM

Another vote for LaCies. Run an office of Macs, many of the for production. Rugged and run day after day after day....

DarrenCT

10-22-2007, 09:21 PM

i have one of those maxtor one touch external units that works well. my backups aren't up-to-date but thats expected :)

if u dont open all those lame emails, you should be fine no matter what..

cheers
-d

rounder

10-22-2007, 09:45 PM

Good timing. I just got a really nice "My Book" on sale from Comp USA. So far so good. Heck of a deal $135.

I don't know who makes a good one but have a My Book at home now. Our computer crashed about a year ago without warning. Ima accountant and do audits and stuff and always recommend some sort of disaster recovery plan for the clients, including file backups on a regular basis. We didn't have any of that stuff at home...what a nightmare. Had to rebuild the computer and contact the vendors to download software...windows, msn office, adobe, etc. The files were all gone forever. Anyway, lesson learned. Everyone out there should have some way to back up their files on a regular basis...external hard drive, dvd, etc..

sbornia

10-22-2007, 09:51 PM

Mac folks may want to check out the drives (and RAM) offered by OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/) . I have one of their "Mercury Elite-AL" external drives that has worked well for the last 18 months. I've got Deja Vu (http://www.propagandaprod.com/dejavu.html) scheduled to run a complete backup every night, which completely saved me when my laptop's HD died. Offsite backups are next.

BoulderGeek

10-23-2007, 11:11 AM

You folks do understand that no matter who makes the casing (LaCie, OWC, Buffalo, etc), the drive mechanism is either a Western Digital or a Seagate/Maxtor, right?

There are only a few makers of hard disks anymore. Fewer now that Seagate absorbed Maxtor and Quantum has been dead for years now.

So, yes, in general, a Seagate is definitely a preferred mechanism. The 10,000 RPM Raptors are rockin' fast machines. You'll get a Seagate in all of the high end arrays from Sun, HP, IBM, EMC, etc.

But, I just wanted to distinguish that off the shelf external cases for your PC/Mac will only be different on the exterior. And if you are using a USB version, it will only be marginally functional for high throughput applications like video and gaming. You'd need Firewire/1394 or external SATA interfaces with an SATA drive mechanism to be anything more than a boring backup device.

OK, geek chat over. :rolleyes:

Karin Kirk

10-23-2007, 11:33 AM

PS: FWIW, they are designed by PorscheDesign (very important in a hard drive).

Phew, good to know I'm with the cool set.
That's what I have and I never realized until just now that it has little grooves that make it stackable. Thanks, Steve!
As for the rest of the design - it's a grey box. Looks more panel-van than Porsche.

I like the idea of filling an external drive and sending it somewhere out of state or something. However I'm sure I wouldn't stay current with it. But it's a great idea. Maybe I'll just put our most important stuff on some CDs occasionally and send them away for safe-keeping.

deechee

10-23-2007, 12:16 PM

as BoulderGeek says, HDs are all the same now. Friend of mine works in QA with lots of hardware and has busted plenty of hard drives from every brand. They're all prone to failure; its the way you use them that makes the difference.

For starters, just because a HD is external and plug n' play, it doesn't mean that you can physically move it while its running. Think about it, a small pin size needle head floating over a 10,000rpm magnetic platter.

USB1.1 slow. USB2.0 better but still slow. Firewire400 a bit better, Firewire800 a bit better, E-SATA much better etc. Problem is you may need to get an interface card in your computer to take advantage of the faster speed. Are you going to have the patience to sit through hundreds of gigs being copied?

(One point this brings up is that interfaces keep changing no matter what. Remember the old SCSI days? In a sense, it makes more sense to buy a reasonable size now, and just back it up in 2-3 years into a newer, more state-of-the-art hard drive and keep upgrading with time. This way you have multiple backups of older files and you'll never worry about an interface that suddenly becomes obsolete or unreadable. (Think 8mm film, 5.25" floppy disks, laser discs, audio tapes etc. )

I like the idea of backing up on DVDs since they're not prone to the dangers of magnets as HDs are. But the longevity of DVDs, especially consumer quality have never been proven. I have no idea if broadcast quality DVD-Rs like the Maxell ones are any more durable than others. Also, burning takes sooo looong and at 4.5 gigs per disc (or more for dual) how much time do you have?

One point that I'll make is that if you think your information is important, don't be cheap with the storage. You usually get what you pay for. In the past, we used to calculate the cost per Gig of HD space, and it should go down as the HD size gets bigger, but the point where it goes back up is usually the size you should get. Its not as much an issue now as memory is so cheap, but its a good exercise to go through. Also, with a name brand HD, you're paying for software, support, better casing (cooling, interfaces for speed) etc.

cw05

04-05-2008, 11:04 AM

So I finally joined the rest of the world when I was given a iPod last month as a birthday present. I had long been content with CD's and was now faced with the monumental task of transferring all of them to the iPod...it didn't take me long to figure out my little laptop Dell HD couldn't hold all of them so after some shopping I bought a Simpletech mini 160G (http://www.simpletech.com/products/storage/signature-mini/) exteral harddrive. I only have two usb ports on my laptop so I figured I could use one for the HD and sync the iPod off the other. Well, it turns out the HD requires two usb's (one for power/data and one just for power in a 'y' format...ie, the two usb's join in a common cord before entering the HD). Obviously there is no port to sync the iPod on. Any suggestions? I'm thinking I'll have to take this one back and get another external harddrive with external (non-usb derived) power. Any good suggestions? This is going to be painful as I now have upwards of 80G on the harddrive.

davep

04-07-2008, 08:59 AM

How about an AC-USB adapter for the power only cable: http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat%5fid=116&sku=22328

false_Aest

04-07-2008, 09:50 AM

G-drives are soooo awesome. They rarely fail.

LaCie lately has sucked big-time (4 people I know, not including myself, have had their LaCie drives fail on them in the past 6 months....they've all been less than 2 years old. Warranty covers hardware but not data recovery which will usually cost $1,000+)

OWC drives are good cheap ones.

A bunch of comp. sci friends of mine recommended Western Digital (eSATA, USB2, FW400, FW800 500gig for $150 is a good deal). Apparently their quality control has gone up significantly lately.

Whatever you get you should remember that external HDs are not perm. Like cars, bikes, and people they all eventually fail. Backing up to media is a good solution BUT most DVDs and CDs are NOT archival---they're rated for about 10 years of storage.

If these photos and data are really important you spend the extra cash and back them up to gold DVDs. If they're super important you made two copies and store them in different locations.
----

Also, I've been instructed to re-format and zero-out all data when I first plug in a brand new drive. (select journaled). Apparently this minimizes any possibility of corruption and the journaled option makes for better data recovery if you need to go that route.

t

William

10-29-2016, 09:07 AM

BUMPING TO THE TOP IN 2016...

Since a lot of the original suggestions are dinosaurs now...what are you using today?

I'm looking to get an external hard drive to move all of my training videos off of the main iMac to free up the large amount of memory they occupy. So...

What are you using now?

William

SoCalSteve

10-29-2016, 09:28 AM

biker72

10-29-2016, 09:41 AM

thwart

10-29-2016, 09:50 AM

Cloud storage, nuff said.

Problem is... if the 'sh*t hits the fan', and the internet as we know it goes down... William may need his martial arts training videos more than ever...

;)

regularguy412

10-29-2016, 10:02 AM

Problem is... if the 'sh*t hits the fan', and the internet as we know it goes down... William may need his martial arts training videos more than ever...

;)

^^This.

And-- even if you have cloud backup, it's always good to have a local backup, too. The internet is only somewhat reliable, at best. You'd be amazed at how many times it actually 'goes out', even if for just brief moments, every day.

In my day-job, I support softwares that automatically use the internet every 2 to 5 minutes 24/7. When there's an issue, I'm checking the event logs. Very often I see events written (especially in the middle of the night) where the internet could not be found. Then it magically reappears some 2 minutes to 2 hours later.

So if your backup fails ( and many cloud backups are unable to be successful 100% of the time - I check those logs, too), it's good to have a local hard drive or other internal network location upon which to save an additional backup.

Cloud backup is good; local backup is advisable. Can never have too many backups. IMO

Mike in AR:beer:

Black Dog

10-29-2016, 11:02 AM

I bought a docking station like this.

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/db/products/Storage/BlacXHDD/main.jpg
And a couple of these (https://goo.gl/VxnXWD) hard drives.

Laptop hard drives will fit in this docking station too.

This is the way to go. 10000%

OEM drives are not expensive and you can have a couple of drives, one on site and one off site. Keep one at work or wherever and do a home back up and switch the drives and so on an so forth.

Tony T

10-29-2016, 11:15 AM

[SIZE="7"]
Since a lot of the original suggestions are dinosaurs now...what are you using today?

I'm looking to get an external hard drive to move all of my training videos off of the main iMac to free up the large amount of memory they occupy. So...

What are you using now?

Western Digital.
Size: size of the files you want to move off the iMac x 2 (or 3)
A 2½ drive is smaller, USB powered and easier to store.
(and since all HDs fail at some point, if the files are important, use redundant external hard drives)

mwynne

10-29-2016, 11:38 AM

Best practice (which is not achieved by many many large institutions I'm sure), 3-2-1 Rule. 3 copies, on at least 2 different storage media (RAID, LTO, SSD, etc), with 1 copy in a different geographic threat region (this is where cloud storage, ie: someone else's server, comes in handy).

But as for the original question, for portability we often go to Western Digital for their SSD storage. An EHD *may* be more resilient, as there is more opportunity to recover files in case of failure, whereas with a failed SSD that is much much harder.

Regardless, all these drives will have a lifespan - not set and forget, you'll want to migrate every few years, depending on amount of use, and other things.

bagochips3

10-29-2016, 03:28 PM

Backblaze publishes their drive failure rates. Worth a read:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/

Peter P.

10-29-2016, 04:05 PM

It's MHO also. I've been using a LaCie Rugged for about a year. FAST, quiet, solid, dependable. Recomended highly!
Don

This is exactly what I bought, maybe a year ago. Can't remember what it replaced but it certainly wasn't a LaCie, but it's the third external, backup drive I've had since 1998.

The LaCie I have is 1Tb and it is dead silent whereas you could hear the old drive spool up, even when it was in good shape.

If I recall, the LaCie was much cheaper than $200, too.

bcroslin

10-29-2016, 04:09 PM

Backblaze publishes their drive failure rates. Worth a read:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/

I was going to post that link. I've started using HGST drives but since they were bought by Western Digital I don't know if they're any better than the WD enterprise black drives.

Anecdotally, I've seen a large number of Lacie's fail over the years. I use G Drives for backup and haven't had any issues. G's are the industry standard for commercial productions for video backup.

Best practice is to buy 2 drives at a time and set them up via software as a mirrored RAID 1.

pasadena

10-29-2016, 04:25 PM

This is the best way to repurpose old drives and buy cheap new ones.

I no longer use them for work.
For speed and compact size, I use SSD's.
Solid state is really great. No moving parts and speeds up your computer quite a bit. Prices have dropped quite a bit on SSD's.

I use the dock and old plate drives to archive

I bought a docking station like this.

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/db/products/Storage/BlacXHDD/main.jpg
And a couple of these (https://goo.gl/VxnXWD) hard drives.

Laptop hard drives will fit in this docking station too.

huck*this

10-29-2016, 07:59 PM

Correct. Don't buy the pre-packaged so called "backup" drives. They usually get tossed around, have poor cooling (what kills HDD) and not user friendly which is surprising as that is what they are marketed for.

As above I use a docking station. Then swap drives in and out having multiple backups of those "priceless photos". Keep one HDD in a fireproof, water proof safe. The other in closet, drawer, etc.

Another avenue to look at is cloud backup. This is not for those priceless photos but a great database of photos you take over time to be stored chronologically. I use Google Photos.

Another more sophisticated setup would be RAID (6). Whole different ball game and they have at home devices that are easy to configure. DROBO being one. Although not sure if it does 6.

One thing to remember about data backup is the priceless stuff you need to have multiple copies in different places.

bcroslin

10-29-2016, 08:04 PM

For those of you that use drive docks keep in mind that the hard drives you use should be spun up monthly if you're archiving and then removing and setting them aside. HD's allegedly have a higher failure rate if they just sit.

buddybikes

10-29-2016, 08:46 PM

What about using SSD to avoid moving parts?

mwynne

10-29-2016, 09:10 PM

What about using SSD to avoid moving parts?
SSDs are faster and not prone to mechanical failure, but are more likely to fail silently/suddenly, and recovery is far more challenging, if at all possible.

Neither is better, just different risks

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

psyclone1976

10-30-2016, 06:51 AM

Local backups disks are old hat, go cloud, you will get much better flexibility on backups and with some providers offering unlimited online storage with the subscription models you will never be out of space.

https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/

Problem with local disks are too common, drive failures, left the drive at home, dropped it etc.

If you really want to go disk then get a small 2 bay NAS, you can protect against drive failures this way but its still limiting to only one location.

William

10-30-2016, 12:49 PM

Problem is... if the 'sh*t hits the fan', and the internet as we know it goes down... William may need his martial arts training videos more than ever...

;)

I thought the Zombie Apocalypse was on us recently until I realized the new Verizon back up battery had fried the control box. No internet for about five days, no access to anything on line.

I've been doing more training videos, instructional and for student review and it is beginning to take up a lot of space. We have had a Seagate back up drive for a while that will hold one TB...of which I've already used up about two thirds of it which has led me to consider getting another drive or two. Maybe it's just the "old school" in me, but I'm a little uneasy about relying on cloud storage accessibility and hacking by others...hey, I have secret moves! :D

Thank you for all the suggestions everyone!

William

weaponsgrade

10-30-2016, 02:21 PM

I like the docking station idea and will probably add that to my backup strategy. Last year I got an 8TB WD My Cloud device. It comes with two 4TB drives and I've got it setup in a mirrored configuration. It's accessible over a network so I can access it from my iPhone or other workstation in my house. I use my phone to take pics a lot more often than my camera. WD provides an app that will backup the pics on the phone to the My Cloud device. It can also be set so that it only does the backup over Wi-Fi. So, this makes it really convenient to backup the photos on my phone. When I get back home, I tap the app on my phone and all my pics are backed up wirelessly over my home Wi-Fi to the My Cloud device.

It's not without problems though. Sometimes the app seems to get hung up, but restarting the phone gets everything back on track. I also had a problem with the first unit I got. It was under warranty and WD sent me a replacement unit. I think the replacement unit was a refurbished unit, but they also upgraded me to a different product line with a few more features (EX to DL). Also, the user interface isn't the slickest.