jonfrei

Just a quick addition -- as someone else mentioned, replication doesn't protect from data corruption -- I always do some significant quasi-random sampling of both old and new data BEFORE bringing in and connecting the offline drives.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

I also use Acronis - have been for 7 years - great tech support and friendly (now) software. I have a Cloud subscription with unlimited storage. The best $99 yearly expenditure I have.
Mark

Basil Loc: New Mexico

I use a Seagate 4TB portable drive as my working drive (so I can easily move my entire LR catalog and files between my Desktop and my laptop and take it on trips with my Laptop). This is the same drive the OP is asking about.

For backup I probably go overboard. I use WD MyCloud Mirror 2 x 2TB drives set up as a RAID 1. If one drive fails, it can be quickly hot-swapped. Thus, I always have two copies of every file and I do regular backups to that. Then, as an added measure, about once a month, I backup the backup onto a 2TB iOSAFE fireproof and water proof drive. The thing is as big as a toaster, but it can be bolted/locked to my large, very heavy oak desk to deter theft. If the house ever burns down, this thing can withstand up to 1550ºF for 30 minutes and can be submerged in water.

Toment Loc: FL, IL

Bought it, works well

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I'm hoping you mean RAID 1, because if one drive fails in a RAID 0, you just lost all the data, because a file is stripped across both drives unless it's very, very small (will fit into a single block)

Basil Loc: New Mexico

Brain fart. You're right - I did mean RAID 1. I've fixed my post.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I have those on an hourly basis 🙀

Harp Loc: Albany, GA

What do you mean by "chips"? Do you mean flash drives?

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

My chosen backup route is to use Synology NAS servers. I like the 4 slot models and I am using Western Digital Red or Red Plus drives. Very happy with my choice and no issues yet -- have been using these system for over 5 years! Best of luck.

woodworkerman Loc: PA to FL

I have 15 TB of hard drive space for the thousands of photographs and user videos I have. I have had 3 large Seagate crashes and a LaCie crash over the years. I switched to G-Drives through the suggestion of several pro photographers who have world-wide reputations. Couldn't be happier. Got mine through Amazon.

Reinaldokool Loc: San Rafael, CA

For over twenty years I owned a computer business. We sold and serviced desktops and small enterprise systems. I hear a lot of complaints about Seagate, but never experienced reliability problems in all those years. In fact Seagate was our goto for reliability. Nothing wrong with Western Digital either. Google and others use thousand of hard drives and have detailed stats on the various brands. In #1 place are some brands you will never hear about, but just below that are HGST (formerly Hitachi) and Seagate, with WD coming in close behind.

Every hard drive WILL fail. It is only a matter of time. But Seagate, despite the bad rap it has gotten here, is as reliable as any and more than some (Toshiba has recently experienced a rash of fails.)

My desktop, which is now four years old, has three internal drives: 1 HGST, 1 Seagate, 1 WD. I keep my OS and software on one drive, my photos on a second and all other data on the third. I keep a daily backup to two external drives, both Seagate, purchased at Costco over two years ago. A third external Seagate is an older one (Six years) and only 1 TB. It is there for overflow use only. After six years I wouldn't trust any drive. My next desktop will have a solid state drive as C: to hold OS and programs.

One option is to buy an HGST drive and put it in a box--you can purchase these from Newegg or Tigerdirect for about $40. The drive will be another $1-200 depending on size and model. However, if you buy the Costco Seagate and it doesn't work, you walk back in with it and get your money back. Not so, if you have a problem with a home=made one. And good luck exercizing the warranty on the drive. It can be done, with infinite patience.

Nothing I've said here is a guarantee. Even the earth will die eventually in a ball of fire. Or sooner under the current administration.

Basil Loc: New Mexico

Political commentary aside , I have had a Seagate 3TB FreeAgent GoFlex running non-stop for 5 years (It is my iTunes music and movie server). I have a 4TB Seagate Backup Plus portable drive as my primary photo/ LR drive for the past couple of years. So far so good. Of course I back everything up twice - once on a WD MyCloud Mirror RAID 1 (two - mirrored Hitachi drives that are hot-swappable if one fails) and also an iOSafe Fire proof, water proof drive as an added precaution. At least with the Seagate's I've owned I've been very happy. However, I recently bought a WD 3TB Passport drive and it died after a couple of months. Like you said - any drive will fail eventually, which is why a robust backup strategy is so important.

Kuzano

I agree on Acronis. One of the best utility programs I have ever used, and I am about 5 years longer on usage. Can't even begin to tell you how many hard drives I have "cloned" with TruImage from Acronis among other fixes.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Seagate drives have one of the highest failure rates in the industry. Personally I use WD or Toshiba.
http://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/

When I was a systems engineer for Hartford Insurance, Seagate was on our "forbidden" list of drives. When we purchased our computers from Compaq, we required that they either ship the computers without drives or ship them with Toshiba, WD or (at that time Hitachi) drives. Computers with Seagate would not be accepted.

bpulv Loc: Buena Park, CA

I have two hard drive backup systems; one for my operating system, program files and documents and one exclusively for photo editing and storage on my 27" iMac, which only has a 1Tb internal drive. All of my hard drives are Western Digital because of reliability.

My operating system backup is to a 4Tb Western Digital My Book using Get Backup Pro 3 software, which allows full and incremental backups and additionally cloning and synchronization. That backup is only necessary when I update, add to or remove programs, or generate documents, which is infrequent. At a minimum, I run that backup every two weeks. This backup also provides a backup boot drive in the event that the computer's internal drive should fail.

For photography backup, I do all of my downloading and editing on a 5Tb Western Digital My Book drive. The backup is done multiple times a day to a five bay Drobo RAID system which contains three Western Digital 4Tb Red Drives using the Time Machine backup program that is built into all Mac computers. Red Drives are more expensive, but are optimized for the RAID's duty cycle. Although the Drobo allows hot swapping of hard drives, the two remaining Drobo bays are reserved for expansion. The reason for adding a third drive in the Drobo instead of two is reliability. With two drives, the Drobo is capable of correcting a single data error (bit pick or drop in a data word) at a time. With three drives, the Drobo can correct two picks or drops in a data word.