rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Before you go out and spend money on drives, I'd do a search for

backblaze and best drives

They are a backup company and regularly post their real life ratings of hard drives.
--Bob

lev29 Loc: Born and living in MA.

Dear mackphotos,

I'm going to give you information that you may find useful in the long run, rather than a particular brand or a specific model with its latest price. My intention is to help you future-proof your purchases in order to optimize compatibility and speed between, for example, your computer & your external hard drive. The first enumerated point I'll make I'll bet you're aware of. The others, perhaps not.

1. For hard drives, there are two basic engineering types: a. old-fashioned mechanical spindle drives with a quoted speed of rotation in rpm, and b. Solid State Devices, aka SSD, which are purely electronic and thus less prone to damage from physical trauma. Per MB (megabyte) of storage capacity, the SSDs cost more than the spindle drives.

2. Now as to what computer you currently own and what to do when you replace it with a newer one, regardless of its being a PC, a Mac, a desktop, or a laptop.

a. What kind of connection are you currently using between it and any external hard drive that you own (even if it no longer works)? The odds are it's a USB, or as it is now becoming referred to, USB-A. Other types of connections (that I know of in common use,) include Thunderbolt 2, USB 3.0, and USB-C (aka USB type C.)

b. I'm no computer expert, so I'm not sure of the nomenclature for this type, but I'll refer to it as 'USB protocol.' Currently in use are three types: USB 2.0; USB 3.0; and USB 3.1 . Note that the greater the version number, the faster the speed of data transfer between the two devices, but this speed is limited to the speed of the lesser protocol of the two.

3. So now this is where I suggest that you take into consideration how much longer you'll be using your current computer relative to the urgency of buying a new external hard drive. Now it may well be that you're employing USB-A connections with the slowest of the 3 protocols: USB 2.0 . Yes, I'm well aware of the aphorism, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

But may I suggest, particularly IF you see room in your budget now or in the near (<~3 years) future, to plan for purchasing now or soon that external HD such it would function even faster for that eventual computer you'll buy to replace the current one. Here's an example, which presumes you use Mac computers and the like:

Currently, I own a (Dec. 2013, aka 3rd-gen) MacBook Pro, which has both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 ports and uses the USB 3.0 protocol. It appears currently to be quite likely that regardless of computer type, the USB-C connection type will become the universal connection standard. In addition, the USB 3.1 protocol is becoming more commonly employed (and yes, it is inevitable that it will be superseded by a faster, better protocol, which might be labeled 3.2, 4.0, or whatever.) This has already come true with the new 4th-gen MacBook Pros that debuted last December. So if I were to need to purchase another external HD presently, I'd buy one that uses the USB-C connection and the USB 3.1 protocol. But could I use it now?

Yes, sure thing! How? By buying, now for <$10, a [b]USB-C to USB-A adapter!] Then, when I buy my next computer, this external HD would plug directly into it, without the need for the adapter. In this situation, the adapter is a "temporizing agent." Will that adapter be obsolete? Eventually, yes. But in the meantime, it can be used for connecting to others' devices that employ the older connection type.

Well, I hope the above makes sense to you. Whether it applies to your particular situation, budget, and values, of course I have no idea. Good luck.

solorone

With a fist full of chips, how in the world to search/find anything. ???

solorone

I run 3, 5 TB Ext One on desk one in safe and 1 off site. i think 3 is the minimum insurance. Also for me this provides, 1 for each of my 2 children . Folks tak about cloud storeage, they must live in the city with very high Inet speeds, how do you move 4 or 5 TB to the cloud?

lev29 Loc: Born and living in MA.

What are you referring to? If it is to someone's post, I recommend you select the "Quote Reply" softkey rather than the "Reply" softkey. Oh, and welcome to the Hog.

James Slick Loc: Pittsburgh,PA

In the days of 20Mb HDDs and 100s of floppies, you'd do a LOT of "DIR A:" commands, and in a few hours you *could* find a particular file. But then you only had 1.2 Mb on each to look at. I wouldn't want to do that with 16Gb SD cards all week!

James Slick Loc: Pittsburgh,PA

Not that I've done any "scientific research" on this,but All of my HDDs (internal and external) are Western Digital. Not an "ad" just my choice!

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Besides that, personally, I would not count on any NAND flash device (which includes USB memory sticks, SD cards, etc...) for long-term archival storage. In addition to the decay of the charge, they are susceptible to degradation from cosmic rays (seriously). Years ago, Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) noticed discrepancies in their long-term simulation runs. It turned out that there were read errors from disk, which over time, introduced serious errors in the model. When the data was reread, it was almost always correct on disk and had been corrupted in the CMOS disk cache by (you guessed it), particles from cosmic rays. The fix was disk systems that checked parity (beyond the disk CRC level) on reads (something you can't easily implement when writing and reading data from camera flash drives).

James Slick Loc: Pittsburgh,PA

I have a 32Gb microSD card in my Android phone that I've had so long that it is now in it's 4th phone and a lot of it's data (like music ETC) that has been on there from day one, So I'd say cards are pretty reliable, that said I still back up the phone and card memory biweekly. You're absolutely right about the cosmic ray damage, It sounds like "tin foil hat" stuff, but just as magnetic fields are bad for magnetic disks/tapes, Memory card deterioration is a real thing! Thankfully backing up regularly is a cheap thing nowadays, and my "OCD" tendencies ensure I do it Religiously! 😁

lev29 Loc: Born and living in MA.

Interesting. I didn't know of this particular cause for degradation of stored data on SSDs, but it certainly goes along with the theme that any data that one truly cares to save for the long run should be stored in at least three sites, one of which should not be in the same physical location.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

It does sound like "tin foil hat stuff", but the particles resulting when cosmic rays interact with the atmosphere are surprisingly energetic. This from Wiki:

"Cosmic rays have sufficient energy to alter the states of circuit components in electronic integrated circuits, causing transient errors to occur, such as corrupted data in electronic memory devices, or incorrect performance of CPUs, often referred to as "soft errors" (not to be confused with software errors caused by programming mistakes/bugs). This has been a problem in electronics at extremely high-altitude, such as in satellites, but with transistors becoming smaller and smaller, this is becoming an increasing concern in ground-level electronics as well.[77] Studies by IBM in the 1990s suggest that computers typically experience about one cosmic-ray-induced error per 256 megabytes of RAM per month.[78] To alleviate this problem, the Intel Corporation has proposed a cosmic ray detector that could be integrated into future high-density microprocessors, allowing the processor to repeat the last command following a cosmic-ray event.[79]"

There's a case later in the article, of a commercial aircraft's flight control system being damaged in flight by cosmic rays resulting in severe injuries, so there are real-world consequences to their impact on electronic devices. Btw, IBM was the storage provider at LLNL, thus the reason for the 1990's test.