Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

WD has 5tb BLACK series drive on sale for $99.00.
Just think, last month I purchased two extra of those drives at $115.00.

For less than 1 2tb SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD V2 drive you could have two 5tb drives.
Remember, Safety in numbers.
Ok, ok they will a bit slower.
They're for backup, not a race up.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Also, one might want to check if the hard drive is CMR or SMR, Conventional or Shingled recording.
With Shingled recording, data on each track kinda overlaps data on the adjacent tracks. SMR drives are a bit slower in read/write because of this. However, they can pack more data onto a given platter size.
Not sure I like data overlapping other data. All my drives are CMR I believe.

Since I don't have a lot of data, I'd probably opt for the two 5s at this point.

Here's some info on what drives are what:
https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-drives-hdd/

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

WD couldn't give me an answer wither not the drive is a SMR or a CMR without opening the case.
Does it really matter?
$100 for 5tb of storage.
For a miserly $300 you can have three duplicate backups.
Safety in numbers.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Maybe..... maybe not. I don't care for SMR.

Did you check the link? WD drives are listed.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Let me offer a different perspective. What you really need is one on-site backup and one off-site disaster recovery (DR) copy of your data. Numbers don’t matter if your house burns down, is flooded, power surge, power supply failure, or lightning strike (direct or nearby). Also mirroring drives doesn’t help with a corrupted or infected file system. To address that you need versioning, which is typically part of good cloud storage.

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

My drives are in fire-resistant bags rated for 2000 degrees for one hour.
Those drives are in a fire resistant safe rated for 1700 for one hour.
Flooding isn't an issue where we live. BTW the safe is inside sitting on concrete blocks.
Lightning strike. I have five backup drives and not all are plugged into a usb hub at the same time.
Power supply failure. My notebook and usb hub, so that means the drives also are both on a battery backup.
So, my drives are safe.
I don't mirror.

Bayou

Cha ching! The best possible answer to the backup question.

If you don't have a "cloud" backup with permanently stored historical versioning, AND a local disk backup....you're not backed up.

Bayou

Fire resistance ratings are worthless for delicate electronics. Those ratings promise that papers stored within will come out of that hour long fire crispy brown, but still readable. Your drives would be long since ruined.

Without cloud storage that has historical versioning, you're not backed up.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

For one hour.

Do you trust your local fire department to extinguish a house fire in one hour? Including time for discovery, call, and travel?

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Only if one feels they would possibly need every single version of a file.
I'm totally fine with only current version in archive.
If I want to save an old version, the new version gets a name tweak when saved. BOTH are backed up....
That way I don't have to figure the same file name with different create dates. So much simpler to put the version in the file name. eg. File.html; FileOLD1.html; FileOLD2.html; etc.. No worrying about date versions or overwriting the wrong file there.
But everyone is different in their methodology.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Versioning is not something to address historical changes in a file. It's to address corruption of a file.

If a file gets corrupted, it is changed, so an incremental backup will back it up. If it overwrites the old file, you have lost it. Versioning prevents that.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Maybe I trust my computer too much... Only one corrupt file in over 30 years out of over 70,000 files.
Yea, I know, the one you need is the one that will become corrupted.
Then one has to remember the difference(s) in the versions.

In a manner of sorts, I do have some versioning. My backups are "full" and I have four backup dates saved at a time. However, I don't check or use every file on a regular basis. So I would have no idea if a 5 year old file became corrupt or not. I'm not going to save all file backups from creation as I have many files that are over 30 years old.

Bayou

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I think the most frequent reasons I hear online for avoiding cloud services are (1) 'I don't trust my files with the cloud'; (2) the cost; (3) the time it takes to recover a lot of files.

(1) Encryption apps are available so you can back up encrypted files so you don't have to worry about someone seeing your data. Probably useful for financial data but kind of overkill for family photos. And not trusting the cloud thinking they will go out of business can be addressed by using more than one cloud service.

(2) The cloud is insurance. How much is your data worth? You insure your car (required in most states if your car is licensed to go on the road). You insure your home because it's a big ticket item. You insure your health (if you can) because healthy and happy are two sides of the same coin. The cloud will keep your data safe from local and regional disasters. Local disasters happen. Houses burn down. Regional disasters are less frequent, but they happen also. The cloud distributes your data across the country or even across continents, so regional disasters are not a problem.

(3) The cloud is secondary backup. Your local backup is primary. In the event of a local disaster, you can recover your files. Many services will lend you a disk with your data if you need to restore large quantities of data, otherwise, a couple days of internet usage shouldn't be a problem. I have been using Crashplan for cloud backup. They allow me to store my data in the cloud, but also on a local drive simultaneously. If I need to restore files after a non-extreme problem, I don't have to spend bandwidth to do that since I also have the entire backup locally. With versions.

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

When it comes to back-up I believe you need 2. I lost a drive years ago with my photos on it. When you prize your pictures you can't trust a hard drive will worn you before failing. I know it is rare but it happened to me and that was the end of my storage. Some drives can be recovered at a cost and if the new solid state drives it's 100% lost.