external hard drive
Jul 14, 2017 19:25:53 #
larryepage
Loc: North Texas area
The unfortunate truth is that we live in an increasingly non-archival (non-archivable?) world. Here is a summary:
The original CD-ROM and DVD-ROM technology used fairly high-powered lasers to burn small pits in the aluminum material inside the plastic. Once written, data on these discs was safe for many years...essentially as long as the plastic material of the disc retained its integrity allowing it to be loaded into a drive and remained transparent enough for the beam to pass. The writable discs that were introduced switched to a dye technology...the laser either changed the color of the dye representing individual bits or it did not. Testing has generally shown a reliable life span of 7 years for information on these discs.
Flash memory devices come into the world to live a life consisting of slow death as data is repeatedly written to them. Individual bits fail one-by-one, putting individual files at risk and eventually rendering the device as a whole useless. Best defense here is to periodically reformat them with a "full format" which will identify and map around the bad bits. Additionally, the connectors on USB drives are really quite delicate and can fail mechanically without warning. One of my friends lost her entire collection of purchased music when the connector pulled off her USB memory stick when she unplugged it. There was no advanced warning. As flash drives (USB, SD, SDHC, SDXC, CF, and all the others) have become commodities and grown in capacity, the pressure on manufacturing cost have become incredibly intense. Build quality on almost all is comparable to the lowest cost point and shoot cameras.
Spinning magnetic drives are quickly becoming obsolete. They face the same cost pressures as just discussed for flash drives. These are worst for the "consumer" lines...for instance Western Digital Blue and Western Digital Green. WD Black are high performance drives aimed at gamers and the like. They are not ideal as 24/7 drives. Western Digital Red drives are optimized for 24/7 service in servers and as backup drives. The discs in the Red drives are balanced to tighter standards to reduce vibration and bearing wear.
Solid state drives are where the action has been for awhile. They have the same wearout problem as flash drives, but most good ones come with management software to manage aging. (Can you say firmware? No, wait. We had that discussion in another topic.) And they are really fast...several times faster than spinning drives...and they use only a fraction as much power.
The most powerful weapon against loss of data is diversity...multiple copies in multiple locations. But also be aware of the limitations of each format.
LP
The original CD-ROM and DVD-ROM technology used fairly high-powered lasers to burn small pits in the aluminum material inside the plastic. Once written, data on these discs was safe for many years...essentially as long as the plastic material of the disc retained its integrity allowing it to be loaded into a drive and remained transparent enough for the beam to pass. The writable discs that were introduced switched to a dye technology...the laser either changed the color of the dye representing individual bits or it did not. Testing has generally shown a reliable life span of 7 years for information on these discs.
Flash memory devices come into the world to live a life consisting of slow death as data is repeatedly written to them. Individual bits fail one-by-one, putting individual files at risk and eventually rendering the device as a whole useless. Best defense here is to periodically reformat them with a "full format" which will identify and map around the bad bits. Additionally, the connectors on USB drives are really quite delicate and can fail mechanically without warning. One of my friends lost her entire collection of purchased music when the connector pulled off her USB memory stick when she unplugged it. There was no advanced warning. As flash drives (USB, SD, SDHC, SDXC, CF, and all the others) have become commodities and grown in capacity, the pressure on manufacturing cost have become incredibly intense. Build quality on almost all is comparable to the lowest cost point and shoot cameras.
Spinning magnetic drives are quickly becoming obsolete. They face the same cost pressures as just discussed for flash drives. These are worst for the "consumer" lines...for instance Western Digital Blue and Western Digital Green. WD Black are high performance drives aimed at gamers and the like. They are not ideal as 24/7 drives. Western Digital Red drives are optimized for 24/7 service in servers and as backup drives. The discs in the Red drives are balanced to tighter standards to reduce vibration and bearing wear.
Solid state drives are where the action has been for awhile. They have the same wearout problem as flash drives, but most good ones come with management software to manage aging. (Can you say firmware? No, wait. We had that discussion in another topic.) And they are really fast...several times faster than spinning drives...and they use only a fraction as much power.
The most powerful weapon against loss of data is diversity...multiple copies in multiple locations. But also be aware of the limitations of each format.
LP
Jul 14, 2017 19:44:40 #
12 years ago my son and I bought extra HD space and he wrought a program where our computers contact each other via internet, and download that days work we are up to 4 TB each and we live 1500 miles apart. I am sure we both have a lot of worthless information, pictures, and we should not forget hummer.
Jul 14, 2017 19:46:41 #
Carbonite.com. I just have them back up all of my files daily and when I need them Shazzam. There they are. Really cheap insurance.
Jul 14, 2017 20:44:51 #
Jul 14, 2017 20:47:07 #
Jim Bob wrote:
Don't know about "the best" but I have had excellent experience with Western Digital.
I've had bad luck with the "packaged" external drives. But their enterprise and gaming oriented performance drives (Re and Black series) are extremely reliable. You pay a little more but they are quite good. All you need is a $25 enclosure, a screwdriver and about 3 minutes of your time to install the drive in the enclosure and you are good to go.
Jul 14, 2017 22:37:26 #
Gene51 wrote:
I've had bad luck with the "packaged" external drives. But their enterprise and gaming oriented performance drives (Re and Black series) are extremely reliable. You pay a little more but they are quite good. All you need is a $25 enclosure, a screwdriver and about 3 minutes of your time to install the drive in the enclosure and you are good to go.
Yes, that is true. Between my son and I, we have three WD My Book drives. One, is about 10 years old, one is about 5 years old and the other is about 2 years old. Never a problem and they are cheap. They contain the WD green drives and that is good choice for this application. And you get them ready to go as just a plug in and go for PC or mac. Even a cave man can do it.
Jul 14, 2017 23:19:18 #
Whatever you use, backups of your backups are vital! Also, using RAID 1 storage is beneficial. I use a Western Digital (WD) ThunderBolt drive system attached to my iMac and Synology NAS Servers as well. ALL drives are WD RED or RED PLUS, and all are configured as RAID 1. In addition, I keep one copy off-site. Best of luck.
Jul 14, 2017 23:25:49 #
cjc2 wrote:
I just make multiple backups - and RAID is a good "professional" measure.Whatever you use, backups of your backups are vital! Also, using RAID 1 storage is beneficial. I use a Western Digital (WD) ThunderBolt drive system attached to my iMac and Synology NAS Servers as well. ALL drives are WD RED or RED PLUS, and all are configured as RAID 1. In addition, I keep one copy off-site. Best of luck.
Jul 14, 2017 23:53:04 #
rehess wrote:
I just make multiple backups - and RAID is a good "professional" measure.
With the relatively low cost of larger hard drives, RAID is a good measure period. I would not wish to see anyone lose all their precious family photos.
Jul 15, 2017 03:35:59 #
bsprague wrote:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1277275-REG/wd_wdbyft0040bbk_wesn_4tb_my_passport_portable.html
That's a really great price.
Jim
Jul 15, 2017 04:10:14 #
dandina wrote:
what would be the best external hard drive to store photos, and would it be better to use usb drives for storage?
I mostly use Transcend external HD's....they are weaponized almost for military grade drop testing...Solid..reliable...no aux power supply needed...
Amazon.com has good prices on them....
Transcend External HD
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005MNGQ6C/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This case is a perfect fit for Transcend external HD's
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000HDJT4S/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
this six foot extension cable gives a more relaxed connection to your machines for the external hd. Most external HD's come with a very short USB 2 or more like USB 3 cable..
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CFLNUAE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Jul 15, 2017 06:25:04 #
One of the best ways to be sure your Hard Drive does not fail is to replace them often. I replace my drives every year, I use the old drives as back up units. I copy over the data then unplugged the drive and store it is dry container with some desiccant packets. I have been an Electrical engineer for over 40 years, and I have worked with computers since the 80's. My first computer was per-digital camera. That said I will say that using portable drives is great but do not leave them running. It is best to connect make your back up and disconnect them. Those running Drives in Raid, you should also be running some type of drive life software, this will report the condition of the drive. Also be ware that the mirror drive does not contain an exact duplicate of the primary drive, it is a mirror. If the Primary fails the process for restoring the mirror is challenging. This dual drive system should be run in a server type environment using three drives. One containing the server operating system and two running in Raid. That way the server operating system can always be restored if that dive fails and it will not affect the data drives. And if one of the data drives fails it is easily restored from the remaining drive. In this discussion there hast been discussion about types of drives, I would will add that the latest SSD Solid state drives are as good as it gets, in addition great advancements have been made in conventional drives. I have found that the Crucial SSD drives have the best performance for the cost. I am not a fan of Samsung as I had much heartache with one of their SSD units. All drives need to be handled with much care, recently a friend lost a 3TB drive because he kept it connected all the time, and it was on an unstable surface, it was also in the side up vertical position. While the drive makes will say that drives are all position I will tell you that current production models have only one double row ball bearing and it is designed to have the drive in the horizontal label up position. Also never move a drive when it is running, that can be the kiss of death, never put one next to a printer or other device that creates vibration drive heads are micro inches off the spinning disks, 10 times closer than the thickness of a hair. If the head comes in contact with the disk both are damaged. SSD drives do not suffer from this but they don't like strong magnetic field, they also incorporate TFT, thin film technology. A hard impact at an odd angle can snap a circuit connection and your done. I always treat my drives as if they were my wife's Grandmas Chrystal. I do use the rule of three for my back ups. But all the drives are in the same location, not the best idea. Happy Snapping.
Jul 15, 2017 08:51:17 #
bdk wrote:
Right now I have 2 WD hard drives, a seagate 1Tb that fits in your pocket and an internal drive 2tb in an external case. another internal drive in an external case was given to me, years ago, its still working. I wouldnt use a USB drive for storage IMHO
How do your externals connect to your computer? Aren't they connected by USB?
Jul 15, 2017 08:55:17 #
I have two WD 1Tb "pocket" drives, very pleased. The latest replaced a "book end" drive that failed after many years. Then again, my tertiary backup is Carbonite.
Jul 16, 2017 11:25:42 #
larryepage wrote:
The unfortunate truth is that we live in an increa... (show quote)
Thanks for all that info. larryepage.
And welcome to the Hog.
Marion
If you want to reply, then register here. Registration is free and your account is created instantly, so you can post right away.