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Backup external harddrive


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...Or random abuse. :)

 

I need a good, rugged, external harddrive that can connect via USB. Like all good consumers and cyber-peasants I trust your insane advice more than any reviews online. So shout away!

"It wasn't lies. It was just... bull****"."

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tarna's dead; processing... complete. Disappointed by Universe. RIP Hades/Sand/etc. Here's hoping your next alt has a harp.

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Take a good solid HDD from a reliable company like Western Digital and put that in the external HD chassi of your choice. Voil

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Important: as the following sentence contains many naughty words I warn you not to read it under any circumstances; botty, knickers, wee, erogenous zone, psychiatrist, clitoris, stockings, bosom, poetry reading, dentist, fellatio and the department of agriculture.

 

"I suppose outright stupidity and complete lack of taste could also be considered points of view. "

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I purchased a Simpletech external HD a few weeks ago. Its not fancy, holds about 60 GB and so far its been reliable. Connects through USB. I forget exact price, but I know it was less than $80.

 

I don't know how to quantify its "rugged-ness", but design wise its seems to be built ok.

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You could buy an iPod or iRiver MP3 player and use it as a portable HD. MP3 players are designed to be dropped a few times and it handily doubles as a music player too.

Edited by Jumjalum

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But the point is that a backup HDD needs to last not a few weeks, not a few months, but years and years. So none of the cheap stuff will do.

DISCLAIMER: Do not take what I write seriously unless it is clearly and in no uncertain terms, declared by me to be meant in a serious and non-humoristic manner. If there is no clear indication, asume the post is written in jest. This notification is meant very seriously and its purpouse is to avoid misunderstandings and the consequences thereof. Furthermore; I can not be held accountable for anything I write on these forums since the idea of taking serious responsability for my unserious actions, is an oxymoron in itself.

 

Important: as the following sentence contains many naughty words I warn you not to read it under any circumstances; botty, knickers, wee, erogenous zone, psychiatrist, clitoris, stockings, bosom, poetry reading, dentist, fellatio and the department of agriculture.

 

"I suppose outright stupidity and complete lack of taste could also be considered points of view. "

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One of the cool things about that 2.5 TB RAID NAS is that if one drive craps out, in RAID 5 or 1+0 you could swap out the bad drive with a new one and recover your data. However, $2700 is a bit pricey.

 

But, more realistically ... A few things to consider ...

 

Top brand HDD's (Western Digital is also my personal favorite) have 5-year warranties, and just so long as you're not doing backups every night, they will probably last longer than that.

 

Slower HDD's are somewhat less prone to failure (but a 5400 RPM drive is obviously 66% as fast as the 7200 RPM drives - but this shouldn't make too much difference for backups).

 

Laptop HDD's are slightly more shock-proof and rugged (i.e.: able to survive a drop). That said, if you drop any HDD while it's running, you're rolling the dice.

 

Firewire, SATA, and USB interface will be around for the long haul ... just don't screw up and get a USB 1.0 enclosure.

 

A quick search through some online sites has 2nd-shelf (i.e.: not 16MB cache) WD HDD's for about $0.25/GB. Laptop HDD's are running about $1/GB.

 

I personally have a $10 USB 2.0 enclosure for a cannibalized laptop HDD (only 40GB, but I haven't come close to filling it). It works great, and fits in a shirt pocket.

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For the bulletproof reliability you are talking about, you probably want to go RAID. As for manufacturers, I am not sure who makes the most reliable consumer-class hard drives. In the enterprise world, Seagate's SCSI drives seem to be the best. I used to swear by them for consumer-class drives too until my roommate's Seagate's head crashed.

 

One thing I will definitely vouch for - if you put your HDD in a USB enclosure and lug it around wherever you go, it WILL crash. These things were not built for mobility, regardless of what their shock-tolerance-Gs specifications might say.

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I laughed when I realised you were suggestinga terabyte of storage space. I can't even begin to imagine using that much storage. :D

 

I'm only really interested in having a constant backup of my work files. Somethings so if my old warhorse ofa PC keels over suddenly I won't lose the vital data. What I'm looking for is something that will patiently and reliably double up my files.

 

I guess I'd consider spending up to

"It wasn't lies. It was just... bull****"."

             -Elwood Blues

 

tarna's dead; processing... complete. Disappointed by Universe. RIP Hades/Sand/etc. Here's hoping your next alt has a harp.

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Then what I would do is to buy another HDD exactly the same size like the one youre using and then use your motherboard to run them in RAID 1.

 

Then youll have two identical cloned discs meaning that if one fails, all the data will still be left on the other drive and all you need to do is to run it as a regular single HDD to access the data again. It also means you will increase the read spead of you drives as the system reads from both simulatenously.

 

 

With an external USB hardrive, youll just neglect to do regular backups because itll be so slow to transfer data, and when the main HDD breaks youre left with your pants down.

DISCLAIMER: Do not take what I write seriously unless it is clearly and in no uncertain terms, declared by me to be meant in a serious and non-humoristic manner. If there is no clear indication, asume the post is written in jest. This notification is meant very seriously and its purpouse is to avoid misunderstandings and the consequences thereof. Furthermore; I can not be held accountable for anything I write on these forums since the idea of taking serious responsability for my unserious actions, is an oxymoron in itself.

 

Important: as the following sentence contains many naughty words I warn you not to read it under any circumstances; botty, knickers, wee, erogenous zone, psychiatrist, clitoris, stockings, bosom, poetry reading, dentist, fellatio and the department of agriculture.

 

"I suppose outright stupidity and complete lack of taste could also be considered points of view. "

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I laughed when I realised you were suggestinga  terabyte of storage space. I can't even begin to imagine using that much storage.  :D

:D I presently have a little over 1.5 Tb on my newest rig. Running out of storage space irritates me.

Ruminations...

 

When a man has no Future, the Present passes too quickly to be assimilated and only the static Past has value.

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That and backing up all my music and movies onto my drives.

Ruminations...

 

When a man has no Future, the Present passes too quickly to be assimilated and only the static Past has value.

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