A Question About Back Up Drives

[MichiganShootist]

I bought a Seagate Free Agent external drive to back up my PC. I would like to store it in a different building other than my home/office in case of a fire or other terrible event.

My pole barn/garage is 100 feet from my home and would be perfect....But... I live in the frozen North...and while the building is dry---it's not heated. How could or would that effect the hard drive????

I have been told by some that the potential condensation will ruin it... others say no problem if I let it warm to room temp. before firing it up. All Seagate will say is that that type storage is not recommended.

What do you guys (and gals) think????????

[Graham Smith]

Very cold weather can be a problem for a hard drive. Despite being "sealed" there is still a small opening into the drive case to allow pressure to equalize. It is possible during the process of cooling and warming as it moves from one area to another for moist air to enter and then condense.

If you are considering the issue of storage, get a small fire resistant lock box. It's worth having one to protect papers anyway.

[larry cazes]

Best way to deal with condensation is to just allow the drive to sit disconnected and powered off for a few hours in the intended environment before powering it up and using it. As long as you do that you will not have a problem. This is a good idea for ALL electronic devices that are not hermetically sealed.

[Got Juice?]

Get a USB Key. or Solid state drive. Faster than a traditional HDD, and not magnetically influenced.

Portable, and easy to use, and cheap to replace when necessary.

[Pro-Pain]

I agree with the small lock box. I think the cold weather/condensation would be detrimental to the drive. It's sensitive electronics, and you may findthat's not the ideal place. You said home/office, are they one in the same? Or could you store the home backup at the office and the office at home?

[Flatland Shooter]

I rotate through three separate external drives. One will be attached to the computer, a second is stored in my gunsafe, and a third is kept at my daughter's house. My gunsafe is rated as fire resistant, is located in a detached garage and has one of those electric (heated) dehumidifiers in it.

If you have electricity in your outbuilding, consider a lock box with a Golden Rod dehumidifier in it. Should keep it nice and safe and operational on a moments notice.

Several folks have recommended I not use a thumb drive for a backup drive due to reliability issues. I've never had a thumb drive go bad and recently saw one at Best Buy marked for use as a back up. It cost about 3 times as much as a standard thumb drive.

Bill

[markcic]

How much data do you need to back up?

[CHA-LEE]

Instead of using external standard hard drives look into USB memory sticks. You can get 128GB USB memory sticks for like $30 a piece. That is a TON of storage space for very little money. That and it will be far more portable, and heat/cold resistant than standard external spinning disk hard drives. If you have less data to back up you can find 8 - 16 Gig USB memory sticks for like $5 - $10 a piece. That is cheap enough to make multiple backups of your data and store it in multiple places for very little money or hassle.