Best backup hard drives?

[BigDave]

What is your current preference for external hard drives for backup or photo storage. Based on George's advice, I picked up a Maxtor OneTouch back in 2007 and it has served me very well. But, is there something new/better that I should be on the lookout for? Lacie? WD? Seagate?

TIA

[sideshowbob]

I am currently running a LaCie 2big Quadra (2TB). I have it set up to run RAID 1. The drives are hot swappable. RAID 1 really gives me peace of mind. I have been running it continuously for about 2 years now. No problems at all.

[bbbean]

What is your current preference for external hard drives for backup or photo storage. Based on George's advice, I picked up a Maxtor OneTouch back in 2007 and it has served me very well. But, is there something new/better that I should be on the lookout for? Lacie? WD? Seagate?

TIA

After having both my primary and backu[ drives crash in a brownout, I've become a big fan of off site backup. I've used Carbonite for a little over 2 years, and have restored a crashed drive using the service. I'm very happy.

[Nik Habicht]

Dave,

it probably also depends on what you want to do --- create a copy of your hard drive so you can easily restore to a new or repaired computer, or just to back up critical data. If the key is to back-up critical data, then size of that data becomes a consideration. Do you need a hard drive? Would some USB Thumb drives or Compact Flash Cards do? The Lexar Pro series CF cards were pretty robust when I was at the paper --- more than one survived being run through the laundry. One advantage that Compact Flash cards offer is that with modern professional readers transfer times are likely to be faster than USB thumbdrives, especially if you're able to select a firewire option....

I'd consider 2 identical hard drives or two identical cards/thumbdrives --- if you decide to go that route --- so they can share the same connection and power cables. Place one on your desk and run your backup routine. Now place it in your safe, and when you next backup your data do it to the second drive. Exchange it for the first, and repeat. My back-up hard drive is only connected to power and computer when I'm actually using it; I unplug it as soon as possible to limit its exposure to viruses/malware and to electrical problems.....

[Patrick Sweeney]

I use a ClickFree connecting cable, and whatever 1 Terabyte drives are on sale at the office supply stores. (Latest price: $99)

The cable does a complete data backup the first time, which takes a while. (I have four 500 Gig HDs in my office box) Subsequent backups are done by checking changed files and adding those and only those to the previously back-up files. Two externals, stored in different places, done once a week, and I'm a happy camper.

Best part: to back up, I simply plug in the hard drive and fire it up. Plug in the ClickFree usb cable, and click "start". It does everything in the background, and quietly goes away when done.

[adweisbe]

There are a couple of different terms you need to be familiar with when picking a backup strategy.

Availability - Users want their systems, for example wrist watches, hospitals, airplanes or computers, to be ready to serve them at all times. Availability refers to the ability of the user community to access the system, whether to submit new work, update or alter existing work, or collect the results of previous work. If a user cannot access the system, it is said to be unavailable. (quoted from Wikipedia)

Durability - How durable are your backups? What kind of failure must occur for you to actually lose data, and what data will you lose? Consider the durability of the tail of your data that hasn't been backed up yet (for systems that perform periodic backups).

Versioning - What if the data your are backing up is already corrupted? If you overwrite backups you may eventually lose some data via corruption. If you periodically checkpoint your data and store that checkpoint indefinitely you are guaranteed to not lose the check-pointed data (assuming it is stored durably).

You need to pick what level of performance you want for each.

A service like Backblaze or Carbonite will give you excellent durability. They are durable in the sense that these services will store your data in several locations. If one of those locations fails you will still have a copy. If those locations are geographically co-located then your data will still be vulnerable to natural disasters or similar. Backblaze provides some versioning in that they keep a 30 day record of sorts. Backblaze does not provide much availability unless you are willing to get your data via the internet and your data set is small enough. to be downloaded in a reasonable amount of time.

Something like Western Digital's My Book Mirror edition provides a redundant array of two disks. If one disc goes down you won't lose access to your data nor will you lose the tail of your data that hasn't been backed up yet. Having two disks fails simultaneously is not unheard of which is why this is not a very durable solution by itself. Where it really shines is the added availability if that is important to you.

I recommend a combination of Backblaze and http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Book...2212&sr=8-1 (if availability is important)

This will give you availability and some durability locally via the redundant disc array and more permanent durability via Backblaze. It is up to you to come up with a versioning and check-pointing system for your data. You can use the two previously mentioned options as storage for your checkpoints.

I use a combination of Backblaze, Amazon S3, and Flickr (yes I know I shouldn't rely on them) for backup. I wanted RAID-1 array for added durability/availability but ended up with

http://www.amazon.com/HP-LX195-MediaSmart-...3333&sr=1-3

because I can actually run arbitrary applications on it 24/7 with minimal power and noise.

Edited November 30, 2009 by adweisbe

[P.E. Kelley]

I use a ClickFree connecting cable, and whatever 1 Terabyte drives are on sale at the office supply stores. (Latest price: $99)

The cable does a complete data backup the first time, which takes a while. (I have four 500 Gig HDs in my office box) Subsequent backups are done by checking changed files and adding those and only those to the previously back-up files. Two externals, stored in different places, done once a week, and I'm a happy camper.

Best part: to back up, I simply plug in the hard drive and fire it up. Plug in the ClickFree usb cable, and click "start". It does everything in the background, and quietly goes away when done.

Thanks Mr Sweeney!

I just ordered a ClickFree cable and two 500GB refurbed Hard Drives for $144.00 shipped.

The ClickFree HD's don't need the cable but I do have other HD's that will.

Merry Christmas!

Patrick

[Patrick Sweeney]

Glad to help. I don't know what gives me more of a warm fuzzy when falling asleep: the loving wife, the two devoted poodles, the piles of ammo, or the backup hard drives in fireproof safes in two locations.

[MoNsTeR]

WD Elements USB HD outside for backup. No particular preference for it over other brands, it's what was on sale at Newegg. It was cheap and works great.

(Plus real RAID-1 inside for fault tolerance. Expensive but worth it to me.)

[John Heiter]

If portability means anything to you, I'm a fan of these.

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/...asp?DriveID=722

1TB in size, don't need an external power pack, and are about the size of an I-phone so you can put a TB in your pocket and go. We picked up a couple for the office and I'm liking them.

[3quartertime]

+1 for the WD essential. Lots of guys at my work carry them around and share files. Just picked one up the other day. I only got the 500G model cause I'm thinking I'll get a few more and try to use them for dedicated type file storage...

[Tom S.]

I use a 1Tb WD My Book for my main back up. Something to consider though is on line storage. It's cheap, and if you suffer a major catastrophe like a fire, flood or theft, your data is still safe.