External Hard Drives

External Hard Drives

I have never really had a look into them as i stored my stuff on several interal hard drives. Maybe it is better to have a backup at some other place just in case.

enlighten me with your insights. it seems that a lot of ext. hdd have some kind of backup software on them which does not seem very appealing.
are there any brands to avoid?

pic related seems quite solid

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Just get an external case with USB 3.0

Then you decide what brand, amount of storage or if the thing inside is an SSD or HDD, also replaceable if it fails.

they all work just fine really

just be ready to replace in 3 to 5 years

i have a toshiba from 2011 that still works, but is slower now, and also will suddenly cease to read when the cable is even slightly bumped.

Just avoid Seagate and you'll be find. WD is good, not sure about any backup software though.

Also, you get what you pay for. Just be prepared to replace after 3+ years.

i have thought about this. my fear is that it wont be really shock proof. I will probably store it at my parents house and only god knows what it will have to endure, there. but i might research some more in this direction, thanks.

replace because of data decay/loss or because the parts wear out? i wont be using it much, honestly. I just want to have my most important stuff in a safe place. will update it maybe twice a year or so.

i can totally tell you in my own experience that it is not shock proof, be weary of that

buy two then, one you keep with you, one to store

also buy one of those hdd pouches with the zipper on ebay

seagate never again, one of the mantras
good to know. a padded pouch will probably be the best solution to withstand rough handling

>is that it wont be really shock proof
Make it shock proof then, cushion it with something.

It's the best option imo because you decide what to put inside.

Don't cheap out and buy branded external hard drives, they often have very poor ventilation and have USB adapters that will die on you within a year or so of constant use. Do what I did and buy yourself a decently priced multi-bay external hard drive enclosure with a fan built in. Some even have RAID or automatic mirroring built in, but those will cost about $50 more than the JBOD or non-RAID enclosures. Nearly all of them come with USB3.0 connectivity, but you might also want to take a look at eSATA or Thunderbolt enclosures if you have those ports on your laptop/desktop. They're usually higher quality and eSATA enclosures don't have to mess about with converting SATA signal to USB's protocol.

I've downsized my torrent seedbox to a Pentium J2900 ITX board and case and have a Mediasonic hard drive RAID enclosure hooked up to an eSATA port using a PCIe x1 adapter card that has port multiplier capability (that way a single eSATA/SATA port can recognize multiple drives).
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The only drive inside my case is a 120GB A-Data SSD while I have 4 6TB WD Red Pros in the enclosure running 24/7. I probably still use less power than my older pre-built i3-2130 set-up with all the drives located inside a massive Dell case.

Would it be a great idea to buy 2 externals (like 6-8TB) and mirror RAID?

It's not the best of idea to buy two separate single enclosures and mirror them. I've lost entire arrays because one of the enclosures started shitting the bed during an 8-hour long transfer. It's best to use a single enclosure with multiple bays that has RAID capability built in, since not all multi-bay enclosures play nice when put in software RAID.

How much space do you need ?

WD offers some decent solutions that can have 1 or 2 disks.

You can setup the 2 disk external drive in a raid0 or 1 configuration.

If you want to get more out of your external storage, like say plex server, file server, whatever then consider spending the money and getting a NAS.


no , this sounds like a stupid idea.

RAID drives are so cheap now, its worthwhile if you have any critical data that needs to be backed up IMO.

If it's just system backups, just buy whatever is a good deal for external HDDs

This is what I have - but I have irreplaceable archived files to keep safe.

It was pretty cheap.

>RAID drives are so cheap now, its worthwhile if you have any critical data that needs to be backed up IMO.
Someone ought to take you aside and explain-like-you're-5 that RAID is not backup.

I have a tiny portable 2 TB HDD. Works well for school when I take big ass files around

Thoughts about the WD EX4100 ?

I would get some QNAP, but its just too much money

wait why not seagate?
I got one of their 2 TB external hard drives on black friday...

blackblaze published a report with damning stats about the failure rate of seagate drives and how much higher they were then everyone else.

I believe that was mostly limited to drives made in 2015 and the problem has already been fixed.
i havent followed it much since I havent bought an HD in years

I've been using the same 500 GB WD External for like 8 years now, I think you just don't take care of your shit, homeboy.

Multiple backups is always good practice. Just make sure each copy contains 100% perfect non corrupt data and you don't accidentally overwrite/replace good data with bad. If you use a drive only once to to the backup and then store it in like a anti static bag you should be good for several years or longer (long as you don't forget about it and accidentally throw it out or format it by mistake)

If I remember correctly, they were using consumer hands with (intended) very short lifespan, not suited for 24/7 deployment.

Before you run a backup scan your event logs under system, If you see NTFS entry for any drive then you better start praying. Pretty much any NTFS entry means something very bad has happened to a drive mentioned in the log and your data or the drive file structure is damaged/corrupt. Disk management sometimes lies. It'll say drive is healthy when it fact it has several NTFS entries for it in the event log. If you do see NTFS entry your better off just formatting the drive and run chkdsk. If chkdsk runs and finds nothing wrong then restore data from backup. The rub is that most likely the NTFS flag has been showing up for a while so your most recent backup will have damaged data/files in it.

actually, get a 2.5in hdd and an enclosure for that, then replace as needed

I got two of those drives and so far they have handled really well. I keep one with me and one in my desk. I read the hardware encryption is a joke and can easily be decrypted.

I bought a pair of seagate external drives a few years ago, the one I travel with is on death's door while the one in my home office is fine.