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Help Needed: Portable Hard Drive's...

doktorfeelgood

doktorfeelgood

layin' it down like pavement
Dec 19, 2007
1,264
61
North Kingstown, Rhode Island
#1
I'm looking into getting an external portable hard drive to back up my computer data with. Could anybody please tell me what would be the best one to get or any other info pertinent to this item....Such as , is there any major differences in the brands and are there any problems that might arise from using these, i.e. losing your data, etc...? I'd really appreciate any help. Thanks )-(
 
#2
I don't really consider a portable harddrive to be a viable, long-term backup solution. Especially not for important files. However...
Most brands have pros and cons. Connectivity (firewire, USB, network etc.) is one. Size is another. Brand can be misleading, as often times the enclosure can be made by one brand, but the actual drive within is made by someone else.
Read reviews on them, but take them with a grain of salt. HDDs die all the time, from all manufactures. You'll hear some people stay away from brand A, and buy brand B, whereas others are the exact opposite.
I can't really interject my personal opinion here. I have a NAS that keeps almost all of my data on with RAID5 (can lose a single HDD and not lose data). Then, very important files are kept on the NAS, on a desktop here at the house, and on a DVD backup that I make (I have few enough things that I don't consider critical to just use one DVD to back those up) that is kept elsewhere in case of environmental issues (say, a house fire).
 
#3
The top two brands (in sales) are probably Seagate and Western Digital.
Either (and most other brands) should work fine. That's the easy answer.

The difficult answer is how to implement your backup strategy. A lot of
backup software (especially the stuff that comes bundled for free with
hard drives) is terrible. And for the average computer user, recovering
from a hard drive crash -- even with a backup -- is a nightmare.

FWIW, I'll tell you my backup strategy. I picked up a second internal
hard drive for my computers. I installed it in a spare bay and normally
leave it unattached. To back up, I connect the second drive and then
use clone software to make a clone of my main disk.

Now, if my main disk crashes, I simply hook up the backup disk and
I'm up and running instantly. I don't have to reinstall the operating
system or applications. All of my settings and data (as of the last
backup) are instantly there.

I use this strategy for Windows PCs and Macs. For Windows, I use
Acronis TrueImage to clone. For Macs, I use Synchronize! Pro X to clone.

By the way, don't get too overconfident with RAID network area servers.
Yes, you are protected from a hard drive failure. However, you are
not protected from a failure of the hard drive enclosure. You can end
up with two good hard drives with no way to read them. These NAS
systems often use their own file system which is not compatible with
anything else you have. I've seen this happen.

If your data is truly important (and it usually is), do not hesitate to
keep more than one backup. Spare hard drives are pretty cheap.
 
#5
warnergt said:
By the way, don't get too overconfident with RAID network area servers.
Yes, you are protected from a hard drive failure. However, you are
not protected from a failure of the hard drive enclosure. You can end
up with two good hard drives with no way to read them. These NAS
systems often use their own file system which is not compatible with
anything else you have. I've seen this happen.
Click to expand...
I built the NAS device myself. It's running Windows Server 2008R2, and it's a hardware RAID card on a solid AMD platform (Raid card is a Dell PERC 6/i). If this enclosure dies, it doesn't bother me much, as my truly important stuff is in two other places anyway, and re-copied bi-weekly. :) I've been in IT far too long and have witnessed first hand not only HDD failure, but RAID5 arrays go to hell when the parity from the remaining disks isn't intact enough to rebuild the last drive again.
 
#7
I use a G-drive 500gb for storing RAW files on location for photography as a backup. It is super fast for a USB powered drive and has worked flawlessly.

I would get on line and check reviews, I also checked a lot of the photo sites. A few definitely have reliability issues.
 
#8
I've been using Western Digital Externals for years with almost no problems.

I've had one or two break on me, but that is mostly my fault for dropping them. And to be fair to WD, I had dropped them without them breaking before haha

After having a lot of experience with both the WD Passports (very small and portable) and some of the larger WD Externals, I don't think you can go wrong. Figure out if USB or Firewire is more convenient, and most of them are USB-powered these days.

Figure out what your needs are and go from there. Externals are so cheap these days so it isn't even a big deal really. Though, as people have already said, I would make sure it is not your only source of backup, because that would just be foolish.

newegg.com is a great place to start. I also enjoy buy.com
 
#9
A couple of months back I bought a 2.5" external, USB-based, all-aluminium-bodied hard drive enclosure called an elephant2go:

Link Removed

It came loaded with a 500 GB 5,400 RPM Seagate hard drive which I promptly swapped with the 250 GB 5,400 RPM Western Digital HD in an acer 5517-1536 notebook I have.

Said swap gave me a chance to dismantle the elephant2go. It sports a sturdy, roomy, and well-ventilated, extruded aluminium case held together with machine screws.

Link Removed also offers 3.5" single HD, and dual HD RAID enclosures.
 
#12
Ray Salamon said:
I built the NAS device myself. It's running Windows Server 2008R2, and it's a hardware RAID card on a solid AMD platform (Raid card is a Dell PERC 6/i). If this enclosure dies, it doesn't bother me much, as my truly important stuff is in two other places anyway, and re-copied bi-weekly. :) I've been in IT far too long and have witnessed first hand not only HDD failure, but RAID5 arrays go to hell when the parity from the remaining disks isn't intact enough to rebuild the last drive again.
Click to expand...

Dammit dude, you're scaring me :(. I've gone through A LOT of data corruption, computer failures, hardrive failures, and general storage issues and finally with my 2TB bloat-wiped backup drive I felt safe and you've just ruined all of that :(. Is this NAS backup solution mac compatible? RAID isn't really an option for me as my main (and only) computer is a laptop. Suggested reading for keeping things safe and well stored beyond a simple backup drive? DO you have multiple DVD backups or just one rewrite-able? I think I may just start doing that myself and put all these currently useless blank DVDs my Dad has to work.
 
#13
Kwesi said:
Dammit dude, you're scaring me :(. I've gone through A LOT of data corruption, computer failures, hardrive failures, and general storage issues and finally with my 2TB bloat-wiped backup drive I felt safe and you've just ruined all of that :(. Is this NAS backup solution mac compatible? RAID isn't really an option for me as my main (and only) computer is a laptop. Suggested reading for keeping things safe and well stored beyond a simple backup drive? DO you have multiple DVD backups or just one rewrite-able? I think I may just start doing that myself and put all these currently useless blank DVDs my Dad has to work.
Click to expand...

They're a mechanical and magnetic device, what do you expect? :D
Honestly, a single external HDD would probably be good enough for the vast majority of people most of the time. For me, it's not. I mostly built the NAS so I could have 10TB of storage here at home for ripped DVDs, BluRays, and CDs - not for backup or anything like that. However, it does serve as one location that I keep files, but I don't count on it as my sole backup.
The main thing is to have multiple copies of everything. Three copies (one off-site; another house, safe deposit etc.) is the accepted minimum to be very safe. Any more than that and you're information better be valuable or basically irreplaceable.
I built my NAS for about $1050 total. However, I have Microsoft TechNet, so the Server 2008 license was essentially free. Even for people without that privilege, there's plenty of alternate, free OSes that one can run to manage the NAS box. Yes, it'd work with a Mac just fine.
My NAS and my PCs are obviously here with me. The DVD I burn is just a one-timer, not an RW. It's re-burned actually either bi-weekly or monthly, depending on how often I change the data, and then kept in a secure, off site location.
Now, if my NAS bites the dust (unlikely, but like I said, wouldn't be the first time I've seen it happen. Though with the reconfiguration I'm running on it now - to RADI6 - I'd have to lose 3 harddrives to lose my data), then I lose all of my ripped content and such, which while inconvenient, isn't anything I consider needing backed up.

Nothing is failsafe in IT. The best thing you can try to do is plan for the most likely problems/issues and have something in place to recover from them.

Edit:
The only two times I've seen RAID5 arrays fail are as such;
One was this old SUN storage that a company I worked with had. Basically, it had three trays that had 10 harddrives on it each. I think all said and done the thing had like 10TB of storage or something. But, if one drive would die, you have to pull the *entire* try out to change it. So you power it all down, pull this heavy tray out, and swap the drive. Then you slide it back in, and hope that all of the drives spin back up (i.e. don't have mechanical failure. When a drive is first spinning up, that's when the most mechanical stress is put on it. By a factor of about 5. So, what do you think the chances are of all 10 of those drives spinning back up when it was powered back on are? Keep in mind, this was an enterprise site that had people hammering on this storage for 8-10 hours a day. Needless to say, we lost more drives from failure to spin up than from drives naturally dying!).

Second one was when just one drive died in an array I had at home. Just a simple RAID5 with three drives in it. I got a replacement, and as it was rebuilding, there was corruption on the parity of the other disks, so it couldn't rebuild. As it was trying to though, another drive bit the dust, and I lost everything. It sucked :).
 
#14
Haha, very good points! A NAS or RAID setup are more than likely overkill for my situation but I do like the idea of having multiple backup sources. Maybe I'll find a second external hardrive in addition to burning important files to DVD.

Quick question though: Why not use a DVD-RW? Is it so that you have even more disc backups?
 
#15
Kwesi said:
Haha, very good points! A NAS or RAID setup are more than likely overkill for my situation but I do like the idea of having multiple backup sources. Maybe I'll find a second external hardrive in addition to burning important files to DVD.

Quick question though: Why not use a DVD-RW? Is it so that you have even more disc backups?
Click to expand...

I just don't trust RW media, really. No foundation on why, I just don't. I only keep two versions of the DVD (current one and one previous). You'll want to make sure that the discs you're using are of decent quality, too. Some of the ones out there are junk :)
 

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