[pullhair] External Hard Drive [/pullhair]

[usayit]

I've had two Acomdata's fail on me after about two years of usage. One such failure took out the firewire port on my Mac <GRRR>. Cheap IDE internal hard drives were inside.

I've had nothing but good results from LaCie. As such I've stuck to them. No matter what anyone tells you, no hard drive will run forever. THEY ALL FAIL. Its just a matter of "when" not "if".

Go for redundancy but don't stop there... you also should do back ups. One way I've recommended to friends is to buy a hard drive dock or adapter that takes internal hard drives. I found an eSATA one for under $50 and I've seen USB based ones for even less. Save the boxes and anti-static packages and label them indicating which rotation. You save the $$$ of externals over internals and I've seen internal hard drives go on sale more often (some stores will sell unbox OEMS) Just dock the hard drive, make your copies, and store back in the box. Send one to a neighbors house or stored at work just in case.


Me? I'm still old school and back to magnetic tape.... its familiar technology in my field (disaster recovery and data protection).

 

[Hertz van Rental]

Anyone who is serious about backing up info onto a HD knows that the securest method is to use RAID - yet I don't see anyone mentioning it here.
Get one of these, set it to RAID 1 and relax.
RAID 1 saves all info to several disks simultaneously so if one disk fails you still have the another.
The LaCie drive has removable HDs to make life even simpler.
It is possible to set up separate disks as a RAID array but you usually need to get a software driver.

 

[digital flower]

http://www.maxtor.com/home-en-us.htmlMaxtor is now Seagate

"Maxtor is now Seagate.

Two great companies. One incredible family of products. Now at Seagate.com.

You want top-of-the-line hard drives — for backup, for portability, for networking. You've got it, now more than ever.

We've combined the best of Seagate and Maxtor to create the ultimate portfolio of hard drives. You'll recognize some old favorites and get to know some new ones. The very best of the very best. That's what's waiting for you — at the new Seagate online store. "

 

[usayit]

set it to RAID 1 and relax.
RAID 1 saves all info to several disks simultaneously so if one disk fails you still have the another.

Yup... that's what was meant as redundant. Mac OS X users can setup up RAID 1 out of a couple regular external disks which is what I do with a couple firewire LaCie drives. No extra software required. I believe the same can be done within windows as well.

Still.... RAID 1 should not replace backups.

 

[usayit]

http://www.maxtor.com/home-en-us.htmlMaxtor is now Seagate

"Maxtor is now Seagate.

I sure hope this doesn't mean lower quality out of Seagate...

 

[Dao]

set it to RAID 1 and relax.
RAID 1 saves all info to several disks simultaneously so if one disk fails you still have the another.

Yup... that's what was meant as redundant. Mac OS X users can setup up RAID 1 out of a couple regular external disks which is what I do with a couple firewire LaCie drives. No extra software required. I believe the same can be done within windows as well.

Still.... RAID 1 should not replace backups.

Yes, RAID and backup are total different things. And cannot replace each other. RAID is not designed for preventing data lost.

Multiple drives in a RAID system may fail around the same time. Especially when the drives came out from the same factory around the same time. I have seem many times that the RAID system failed due to multiple drives failure. (i.e. 3 drives died at the same time on a 5 drives RAID - IBM Server) I know some people purposely buy drives from different manufacturers or same manufacturer from different places to minimize this problem.

Beside hardware failure, you may lose data as a result of human errors, malware/spyware/virus or act of god. So backup is the best way to protect your data. Multiple backup including off site backup is even better. It really depends on how important you think your data are.

For me, I am storing my data on a local computers and back them up on a network storage based on OpenSolaris ZFS.

 

[Garbz]

Thanks Dao, I was about to post the similar thing.

RAID is NEVER a replacement for a backup. RAID is about availability not about backups. I have seen many degraded arrays fail during a rebuild and then people cry to me they've lost their backup, to which the reply is always that they never actually had a backup.

A backup protects you against powersurges destroying your hardware, protects against fire and flood, protects against physical theft of hardware, and most importantly protects against the inevitable "OMG I JUST HIT DELETE ON THAT FOLDER [fetal position]".

RAID does none of those. That said it has it's place. All my photos are on a RAID1 array. That RAID1 array is backuped to a removable harddisk which is in my desk drawer at work. Last time I lost a drive in the RAID array (degraded) I shut down the machine, grabbed the backup from work, bought it in and then proceeded to do an incremental backup of the data before I threw in another drive for a RAID rebuild. This ensured that if the RAID array falls over during the rebuild I still have a current backup, rather than a 2 month old backup. In this case everything survived and 3 months later the other drive died. However several of my friends have not been so lucky.

2 Drives with similar MTTF characteristics with identical run time on the clock, one fails, and the result of that is you physically thrash the other by restoring 1TB of data over a period of a full day... that's a recipe for disaster. I'd only ever trust this on small sub 100GB arrays.


Anyway I will say Merry Christmas to all, and leave you with three words I hope you take to heart: "OFF SITE BACKUP".

 

[rallysman]

I have an old Maxtor one touch (5-6 years old) that's still running solid.

 

[dhilberg]

Maxtor is now Seagate

"Maxtor is now Seagate.

I sure hope this doesn't mean lower quality out of Seagate...

It shouldn't. The two products are separate in the Seagate line: Seagate Barracuda and Maxtor DiamondMax. You can still buy "old reliable" without worry.

Years ago (2001 or 2002) I had two Western Digital drives and they both failed within a year of owning them. I quickly learned my lesson and have only used Seagate drives since, with no problems.

I have a separate desktop Linux machine that I use as a small server. It's been running non-stop for about five years on the same Seagate hard drive. It gets rebooted maybe twice a year. The last time it went 8 months without a reboot.

But yes, all hard drives will fail at some point. Anything man made WILL fail, especially something with moving parts. However, generally speaking hard drives are very reliable.

 

[usayit]

It shouldn't... but we all know business decisions don't always follow what's best for the product line.

 

[Dao]

I have seen many degraded arrays fail during a rebuild and then people cry to me they've lost their backup, to which the reply is always that they never actually had a backup.

And that is why they invent Hot Spares and RAID 6 so that the RAID system can rebuild as soon as one drive fails (for hot spare) and RAID 6 (or RAIDZ2 in ZFS) so that data is still good even 2 drives fail at the same time.

 

[chip]

I am amazed. When we are comparing no backup vs. RAID and various brands of harddrives, any backup is far better than no backup. Problem with most of us is we are too lazy to backup and may end up losing data from time to time. To me which brand of harddisk to use is almost immaterial as long asyou are diligent to back up periodically.

 

[usayit]

I have seen many degraded arrays fail during a rebuild and then people cry to me they've lost their backup, to which the reply is always that they never actually had a backup.

And that is why they invent Hot Spares and RAID 6 so that the RAID system can rebuild as soon as one drive fails (for hot spare) and RAID 6 (or RAIDZ2 in ZFS) so that data is still good even 2 drives fail at the same time.

No RAID in any configuration replaces the need for backup. If you consider storage in terms of a service, you need to think in terms of Availability (RAID) versus Recoverability (Backups). Two distinct "problems" that are addressed in different ways. I am with Garbz, I've seen hundreds of ways a RAID (of all sorts of configurations) fails to protect data. (Interestingly... a bunch are user mistakes)

If on a budget, I'd put a priority on backups (recoverability) over RAID (availability). A home computer/data rarely needs constant availability but recoverability is always important. (a user can live for days without access to the data but wants their wedding photos recovered).

The question is.... how much is your data worth to you?

 

[usayit]

I am amazed. When we are comparing no backup vs. RAID and various brands of harddrives, any backup is far better than no backup. Problem with most of us is we are too lazy to backup and may end up losing data from time to time. To me which brand of harddisk to use is almost immaterial as long asyou are diligent to back up periodically.

Agreed... but brand is not quite immaterial because the brand can mean many things: performance, quality and features. S.M.A.R.T. bit being a good one... multiple interfaces being very convenient... As said prior, I had a cheap Acomdata die on me. Fine! I can accept that. What I cannot accept was that when its controller failed, it took out one of the onboard firewire controllers with it. That's unacceptable and why I don't cheap out anymore.



For those that hate backups, you can consider using docks and a nightly scheduled copy of your data; Mac and Windows are capable of doing this. Still effort BUT just a tad more convenient.

Voyager by NewerTech- Hard Drive Dock for 3.5" and 2.5" SATA Devices provides high-performance and flexibility
Thermaltakeusa Â» Storage Â» BlacX

 

[Garbz]

And that is why they invent Hot Spares and RAID 6 so that the RAID system can rebuild as soon as one drive fails (for hot spare) and RAID 6 (or RAIDZ2 in ZFS) so that data is still good even 2 drives fail at the same time.

Yeah RAID6 addresses that in enterprise, but realistically how many people do you know who run a RAID6 array with hot spares? In discussions like this the KISS principle still needs to come into it somewhere

And it still won't prevent user error. Well ZFS may but good luck getting that running on a typical windows box