Advice sought/WTB hard drive backup

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Rikkitic

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#249410 9-May-2019 16:32

I am looking for recommendations and/or offers for a good, reliable external hard drive for backup use. The drive would almost never be used, just plugged in for occasional data transfer and then put away. It should be around 4+ TB, not SSD. I currently have a 4TB Seagate which seems reasonably solid so maybe another one of those but it has been a few years and I don't know what has changed. It doesn't have to be super-speedy, though of course I would prefer something not too slow. If anyone has any suggestions or a drive they want to sell let me know.

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#2233849 9-May-2019 16:49

I know you are a bit techy.... an option you have got (not necessarily a great one, depending on your perspective) is to get a USB to SATA Hard Drive Dock like this one http://www.dynamix.co.nz/Y-1092 and buy an internal drive. Keep it normally in an anti-static bag somewhere it won't get knocked around. Internal SATA 4Tb drives should be cheaper than External USB, though I've heard that this is not always the case.

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michaelmurfy

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#2233857 9-May-2019 17:01

I bought a couple of these 8tb drives for my server to "Shuck" the drives out of: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LQQHLGC/

Basically, the externals have "white label" drives in them which are the same as the WD Red NAS drives so are quite reliable. I currently use these drives in my server as they're a lot cheaper than buying WD Reds. As an external, quality is very good. Just remember with buying from Amazon that the power supplies have US pins on them however any 12v 2+amp power supply will work with them.

Also, general rule of thumb, if the data is important then consider putting it also somewhere else other than a single external drive.

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Rikkitic

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#2233883 9-May-2019 17:20

That looks great. Thanks for the tip.

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richms

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#2233926 9-May-2019 18:48

Externals are generally cheaper than internals, but its luck of the draw as far as the drives go.

I don't think they are doing 4tb shingled drives yet, but its probably something that will come if not already so they can get the platter count in them down.

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#2234200 10-May-2019 07:20

No individual hard drive should be thought of as reliable. They'll all fail, the only question is when. Any individual site (home, work, data centre) can also be destroyed with no notice. Your backups should address these risks. Cloud backups can be reliable - for example files stored in AWS S3 are stored in three different data centers, which are all in the same region but physically separated. S3 glacier costs US$1/TB, but it's cold storage - don't use it if you regularly need to restore from it.