Community Newsletter: Q&A: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data
- 8/8/08 10:24 AM
USB is fine
by sys-eng - 8/3/08 5:39 PM In reply to: eSATA -- Not USB! by valleydesignMany PC's do not have an e-SATA port. E-SATA is fine if you have the ports but probably not worth buying a disk controller for it.
Don't get too excited about 3-GB vs. 480-MB interface. Your disk drive will not handle 480-MB sustained writes anyway.
A Couple of important things about external drives
by ProToolsGeek - 8/2/08 2:56 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
There's a few things to remember when buying external drives. I've used several dozen drives of various brands in the last few years for different projects and have noticed a trend in reliability.
First of all, the Avastor brand has always been a winner in reliability, as none we ever bought has failed. Never buy a drive that relies on "convection cooling." Always buy one with an internal fan. The internal fan helps cool the unit and the drive life is highly dependent on temperature. There's charts floating around showing an exponential failure rate VS increased internal temperatures. Some companies don't like to talk about this and it's one of those things that tends to happen after the drive is post-warranty.
Secondly, always get a drive with a three prong grounding type power supply. If there's a failure of your power supply, you don't want your computer to go down with it. This is also a problem some companies don't like to talk about.
There's some brands made to hit a price point (cheap) like office supply store type brands, and then there's others like the Avastor which are made for reliability because they're used many times in the field when used to store audio and video files.
There's various I/O ports available in the better brands in different combinations. Some will even have Firewire 1394a, 1394b, eSATA, as well as USB 2.0 ports on the back. These types will cover all territory for the near future, but what you need depends on the data bus transfer speed needs and the I/O you will be using. For video editing, I'd definitely make sure I got a 1395b Firewire port.
Lastly, no matter which brand you get, never move or bump a drive, especially when it's turned on!
For real safety, don't use a hard drive at all...
by RicF964 - 8/2/08 4:27 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I recently upgraded my second hard drive and made my own external with the old one. However, I don't look at the second one as a back-up, just a 3rd drive that I can store things on.
Hard Drives fail...no matter how good of a reputation they have, they do fail. Because of that, I use Carbonite to back up all my hard drives. Right now I have 114GB saved with them and the great thing about it is that they don't limit you...it's a fixed cost, just $49.95 year. It is easy to install, set up takes just one minute and it's completely automatic. As soon as you add or modify a file Carbonite automatically backs it up to their secure servers. You don't have to do anything!
It uploads 2-3GB a day so your computer will be running for a while initially but once it's done, your done. I think $50 a year is worth the peace of mind knowing that my stuff is REALLY backed up. In fact, I deleted a photo off my network by accident and all I had to do was go to Carbonite and it was restored in seconds.
Seagate External Drives
by irv60 - 8/2/08 5:24 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I purchased 4 750GB external drives from Seagate, Model #ST30000CB. 3 of the drives have failed during a storm. One drive failed while plugged into a surge suppressor (APC), and no electrical surge occurred. The other 2 drives were backup and WERE NOT PLUGGED INTO ANY COMPUTER OR OUTLET AND THEY FAILED. SEAGATE WAS NOT HELP.
I am now utilizing WD My Book essential.
I will never purchase Seagate external drives again.
Backup program
by doowopper - 8/2/08 5:41 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
For two years I have been using a fantastic program to back up my two internal hard drives and to make a clone of my C: drive. It is called Casper (http://www.fssdev.com/). It is very easy to use. I have an internal backup of my C:drive, and two external backups of each of my two internal drives (overkill?) - prepared the backups with Casper. Casper saved me twice in the last two years. One time lightning destroyed my motherboard. Another time lightning destroyed my C: drive. (Now, I turn my computer off if there is even a slight chance of a thunderstorm.) An easy to prepare cd allows for Casper to run without Windows loading. And the tech support also is terrific - twice when I used it, the tech person walked me through the procedures to restore my C: drive - no canned answers. I have no association with Casper - just passing on my experience with a terrific program.
Richard
You should Have More than One Backup
by waytron - 8/2/08 5:48 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I can not really recommend any single brand of external hard drive. I have had good and bad experiences with all of them. Like anything else, you can get a defective unit with any one of the manufacturers and you can ask 20 people which manufacturer is best and you will probably not get a single common answer. However, I would recommend sticking with a manufacturer who actually makes hard drives such as Seagate/Maxtor or Western Digital. It is not that the no name brands are automatically no good, it is just that you have no idea who’s hard drive is actually inside any given model. Keep in mind that external drives do not tend to last as long as internal hard drives. This could be due to improper cooling, the greater likelihood of bumping or dropping them or maybe they get accidentally unplugged at just the wrong time. How the external drive is actually used and the method or ease at which it backs up your files is dependent on the software that is either provided with the external drive or that you can purchase separately.
Personally I would never use an external hard drive for anything that is not backed up somewhere else. Well actually you should never use anything for data storage that is not backed up somewhere else. In other words, you should never have just one copy of your data. I would recommend at least 2 separate backups which if you include the original date would give you a total of 3 copies. Even burning CD’s and DVD’s that were once considered to be good long term backup solutions are proving to be not so reliable. There are many reports of this type of media failing in as little as 6 months. I personally have had some CD’s of mine fail after only 12 months. So, yes, you could very easily move all your music, videos and photos to an external hard drive and play them from there, but you still need a backup, second or third copy somewhere else.
So you really have a couple of options:
1. Purchase 2 or 3 external hard drives - One for your music and photos and the other ones to back up everything.
2. Purchase 1 External Drive and 1 Internal Drive - Another option, which I prefer, is to install a second internal hard drive in your computer and use it exclusively for all of your data. You can redirect My Documents to this drive which would then contain all your documents, Music, Videos and photos. You can also redirect other data such as Outlook or Outlook express to this drive making it your complete data drive. The advantage of this is that if something go wrong with Windows that requires a reinstall, all your data is safe on the second drive. The other advantage of the second internal drive is that is faster than an external USB drive and it is safe from bumping, dropping or other possible damage. Now you still should to buy an external USB drive or two to back it all up.
3. Online Backup - The last option is to just leave the computer the way it is and subscribe to an online backup service such as www.carbonite.com or www.mozy.com . For about $50 per year, these services will backup an unlimited amount of data automatically with out the need for you to do anything. Every time you make a change or add a new item to your computer, it automatically gets backed up. If you think about it, a good external backup drive with decent backup software will cost about $150. The expected life is about 3 to 5 years. I normally recommend replacing your drive every 3 years anyway. So the cost is really about the same without any of the hassle of backing up drives and program settings and worrying if your backup really worked. I can not tell you how many people I have personally run into that go through the steps of backing up their data only to find (years later) that they were backing up the wrong data or it was never working in the first place. The other advantage is you have your backup offsite where it is safe from fire, theft, flood or other natural disasters.
4. If money is no object, there are lots of other options such as a combination of Raid drive, backup drives and Online Backup to cover yourself completely.
Lastly, you expressed concern (as did I) about wearing out your primary hard drive by playing music from it all the time. To date, I have not seen any published evidence that this reduces the life of hard drives nor personally experienced a higher rate of hard drive failures with customers of mine that play a lot of music vs. those that do not. When you really think about it, the hard drive is getting so much work from other activity such as daily Antivirus and Spyware scans, constant updates and swap file access that I really do not think that music playing is really a big factor. I have many customers that stream music all day long from their computers and I have not noticed any difference in the life of their hard drives vs. anyone else. But time will tell. The other thing to keep in mind is that hard drives are really pretty cheap at $60 to $100. I personally recommend simply replacing them every 3 years just like you would with a set of tires on your car. Why wait until it fails? If you replace it before it fails, while it is still working, copying it over to a new drive is really very easy. On the other hand if you wait until it actually fails (which is just a matter of time), then you are in for not only the cost of the drive but also the cost and time to reinstall Windows, recover data that you did not have backed up, reinstall all your applications and drivers, search all over for original CD’s and programs that you downloaded, reinstall any printers, scanners, cameras and music players you may have, reconfigure all your personal and email settings and then figure out what you missed or forgot or lost forever.
Regardless of which methods you choose, I would still highly recommend having multiple copies and backups of your most critical data that you really need.
Dana
Wayland Computer
Why not use a cloud based backup solution?
by vineetkjain - 8/2/08 6:26 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
There are online solutions like Egnyte, which provide set and forget backup. The backed data can be viewed online, searched online. You can securely access this from anywhere and moreover, share with others.
They provide unlimited storage at $15/month.
One you have marked the folders to be backed up, Egnyte senses changes and pushes them into your online backup area. At any given time, you can see when each folder was backed up.
how valuable is your data?
by edpowell - 8/2/08 6:50 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If you're really interested in data protection balanced with ease of use, you should look into a Drobo (http://www.drobo.com). And please, don't get me started on scalability!
A Drobo will provide you with redundancy, hot-expansion capabilities, terabytes of space and the choice of how much space you want to buy. I strongly recommend their fantastic product.
2 recommendations for external hard drive
by Ikone - 8/2/08 8:12 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi Ben. My 2 recommendations are:
1) buy an external enclosure and then get an enterprise class hard drive to install in it. I highly recommend the Antec MX-1 enclosure. It's quiet, has silicon rubber shock doughnuts around the screws and, most importantly, it keeps the drive very cool. IMHO, the most neglected thing about using hard drives is keeping the heat down. For me, if a drive goes over 90F, it's too hot. Ignore the manufacturers' temp specs — drives have to be kept cool if they're going to be reliable. I have drives going back as far as 1996 that still work perfectly, even if they are too small to be practical today. The point is, I've never lost data because they failed. In fact, I've never lost data from a failed hard drive, ever, and I've owned more than 200 drives of all makes and models.
2) buy, and use, SpinRite (grc.com). Most people use it to rescue drives that are not readable anymore. To me, it's most important use is for maintenance. Run it at level 4 on your drives twice a year and your drives will have a much longer life.
I currently have 5 Antec MX-1 enclosures, 4 on a server and 1 on my main PC. All are working beautifully. Oh, and I have 1 spare MX-1, just in case.
BTW, I do backup religiously. I said I've never lost data from a failed hard drive? Well, I don't plan to in future either 
drives for external backups
by aofsilva - 8/2/08 8:18 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I´ve lost a few drives due to heat - at least I guess that is the reason.
In an external enclosure the drives tend to heat more also. So, now I only buy enclosures with cooling fans.
Another thing I noticed is that Samsung drives work cooler than Seagate or Maxtor (about 10 to 20 °C), so they are my preferred ones.
data backup vs. archiving
by sys-eng - 8/2/08 8:38 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
According to the many posts here, there is a common misunderstanding of data backup. Backed-up data resides in two locations such as two hard drives, a hard drive and DVD, a tape and a CD, etc. Archiving is moving data to another location for retention (long term storage). Backup is copying data for disaster recovery. Using an external drive for backup is a great idea. Except for a virus attacking both drives, the data is safe from either drives failing. The chances of both drives failing at the same time is extremely small.
If the data is very important such as photos, financial data, etc., then you should keep a CD, DVD, or tape in a fire-proof safe or at another site (friend’s house) too. This protects your data from a house disaster such as fire, flood, tornado, or theft.
data backup vs. archiving
by ewt38 - 8/2/08 8:53 AM In reply to: data backup vs. archiving by sys-engwhat you are sayig is that we had best use 2 locations no matter what we call it - backup or archiving, Am I correct? From what I can gather from other discussions, these drives all have a limited lifespan and should also be backed regularly. I guess my real question is - What is the best solution for long term archiving of photos, music, documents etc - all the important stuff of life?
best archive format
by sys-eng - 8/2/08 12:14 PM In reply to: data backup vs. archiving by ewt38I would say that the current best archive format for home PC is DVD. When the DVD is written, the label should include the date. I suggest refreshing the data every 5 years which will probably mean changing formats because someothing better than DVD will be available by then. I recently moved most of my CD data to DVD's.
What IS the best method?
by DamageIncM - 8/2/08 10:21 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
OK, so I can't read every single posts on the last 10-11 pages.
But what in fact ultimately IS the best way so save data today?
Personally I never REALLY lost data, not the important stuff anyways.
I remember computers, before even the P3-era, just failing which cause me having to start all over again.
But that was way before the "current era" of having so many digital files, like music/movie-downloads, saved images also from cameras, etc.
And during this time I only had an external Toshiba HDD fail on me.
I did kinda freak out, but I decided to rip it open and see what's in there.
So I ended up with a great WD Caviar I believe, less noise and better performance in the case too.
I have 3 individual drives now, meaning unrelated doing their own things.
One I use for the system, another for games or programs basically together with the system-drive, and then the last one for media and such.
The first 2 are Maxtors, already like 5 years old, still spinning along.
And the Western Digital is from like 2005, also still going.
All while being stuffed pretty full and being hooked on Diskeeper.
But seeing the age, I've felt I should be backing up stuff for a while.
It's just I don't know what to start, and most importantly, which method to use, which also wouldn't cost me too much.
But I could of course consider to buy 1 drive, many CDs/DVDs I don't have a problem with besides where to keep them and not losing them.
So I'd really like to know what in fact is the best way to do this besides personal opinions.
Please let me know. 
NAS Storage
by waytron - 8/2/08 10:47 AM In reply to: What IS the best method? by DamageIncMI fogot to mention NAS (Network Attached Storage). These are hard drive units that connect to your Network or router and provide storage for all your computers on the network. The buffalo LinkStation is an exceptional device in that it has two hard drives in it and can be configured as 1 large 1.0 terabyte drive or as a pair of mirrored drives at 500meg.
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