hard drive help??

I have had two "portable external hard drives" and both got corrupted.

Can someone explain me, are these three things different and is the top one safer?

LinkStation Duo LS-WXL/R1 Network Storage | Buffalo Technology

Seagate Goflex 2TB Desk 3.5-inch USB 3.0 External HDD - Black: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Seagate Expansion 2 TB External Hard Drive, USB 2.0: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

(number 3 is the thing thats fucked up twice I had already, so i dont want to buy one or two if they are basically the same thing with a different name)

 

The Buffalo /R1 models each come with two drives. You can configure those drives in either RAID 0 or RAID 1.

-RAID 0 "stripes" data across multiple drives to increase performance and storage space -- this means it writes one block (stripe) to the first drive, the next to the second, and so on for as many drives as you have in the array. while this increases read/write speed since it's spread across multiple drives, there's no redundancy so if a drive goes bad, your data is toast.

-RAID 1 will write the same data to two drives and check them against each other. If one of the drives fails, you can replace it and recover from the other. If your data is bad and is written to both drives, you still won't be able to get it back.

An old mantra of the IT field is "RAID isn't bakcup." you want to have a primary storage location and back that up periodically so that you have a copy in case something goes wrong with the primary storage. I would get the Buffalo 2-drive unit, set it up in RAID 1, put it in a safe spot as far away from your computer as possible (in case of fire, etc.) and back up to it nightly with a few old versions in case something changes and you don't notice immediately.

 

Yeah. I really need to figure out and get a very reliable data backup system. We handle some very expensive information, and losing that stuff by some hardware failure would suck huge donkey balls.

Got any suggestions? MONEY IS OF NO CONCERN!

(I hope. I know your IT stuff can sometimes get incredibly expensive. At random and without reason.)

 

Actually, I do but I'm really not prepared to pay that kinda money for data backup. Maybe in 5 years.

Sounds pretty good, actually. Is there an extremely secure version of the sites you mentioned, and would you know the pricing?

 

We do offsite backups with a company called CoreVault. Pretty good pricing structure.

For in house RAID systems, I can't recommend the Synology lineup enough. They have a custom linux based OS that makes setup and maintenance super simple. I want to get one of the two disk desktop models for my house so bad.

 

I'm unfortunately limited to things you can buy in Argos (gift vouchers from work for my employee of the year prize)

I am assuming the Buffalo thing is better for me, but dont really know why.

I thought about buying a 2 TB PC for £300... but all I want is a safe place to save my video's and music, and it seems too much. I want to buy a nice watch with the rest.

 

Basically, with the Buffalo unit, you have two identical copies of your data. If one drive goes bad, you can still get it back from the other one. With the others, you only have one copy. You said your old drives were "corrupted," were those problems with the drives themselves where you couldn't even reformat them or was it just a problem with the data?

 

Alright. I'd like to receive some insight here as well.

Just recently bought two external portable HDs (if it matters, one was a Toshiba 750gb, the other a Seagate GoFlex 1 TB) for a combined cost of around £150.
Additionally, I bought some smaller satellite storage in the form of two 32 GB thumb drives, (half-priced, one-day only).
As an example, if I were to exchange the two portable HDs for what would be a bigger, 2 GB external "desk" drive, (and also returning around £15 back into my pocket) is there even a difference when it comes to the reliability / duration concerns, or does it not even really matter, so long as I back up my data in various outlets and formats (flash, hard drives, blank DVDS, cyber cloud storage)?

I'm wondering, do most above-average tech guys disrespect portable external hard drives because they fail to live up to some measure of reliability, or is the technology that allows for these portable hubs of massive data storage unrealistic; meaning that as a half-minded consumer, we should all be aware that even the best of the line in external HDs will only last a couple of years (5 at max?) before the drive and/or data "go bad". I'm well aware of my novice stature in computer / IT concerns, but with the other fellows that consider this a life's work/passion, do you disagree, and if so, what brand and/or type of data storage do you opt to use most frequently?


The other thing I had in mind is that if external HDs are, for the most part, viewed as less reliable than their internal counterparts, what other measures should one take to make sure whatever data and digital info we have accumulated stays safe and forever accessible? Does flash memory last any longer, or is it viewed as any more reliable in the long-term, when it comes to the invisible countdown of drive failure? From what I have had time to read, it seems that a good viable alternative (not exactly one that is frugal, though) to storage concerns and backup would be the utilisation of a "hybrid" hard drive, one that incorporates the still-being-improved solid-state model, with that of a traditional hard disk. From what I've gleaned, if one or the other goes bad, (some reason the example always has it that the SSD component would be the first to deteriorate) the data would still be intact and accessible, because the drive would revert to performing like a regular hard disk.

 

The drives themselves in external hard drives are exactly the same as the ones inside your PC, so they should have the same failure rate. The difference comes in the enclosure. Some cheaper external drive enclosures are basically just shells around a hard drive with a small logic board in the back that allows for the interface (USB2 or whatever). If you perform a lot of sustained reads and writes on the drive, heat can be an issue and you can shorten the life of the drive. If you are looking at enclosures or ready made external hard drives, look for good ventilation and/or fans.

Flash memory has a theoretical maximum of read/writes. Not really an issue on thumb drives, but some worry that SSD's could have shorter life spans because of it because your PC is constantly read/writing to your primary hard drive.

Best advice I would have for you would be to use a NAS with RAID 1 or RAID 5 for your massive storage and backup needs. It's not a question of if a drive will fail, it's just a question of when. A RAID setup is the only way to ensure that when a drive fails, your data is relatively safe.

 

Everyone brags about MTBF, but that number is meaningless without a standard deviation and even with it you don't know when a drive could fail. You need backups and you need redundancy, if you're on a budget you have to decide what the right mix of the two is for you (in my case, a single primary drive with everything important backed up nightly to a pair of drives in RAID 1. I wouldn't mind having a secondary backup, but I can't afford any more drives at the moment, nevermind another computer to run them away from my desktop.