Best drives for backup?

[AFQ]

I've a few computers under my usage and all of my data is kind of scattered among them. Sometimes it makes very hard to find some particular file. So I am planning to put together lots of storage in a single system and back up all my files there or get some NAS.

But the main question is which drives to go for? I would obviously like to get SSDs since they have gotten cheaper now and they are fast but still the overall cost gets out of control when you are targeting about 3-4TB of total storage space.

So which HDDs should I go for? I want something fast but should be reliable as well. I can think WD Black from the top of my mind, what other options do I have?

 

[Anteaus]

For non-raid, non-NAS solutions WD Green drives are great for mass storage. Don't let the lower RPM fool you....they are fine for holding and transferring files. They are poor system drives though. Seagate also makes some great drives now, specifically the recent STBD4000400 (same as ST4000DM000 Bare drive). It has the bonus of being on the compatibility list of some NAS appliances, such as the Netgear RN314.

Note that RAID and NAS setups require hard drives that have appropriate firmware, such as the WD Red series. Whichever NAS appliance you look at, check the compatibility charts. Usually you can use whatever drives you want, but some companies such as Netgear will not give you support if you use drives that aren't on their lists.

Hopefully this helps you in the right direction. I recently shifted from having over 6TB of local storage on my desktop to building a Linux server and moving it all there. It's nice having every device in the house to be able to share the same file depository.

 

[corkyg]

The cloud also merits some consideration. Good backup usually means something offline that is not subject to local power hiccups and perturbations.

 

[AFQ]

For non-raid, non-NAS solutions WD Green drives are great for mass storage. Don't let the lower RPM fool you....they are fine for holding and transferring files. They are poor system drives though. Seagate also makes some great drives now, specifically the recent STBD4000400 (same as ST4000DM000 Bare drive). It has the bonus of being on the compatibility list of some NAS appliances, such as the Netgear RN314.

Note that RAID and NAS setups require hard drives that have appropriate firmware, such as the WD Red series. Whichever NAS appliance you look at, check the compatibility charts. Usually you can use whatever drives you want, but some companies such as Netgear will not give you support if you use drives that aren't on their lists.

Hopefully this helps you in the right direction. I recently shifted from having over 6TB of local storage on my desktop to building a Linux server and moving it all there. It's nice having every device in the house to be able to share the same file depository.

I've a 1TB WD Green in one of my systems and I feel it to be kind of slow but it cant be ruled out from possible options. Its major plus point is that its cheap.

And secondly, the WD Red also came up once I had made this thread. It is significantly cheaper than WD Black so it also makes up to be a good option. Furthermore, since its a NAS-specific device so I guess there wont be any compatibility issues that you mentioned.

May I ask that why did you go for a Linux server instead of a NAS? The main issue which seem to be holding me till now to jump to NAS is that most of them have their own OS and apps and you've to go through them or your browser to access files. However, I would like something which shows up simply in My Computer among your partitions or like how OneDrive/SkyDrive shows in Windows. I guess that's why you went for Linux server?

 

[AFQ]

The cloud also merits some consideration. Good backup usually means something offline that is not subject to local power hiccups and perturbations.

The cloud would be more risky as compared to local server if you consider hiccups and such. Furthermore, I would not be comfortable with hosting my files with Google or Microsoft for obvious reasons.

 

[Anteaus]

May I ask that why did you go for a Linux server instead of a NAS? The main issue which seem to be holding me till now to jump to NAS is that most of them have their own OS and apps and you've to go through them or your browser to access files. However, I would like something which shows up simply in My Computer among your partitions or like how OneDrive/SkyDrive shows in Windows. I guess that's why you went for Linux server?

My reasons are similar to your concerns. My biggest worry is that if my NAS appliance would fail, would the data on the drives then become inaccessible? I wanted to avoid RAID for this reason and with NAS devices RAID of one type or another was a defacto fact. I also didn't like that they were priced so high for comparably weak systems. Until I built my server, my files were stored on internal drives in my desktop and backed up on matching external drives.

As to my server. First, it was cheaper by a fair margin. For about 500 dollars, I built a low power Haswell system with 8GB of ram and onboard support for 6 SATA3 drives with space for new SATA controllers. My microatx case has room for 8 drives. Second, Linux is free and with Debian or Ubuntu Server you can do anything you want with it. Third, as per my preference I can avoid RAID entirely and mount the drives individually. Why would I want that you ask? Well, if everything but the hard drives died around it is very simple to move those drives to another system. So, if my Linux server died tomorrow, the drives can be installed and mounted on another Linux install with no array to rebuilt, just as a Windows NTFS drive can be moved around. Windows can even read EXT4 Linux partitions with the Ext2Fsd driver so if push came to shove I could still get that data off the drives. Assuming you maintain proper backups, drive failure is a non-issue, though some definitely advocate RAID for redundancy and uptime. I'm not one of those people. It always seemed to me that powering up all of the array just to retrieve one small file would just add wear and tear as well as waste electricity.

There is a learning curve though and controlling a Linux box via SSH is not as straightforward as a NAS web interface. My Linux setup is pretty simple. I use Debian Server headless with Samba for file sharing and miniDLNA for pushing media to my TV, etc. For backups, I use Beyond Compare 2 and sync the Linux drives to external drives via my Windows client.

Bottom line, it was a bit of work to learn how to use Linux and get it setup, but I'm glad I did. Before I bought my hardware, I installed Ubuntu Server on my laptop and learned everything I needed to know. I recommend you do that or perhaps run a virtual install or Live CD. You will know very quickly if it's a path you want to take.

 

[AFQ]

My reasons are similar to your concerns. My biggest worry is that if my NAS appliance would fail, would the data on the drives then become inaccessible? I wanted to avoid RAID for this reason and with NAS devices RAID of one type or another was a defacto fact. I also didn't like that they were priced so high for comparably weak systems. Until I built my server, my files were stored on internal drives in my desktop and backed up on matching external drives.

As to my server. First, it was cheaper by a fair margin. For about 500 dollars, I built a low power Haswell system with 8GB of ram and onboard support for 6 SATA3 drives with space for new SATA controllers. My microatx case has room for 8 drives. Second, Linux is free and with Debian or Ubuntu Server you can do anything you want with it. Third, as per my preference I can avoid RAID entirely and mount the drives individually. Why would I want that you ask? Well, if everything but the hard drives died around it is very simple to move those drives to another system. So, if my Linux server died tomorrow, the drives can be installed and mounted on another Linux install with no array to rebuilt, just as a Windows NTFS drive can be moved around. Windows can even read EXT4 Linux partitions with the Ext2Fsd driver so if push came to shove I could still get that data off the drives. Assuming you maintain proper backups, drive failure is a non-issue, though some definitely advocate RAID for redundancy and uptime. I'm not one of those people. It always seemed to me that powering up all of the array just to retrieve one small file would just add wear and tear as well as waste electricity.

There is a learning curve though and controlling a Linux box via SSH is not as straightforward as a NAS web interface. My Linux setup is pretty simple. I use Debian Server headless with Samba for file sharing and miniDLNA for pushing media to my TV, etc. For backups, I use Beyond Compare 2 and sync the Linux drives to external drives via my Windows client.

Bottom line, it was a bit of work to learn how to use Linux and get it setup, but I'm glad I did. Before I bought my hardware, I installed Ubuntu Server on my laptop and learned everything I needed to know. I recommend you do that or perhaps run a virtual install or Live CD. You will know very quickly if it's a path you want to take.

I just checked and Ubuntu Server is quite good and it has some good cloud/storage management tools aswell. I am doing a virtual install as we speak. I guess this will be a better and more robust route as compared to buying an NAS.

Anyway, back to the original question. In case I go with NAS, I'll probably get WD Red but if I go with Linux server, which drives should I get? WD Black or WD Green?

 

[MongGrel]

WD Reds seem to be what I've seen a few people lately,

I finally think I had a WD RE3 die last night on me out of the 4 running the last 7 years, might start switching to yhose in the future myself the RAID still kicking but down a disk.

I on the other comp I guess, but hate losing storage of course, the one here not the main doing fine, and the wife I need to set me up a central system really I guess.

 

[MongGrel]

Actually might not be dead still shows as free atm, but probably dieing.

 

[Anteaus]

Anyway, back to the original question. In case I go with NAS, I'll probably get WD Red but if I go with Linux server, which drives should I get? WD Black or WD Green?

If you plan to only mount the drives as individual partitions and move files between them yourself then you can go with whatever you want. If you ever intend to setup a RAID or use drive spanning software, I would suggest going with the WD Red drives or other drives that support features such as TLER. They are configured to handled the demands of a RAID array.

I personally have a mix of WD Greens and new Seagates with good success (knock on wood). If I were to buy more drives tomorrow, I will likely go with additional Seagate drives. I'm impressed so far with the new 4TB.

 

[ichie]

HDD is OK, there is no need to spend more money.

 

[Red Squirrel]

For backup I like to just get the cheapest/biggest drives I can find. You always want multiple copies anyway so if it does fail it's not the end of the world. Now, don't buy a drive that has known issues obviously. Also does not hurt to mix up brands a little to play it safe.

For active storage, I don't do anything but raid now. Too much work having to rebuild a file system even with backups. Easier to just pop in a new drive when there's a failure, and keep on trucking.

So basically: NAS/raid for active data, individual drives for backups. You can get a drive dock which is nice for this.