external drive failure rate?

[danimal13]

i have a 64gb crucial m4 SSD in my laptop that i use for my os and programs and a my passport 500gb external drive for everything else. i was wondering if it would be wise to invest in a cloud storage service to back up my external. i heard the failure rates on these externals are pretty high. Thanks in advance.

 

[F1shF4t]

I'd just get another external 2.5" HDD for backup and store it in a different place. I don't like the idea of someone having my files.

The 3.5" externals can be pretty crappy and most are. The 2.5" externals I think are pretty good though. They don't get too hot and not much can go wrong with running just off usb.

 

[danimal13]

good point about other people having my files. i do have my old hdd in an aluminum enclosure that i bought when i got my ssd. i will do monthly back ups on that then. would it be okay to just leave it in the box the enclosure came in and slide it in my drawer for a month while im not using it?

 

[Anteaus]

Redundancy is always a good idea. I personally haven't had any externals fail, but that's not to say it doesn't happen. Of the few that other people have owned that I failed, I believe all them were due to the integrated controllers...the hard drives themselves were usually fine.

I agree with F1sh. It's better to just buy another external drive that you hook up occasionally to sync everything. I think cloud services are useful for businesses, but would you really want all your personal stuff on some server somewhere that people might have access to?

 

[danimal13]

Redundancy is always a good idea. I personally haven't had any externals fail, but that's not to say it doesn't happen. Of the few that other people have owned that I failed, I believe all them were due to the integrated controllers...the hard drives themselves were usually fine.

I agree with F1sh. It's better to just buy another external drive that you hook up occasionally to sync everything. I think cloud services are useful for businesses, but would you really want all your personal stuff on some server somewhere that people might have access to?

sweet thanks for the reply guys. im not to sure if you saw my above post, but no harm to the drive if its stored in a draw only to be used once or twice a month? If you did not, short recap: old hdd in an aluminum external enclosure to use for back ups. stored in box it came in, inside my desk drawer.

EDIT: heres the enclosure i bought: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392032

 

[Charlie98]

I put my backup/backup drive in the safe. The idea of a redundant backup (a backed up backup if you will...) is to isolate it from a catastrophy at the PC site. If it's in a drawer next to the PC desk, and your house burns down... everything is gone.

 

[danimal13]

I put my backup/backup drive in the safe. The idea of a redundant backup (a backed up backup if you will...) is to isolate it from a catastrophy at the PC site. If it's in a drawer next to the PC desk, and your house burns down... everything is gone.

good point, i was just wondering if lack of use would cause any problems for the drive. id hate to have my external fail only to realize the backup did as well

 

[Anteaus]

Lack of use shouldn't cause problems. In fact, I would think it would extend the life of the drive by limiting the amount of times it cycles. I've had internal hard drives sit on shelves for years just to hook them up and get data off of them.

Maybe someone else can answer the question as to how long a drive can sit before any chance of data lose is possible, but I think it's a non-issue. I hook my drive up once a week and sync it with my internal backup drive.

 

[bmaverick]

I have an external HDD docking station (cradle) that takes internal SATA drives or SATA laptop drives. The Tripp-Lite unit is sturdy, reliable and can run for 24/7 easily. The connection is via USB-2 or eSATA port to the PC/Laptop.

http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/model.cfm?txtModelID=4484

I grabbed mine from NewEgg. The cradle works great. No problems like the external enclosures that overheat.

 

[danimal13]

Lack of use shouldn't cause problems. In fact, I would think it would extend the life of the drive by limiting the amount of times it cycles. I've had internal hard drives sit on shelves for years just to hook them up and get data off of them.

Maybe someone else can answer the question as to how long a drive can sit before any chance of data lose is possible, but I think it's a non-issue. I hook my drive up once a week and sync it with my internal backup drive.

awesome. thanks a lot for the help guys

 

[Jman13]

I love cloud backup, frankly. I use CrashPlan. Good client, easy backup, unlimited storage for about $3 a month. Nice thing is that all files are encrypted (blowfish), and you can choose just how private you need them to be. You can have your account password only as required to decrypt (which they of course have, and if they were feeling nefarious, I suppose they could use)...you can have a private password that is used to encrypt, that they DON'T have.

Or, if you're really paranoid about others possibly having access to your files, you can choose when you do your backup to have an encryption key generated locally, which you then store (and should definitely back up)....and they never have it, so you simply send encrypted data to them that can't be unlocked by anyone but you. Of course the downside is that if you lose your key, your data is garbage, but that's why they offer the other options. That encryption method is basically impossible to crack, and they can't look at anything. I tried a bunch of them when I was trying to decide where to go, and CrashPlan seemed the best to me...had the best client (you can choose what folders and files to backup...a few of these services don't allow that...it's all or nothing), good prices, good service reports, and if your initial backup is enormous, you can have a hard drive sent to copy files to and send back as your initial backup.

If I need to recover files, I can go online through the website to download all or part of the backup (can select individual files), or even pull them down on my phone or tablet. If I lose my whole PC, I can order a hard drive with my backup on it so I don't need to download 1.4 TB of data.

I have 1.4TB backed up (I also have a few off site storage solutions). I'm a photographer with hundreds of thousands of images, and it's really nice to know they are backed up off site within a day of a shoot, without me having to think.