Internal HDD for Backup?

[slickshooter]

I need an internal drive for periodic backup. I just bought these two in a rush:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136874
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-396-_-Product

The Toshiba looks like it would be great for daily use. I would use a hotswap bay for the Green for occasional backup, but I'm afraid it will fail on me. Should I return it for something else?

 

[MustISO]

Any drive can fail. It's been about 6 years since I've had a drive fail and I buy all brands.

 

[Charlie98]

Why are you afraid the Green will fail you? I've got a Green in 24/7 video recording, it's been running for 2 years with nary a problem. You have it, load it up and use it!

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I would use a hotswap bay for the Green for occasional backup, but I'm afraid it will fail on me. Should I return it for something else?

Why would you have more confidence in whatever you replace it with?

I've used a 1.5 TB WD Green as an internal backup drive for 4 or 5 years.

Zero issues.

Signifying nothing.

I just replaced it with a WD Green 3 TB from Newegg for 99.99 a few days ago when they had a $20 off coupon. I don't have the slightest idea how long it will last. Nor do I have any way of finding out. Nor do you.

I will continue to use the 1.5 Green as an occasional backup unit in an external dock--running it maybe once every 3 months. I bought the 3 TB model only because I was running out of space on the 1.5 when it was mounted internally.

Do what helps you sleep better and worry less.

 

[slickshooter]

Why would you have more confidence in whatever you replace it with?

I've used a 1.5 TB WD Green as an internal backup drive for 4 or 5 years.

Zero issues.

Signifying nothing.

I just replaced it with a WD Green 3 TB from Newegg for 99.99 a few days ago when they had a $20 off coupon. I don't have the slightest idea how long it will last. Nor do I have any way of finding out. Nor do you.

I will continue to use the 1.5 Green as an occasional backup unit in an external dock--running it maybe once every 3 months. I bought the 3 TB model only because I was running out of space on the 1.5 when it was mounted internally.

Do what helps you sleep better and worry less.

I probably bought the same one you did. I'm just worried because of this review I read:

"I read about a lot of these drives failing after a few months. Each head park results in a load/unload cycle and it automatically parks after 8 seconds of inactivity. Most modern drives are rated around 600,000 cycles. Depending on how your system uses the drive, your drive should only have 10-200 cycles per day, but some these Western Digital drives are reporting 3000-5000 cycles per day. This will surpass the 600,000 cycle limit in a few months. The first thing I did with my new drives was to run the WDIDLE3.EXE utility on them to disable the 8 second head parking. To use this utility, you have to make a boot disk and run it from the command line. Google WDIDLE3 to research for yourself. Operating systems already have options to turn off the hard drive after so many minutes, so the 8 second head park is not needed."

I guess I can adjust the head park, but apparently that voids the warranty. Yeah, otherwise I get the gist that there is no real way to know how long a hard drive will last.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

My load cycle count on the 1.5 Green was about 150,000.

That for 4.7 years since I bought it.

That's about 32,000 per year. About 90 a day. About 6 per hour that my PC is on.

I'm not sure, but I think I may have done the head park adjustment you mentioned when it came to light several years ago.

My load cycle count on this new 3 TB model is 104 after 2 days. I have not even looked up whether there is a head park issue or a possible adjustment for it. Maybe WD resolved the issue in recent models.

Do what makes you feel better.

 

[corkyg]

Keep in mind that internal = online. Unless it can be powered off, the backup is also at risk for internal power hiccups no matter what kind of drive it is.

It is, however, better than nothing.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Keep in mind that internal = online. Unless it can be powered off, the backup is also at risk for internal power hiccups no matter what kind of drive it is.

It is, however, better than nothing.

Not to mention user errors, ransomware, virus, hacks etc.