Large and RELIABLE Storage

[adamwb]

So the time comes up again that I need more storage. I currently have an intel SSD for my boot / game drive, and 2 500gb Western Digital blacks I've had for several years.

I am hoping to buy something that has been at least as reliable as the Blacks. Before I bought them the majority of my drives would last about 18-24months before going out, and it annoyed the hell out of me. These blacks have exceeded my expectations for sure. I'm just wondering if I should be looking at anything else right now - or if I should just get a couple more blacks - and/or if there is a certain size I should be sticking with that is more reliable than another (1TB more reliable than the 4TB? etc).

Don't really care about speed - because my home pictures and movies will be going on these - so I need them to last as there is a lot of sentimental value going on these. I back up some of it on a cloud storage - but several TB of cloud storage is not economical (yet).

Also this might be a dumb question, but is there a limit on storage windows 7 can handle or can I just go crazy? I plan on keeping my current drives, and getting a couple 4TB's or 2TB's to add to it. My case has plenty of room.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

There is no such thing as a reliable hard drive, since they all will fail sooner or later.

The only way to safeguard your data is multiple backups. Perhaps a RAID 1 array in your PC, along with an external (maybe RAID 1 as well?) NAS for a second copy of your data?

But given you say there is a lot of sentimental value with the data, you should certainly have at least one backup copy, if not two.

 

[GobBluth]

Netapp

 

[DSF]

Are you being serious that the majority of your drives last 2 years or less before failing? If so, how many drives are you talking about and what kind of stress do you put them through? That's not normal for a home computer.

 

[mikeford]

Something many figure out shortly after their drive fails is that the cost of the drive is incidental to the value of the data.

 

[Charlie98]

Don't really care about speed - because my home pictures and movies will be going on these - so I need them to last as there is a lot of sentimental value going on these. I back up some of it on a cloud storage - but several TB of cloud storage is not economical (yet)

How much data are we talking here? I have all my important data spread (copied) across 4 different drives... 2 internal, 2 external, all 500GB drives, and additionally on my laptop. This is the stuff I CAN'T lose.

Redundancy is your friend...

 

[cbunn]

These blacks have exceeded my expectations for sure. I'm just wondering if I should be looking at anything else right now - or if I should just get a couple more blacks - and/or if there is a certain size I should be sticking with that is more reliable than another (1TB more reliable than the 4TB? etc).

As others have noted, every drive dies eventually. I've also had good experience with WD Black HDDs. I used a couple 500GB drives without issue for a few years. I have a file server running a RAIDZ on four 1TB Black drives. I remember one had an issue initially, but you do a bit of stress testing and find that out early so you can RMA and move on. I don't think there's any reason to believe a 1TB would be much more reliable than a larger drive. Perhaps fewer platters is better, but it's probably not going to mean a whole lot. Most drives either die early due to defects or last a few years without issue until they go tits up suddenly.

Don't really care about speed - because my home pictures and movies will be going on these - so I need them to last as there is a lot of sentimental value going on these. I back up some of it on a cloud storage - but several TB of cloud storage is not economical (yet).

Have you looked into Crash Plan? I don't want to sound like a shill, but I use it and it's great. $5/month (or less if you buy a year at a time) for unlimited backup from a single PC. I have about 700GB backed up right now. It takes a while to upload everything at first, but then it's just incremental updates from then on out. You should still keep at least two copies of your own, but this provides some off-site redundancy.

Also this might be a dumb question, but is there a limit on storage windows 7 can handle or can I just go crazy? I plan on keeping my current drives, and getting a couple 4TB's or 2TB's to add to it. My case has plenty of room.

No, not really. NTFS has a limit of 16 exabytes per volume, which I doubt you'll bump up against. The 2TB limit you might have heard about mainly applies to a boot drive using MBR. Switch to GPT and you're good to go.

The only caveat I would mention to your plan is that hanging on to older drives might not be the best idea in terms of reliability. Better to replace with something bigger.

 

[adamwb]

Are you being serious that the majority of your drives last 2 years or less before failing? If so, how many drives are you talking about and what kind of stress do you put them through? That's not normal for a home computer.

Yea, I'm being totally serious. Until I bought these 2 500gb WD Blacks, I went through sooo many hard drives. I had a couple only last a few months before going belly up. I was getting pretty fed up. I don't think I put them through much stress - no more than anyone else. My laptop for work gets treated WAY worse, and it's lasted for almost 2 years now, no sign of slowing down.

As far as online backups - I was using Mozy for awhile, but it had so many bugs, I just couldn't handle it anymore. And at one time I lost my hard drive, and found out that Mozy hadn't been backing anything up for a few weeks. Boo.

I'm more than willing to try another cloud backup thing - just not sure which one to get.

Edit: I just checked out that Crashplan and it looks a gazillion times better. 10 bucks a month for unlimited data and multiple computers - yes please =) Makes Mozy look like a complete ripoff.

 

[Elixer]

It hasn't been mentioned, but, pre-flood & post-flood drives are not built exactly the same.
How does this affect reliability ? It is too soon to tell.
They had to rebuild their factories, and who knows if all the kinks have been worked out or not.

Doing something like Crashplan is smart, but most ISPs have really, really crappy upload speeds, it can takes days, if not weeks to upload 1TB of data.

 

[Emulex]

RE4 SAS in proliant microserver with proper p400/p410 bbwc(fbwc) and enough ups to always control shutdown with temperature and humidity control should see 3-5 years of continuous near linear (backup) with no power save. bass/vibrations will knock that way down btw. htpc's and big drives = fail

 

[corkyg]

Reliability is best achieved through planned redundancy, because no single medium is wholly reliable all the time.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Amen to that.

 

[tweakboy]

Just stay away from Seagate and Maxtor.. As they have a higher failure rate

Grab a WD External and make sure it has power on / off button in back and it supports USB 3.0 or SATA 3.0 .......... gl