Backup for music - External Drive and Reliability - Page 2

The dock I have is from NewerTech. It seems fine. I bought the model because it was the only one at the store with an eSATA port. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by lostid 

I think I am going to order one of these from ebay.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-3-0-SATA-HARD-DRIVE-DOCKING-BACKUP-CLONE-DUAL-DOCK-/320717451990?pt=PCC_Drives_Storage_Internal&hash=item4aac3ff2d6

Never used them personally, but they look interesting. Let us know which route you take. 

I have a ThermalTake 2.5" and 3.5" external hard drive dock that uses USB 2.0 and eSATA. I bought three internal hard disk drives from Western Digital, Seagate, and Hitachi. All of them failed on me in less than one month of time after I purchased the hard drives. I encrypt my data using TrueCrypt and what I have noticed about using internal hard disk drives and full disk encryption is that the operating system must be absolutely reliable, stable, and dependable or else you are going to wind up with a volume bitmap error which leads to data corruption and loss.

I have a Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1.5 terabyte USB 2 external hard disk drive. I protect it using TrueCrypt. I never had a problem with this external hard disk drive and I have owned it for about two years now.

All hard disk drives are going to fail eventually over time because they are mechanical devices. I would recommend that you store your critical data on solid state drives and purchase a few hard disk drives for mass storage. Make sure that you make a backup of your data onto another storage medium and store it outside your home in a safe and secure area such as a bank vault. I would also recommend that you use full disk encryption to secure your data and you should store your user IDs and passwords in a password management system such as KeePass 2 or Password Vault.

External hard disk drives are not susceptible to data corruption and loss if your operating system is unstable or unreliable in my experience so long as you keep them connected to a powered USB 2 or Super Speed USB 3 hub and you connect your hardware devices to an UPS just in case you lose electrical power for a few minutes.

I would not recommend using an external hard disk drive dock and internal hard disk drives. I have had too many fail on me in the past.

Solid State or DVDs would of course be the best choices, but with libraries hitting multiple terrabytes I don't see either one as a practical solution.

Heck, mine is aorund 250gb and that's still ridiculous for either of those options.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lostid 

Thanks for sharing your experience. Interesting that no CD's/DVD's have failed me during the past 10 yrs. This leads me to believe that storing data on to CD's/DVD's may be the best bet.

 

 

 

The other problem I think would be burning out drives while doing the back ups. Depending on the library size you could easily burn through at least 2 drives.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by lostid 

I am with you. That's why I started this thread. 

 

Burning to DVd's is not that much a problem. The problem is when you try to access them one by one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you have a double layer DVD burner optical drive, then it would be best to purchase double layer and double sided DVD+R discs for backups. DVD is an incredible format and DVD discs are durable and reliable; they will provide you with years of archives if you put them into CD or DVD cases with scratch resistant sleeves. The problem is that you will need a lot of discs and accessing the data along with writing the data will be very slow compared to a hard disk drive or solid state drive.

The best compromise in my experience is to purchase a high capacity external hard disk drive with Super Speed USB 3 or eSATA connections. After the flooding in Thailand, hard drive prices have shot up quite considerably sometimes doubling in prices or more. They are still the best value for your dollar though and they provide you with a transportable capability so that you can move your data to different computers. If you are going to purchase an external hard disk drive, then here are my recommendations:

Dual drive bays with RAID 0 or RAID 1 hardware options for data mirroring

4 terabytes or larger

Super Speed USB 3 and eSATA connections

110 volt AC power brick and cord

Data backup software: Acronis TrueImage Home 2012 is the best option

It should cost you about $300.00 dollars or more if you decide to get such a drive. However, you will have a lot of time to store such a massive amount of data. I would not recommend that you purchase an external hard disk drive with a USB 2.0 connection as it is too slow for high speed data transfers and backups. I have a Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1.5 terabyte external hard disk drive with a USB 2.0 connection and it is constantly slowing me down. I have to wait for several minutes until the current job is finished either accessing or writing to the hard drive before I can queue another task. The differences in prices between a USB 2 and Super Speed USB 3 have narrowed quite a bit so you should definitely purchase an external hard disk drive with the latter option even if you don't have Super Speed USB 3 ports on your computer just yet. You can always purchase a desktop or laptop with Super Speed USB 3 ports at a later time and you will benefit by the 3 - 10 times speed increase without having to migrate your data from one source to another source all over again.

Acronis TrueImage Home 2012 is the best backup software for Microsoft Windows. You can make an exact image of your computer and save it in an Acronis TrueImage and you can restore your data perfectly from that image in case of a disaster.

RAID 1 mirroring becomes important when you want data redundancy. If you are going to store or backup a large amount of data, it makes perfect sense. If one hard drive fails, then you will have an exact copy on the other hard drive in case of a disaster. It is dangerous to store a large amount of data onto one hard disk drive because it will eventually fail in time.

Finally, use TrueCrypt to secure your data. TrueCrypt has an option to quickly format the encrypted volume so you won't have to spend an entire day or two to format your hard drive before it is ready to use. It is free and the source code is available for review. I would highly recommend that you choose Advanced Encryption Standard in XTS mode at 256 bits cipher strength with the SHA-512 hash algorithm for maximum data security. Choose a strong, complex, and random password with at least 20 characters in length and save that password in KeePass 2 or Password Vault. If you want more data security, then choose Serpent encryption XTS mode 256 bits with the Whirlpool hash algorithm. Serpent cryptography has a service life of 100 years and it has 32 rounds of protection, but it is very slow. So long as you are not using your external hard disk drive as a boot or system drive, you won't notice any difference in performance when writing large amounts of data.

Hard drive prices will not return to their pre-flood levels until sometime late in 2013. If you decide to purchase a hard drive, now is the best time to buy one. I would recommend that you purchase a Western Digital or Seagate hard drive as they have good warranties for most of their products. Hitachi is another good choice as well. Stay away from external hard drive docks and internal hard disk drives as there is no protection from the elements such as bad weather conditions and other hazards such as drops or falls.

My best recommendation is to purchase an external solid state drive. Yes, they are terribly expensive, but they provide the best performance and reliability and durability for critical data. I have an Intel Cherryville 240 gigabyte Solid State Drive in my laptop. I don't worry about the integrity of my data anymore.

You should also consider purchasing a third party extended warranty for your hard drive or solid state drive. Read the fine print for the extended warranty carefully before you consider adding it to your purchase to see if you would benefit from it. Most hard drive manufacturers are cutting their warranties for their products down to one year for consumer grade products.

You could also purchase an enterprise grade hard drive or solid state drive. They have more reliable parts or extra NAND Flash cells with higher endurance and IOPS with longer warranties that extend up to 5 years. They are much more expensive, but they are well worth it if you plan to archive a lot of data for a long period of time. Enterprise drives last longer and they are more durable and reliable and they offer top of the line performance in general.

http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=620

This is the Western Digital Live Duo 6 terabyte external hard disk drive. If you decide to buy an external hard disk drive, then this should be at the top of your list.