Thanks again everyone. I think I'm going to go with Seagate. Since the size of the drive doesn't seem to make a difference with respect to reliability, I think I'm going to take a look around at prices and such.

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I'd like to second this comment. Speed is a big factor with noise and heat. WD's have ALWAYS had noisy mechanisms all the way back to their 40Mb days.

As to life of drives, there are three factors that come in to play: Lot, Heat, & Power.

- Monday/Friday drives or bad lots happen all the time. I think most of the drives of the drives I've seen die were from this. I suspect that the Dells that Magsy mentioned had drives made in the same lot. PCMagazine published an artical recommending making sure that if you do a RAID setup you try to get drives out of different lots. It is usually printed on the drive itself. Buying a few weeks apart helps to ensure this.

- Faster spinning drives tend to get warmer. A hard drive cooler with a fan can help, but the down side is the fan will often make noise and let HD noise escape the case. What ever you can do to improve the airflow around the drive will be good for it. Several small or one BIG slow moving fan will be quieter than one 3" fast fan and do as good or better at cooling the HD an system in general.

- A good power supply in the PC (250wt MIN for an Intel or AMD based system with 1 HD and 1 CD + 50wt for each additional drive) , GOOD surge protectors (Tripp Lite ISOBar), or a UPS with line connditioning all help to make for a long life.

As for online vendors, Newegg.com is where I get alot of equipment for my office.

First post after lurking for a while


I am completely agreed with the need for a good power supply. If you're worried about HDs crashing/computer issues and losing all your music, I would say a powerful but steady PS is a first priority. For this I recommend an Antec in the "True" series, it's really not much of an investment for peace of mind.

Another vote for Newegg as well, they often have the lowest price and ALWAYS have the fastest shipping and best customer support.

Best of luck and happy listening,
morph

I buy from Newegg even though I live in Calif. and have to pay sales tax - it's just worth it to know they will ship fast, and won't play any games on me. They're great.

There are differences in all drives and they are measureable. There are many sites on the net including www.storagereview.com that test drives and report this data.

That being said, Seagate is a very reputable manufacurer. Their drives are not always the best in every measurable category, but they tend to keep a very good balance of price/performance/noise/heat/reliability. I've used a ton of drives by a ton of manufacturers and Seagates have been my favorites.

It's easiest to back a collection up to one disk at a time, rather than splitting it between discs. However, hard disks rarely give warning that they're about to die and I wouldn't advise keeping anything that you really don't want to lose on one disc. Making two copies with one on a seperate drive, especially one that doesn't stay attached to your computer, can safeguard important data.

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I am not a big fan of tape drives. They have their uses, especially for companies that must regularly back up large numbers of computers. However, for the home user, I think they end up giving a false sense of security.

Why? Because tapes are not reliable forms of media. Most experts recommend throwing the tapes away after a year of use, but most home users will not do that. What's the use of a backup if the tape goes bad, and you can't retrieve your data?

The absolute best method for long-term storage is magneto-optical media. It's not affected by magnetic fields (unlike tape and hard drives), doesn't mechanically stretch/shrink (unlike tape), and has no dyes that can degrade over time (unlike CD-R and DVD-/+R). Unfortunately, this technology never caught on in the US (although I hear it's very popular in Asia).

I think the most practical backup method these days, is to back up to another hard drive. It's fast, convenient, relatively reliable, fairly inexpensive, and not subject to some dye rotting away after six months of storage. Either mirror the drives, or put the backup drive in a FW enclosure or removable tray for off-line storage. Even better, use more than one drive, so you can rotate your backups.

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Hmm, well I really have no idea what the power supply is in my computer (you can tell I'm not a hardcore "Computer-as-Source" guy), but Sony did provide the means and instructions for installing a second hard disk, so I guess I'll be OK?

drminky: practically all standard IDE drives are 7200RPM these days, only exception being the WD Raptors at 10KRPM (which are actually remarkably quiet, reportedly, though i've never used one). In fact, modern 7200RPM drives engineered with noise levels in mind are *quieter* than old 5400RPM drives, which were built before anyone really cared about computer noise levels and used much more inherently noisy mechanics. I've used a hell of a lot of computers, and every hard drive I've heard before the modern quiet Samsung and Seagate models was much louder, despite lower spin rates (going right back to the 5MB hard disk on our old Apple ][ in the basement...)

nospam: yes, I should have mentioned the second-hard-disk model, it is indeed another very reliable way of handling things. I thought the cost might be too high, though. It's actually the method I use, effectively, since I have one copy of all my music on my HTPC hard disk, and another copy on my hard disk-based portable player...bit wasteful, but safe

I've had a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA 120G which suddenly (no warnings) died after 7 months. I was playing Doom 3 (maybe I hit the save key too many times (scared)).

Drives with more discs in them, hence more heads, would tend to be more of a reliability risk. Single disc drives would be best in this case.

If heat is an issue for drive reliability, then maybe it would be best to only have one drive in the case. Something to think about.
Maybe put your second drive (backup) in an external case to keep it from generating more heat in the case.

Whatever you do, backup your files. Whatever means possible (hard drive, DVD, RAID,etc.). Your valuable files (pictures, etc.) keep multiple copies.

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While I would agree with you that tape is probably not the best method for this application, unless someone gives you the drive. As far as the "after a year of use", that is for a case of the tape being written to, erased, overwritten on a daily or weekly basis.

But if you are talking about a back it up and put it away situation (Archive), tape is a VERY reliable medium with a shelf life measured estimated in decades for DDS("DAT") and newer tape designs. I replace my DDS tapes yearly (5) and carry last nights tape in my shirt pocket home with me, where it sits on my bathroom counter (a humid invironment) until the next morning, then goes back to work the next day and waits until its turn comes back up. I retire them at the end of the year, but I have the last 4 years sitting in my safe and have pulled data off them. I've had 1 tape out of the last 20 go bad, and that was before "retirement".