If you cannot find a good article that you can trust, then you must
take opinions of others.
So, this is my opinion about best drives to buy.
Even 1 month old Military specs 2-TB USB Drive can go bad. Mine did.
At least most of it was backed up on a different drive/system. It
only cost me $100 plus shipping for the original drive - from Walmart
of all places.
I always buy the best extended warranty I can get, for all my
electronics. At least this replaces the device that died.
First, I personally would not go larger than 2-TB for a drive as your
MOST needed data, unless you have drives that are designed for NAS or
file server equipment. That is my opinion for the drives I can afford
to buy, for the money I had when I need them. I use a desktop, and its
drives as the backup for my laptop data. It will end up as a file
server - one day. I believe in a many device backup system - as follows;
I backup the laptop[s] data to my "Silicon Power 2TB Rugged Armor
A30 Shockproof Standard 2.5" USB 3.0 Military-Grade Portable
External Hard Drive". Then take that drive and copy the files to my
file "server" desktop's 3 different 2-TB internal drives. The are WD
brand. Then I use a syncing backup script to the 3 external drives
- again WD drives - 6-TB internal and 6-TB external. So, I have at
least 2 different drives hold the "backups" of the data, if the
laptop drive goes bad. It could be easier if I had more money.
I looked at a few places and the "best" drive type I found so far may
be the WD Red Pro drives for NAS storage. They cost more than the WS
"Black" type, or other brands of drives. They are designed for long
life in demanding needs. I have seen the "red" drives as large as
8-TB for $400 USD. The 4-TB run about $150. If I have the money, I
would replace my current drives with these drives.
I currently do not have a NAS storage device - due to the fact I could
not figure out how to get my Linux systems to work with the current
router/NAS device I have, or any NAS storage outside of a desktop
setup. That is why I hope to get one of my desktops to be a true
Ubuntu file server.
On 10/16/2017 06:04 PM, Steve Edmonds wrote:
Hi Charles.
I have just had a new WD Black (supposed to be high(er) reliability)
die within a few weeks. Replaced under warranty.
The probability of that is low, but it does happen. If the backup is
only a copy of what is on your PC/laptop then you are not needing
such high reliability as you always have at least one copy on a failure.
I archive (backup and delete original from PC) so use a little DS216
NAS storage unit with 2 drives configured raid. Less frequently I
backup that to a single 4TB HD for off site safety (house burns down).
I also bought a drive on Amazon recently and noticed that there was
an option for $10 extra to cover data recovery in a failure.
I think your best solution will depend upon how much data you need to
back up and how often, an on-line solution may even work for you.
Steve
On 17/10/17 07:53, charles meyer wrote:
Hi All,
I have a SONY external hard drive that just died one day within it's
warranty period.
SONY won't recover my drive contents so the next time I've got an extra
$500 I'll have to find a data recovery firm.
I need to back up my contents - music, videos, data but I can't seem to
find an objective, independent evaluation of which external hard
drives are
most reliable.
Have you found any such article?
Or have you found through experience certain brands more reliable than
others?
Thanks so much!
Charles.