External Back Up Drives

[light_with_jb]

Hi there

I am looking for a 2TB external HD to back up my work. Any suggestions?

3 Basic Questions:

1. Which vendor?
2. FIreWire-800 or some medley of USB/FireWire connections
3. Which manufacturer?

I am looking at a Western Digital 2TB My Book Studio Edition II Quad Interface External Drive for about $300 at B & H. Think I can do better?

Thanks

JB

[light_with_jb]

Hi there

I am looking for a 2TB external HD to back up my work. Any suggestions?

3 Basic Questions:

1. Which vendor?
2. FIreWire-800 or some medley of USB/FireWire connections
3. Which manufacturer?

I am looking at a Western Digital 2TB My Book Studio Edition II Quad Interface External Drive for about $300 at B & H. Think I can do better?

Thanks

JB

[wlachan]

After went through some dead external because of overheating, I would not buy any external w/o active cooling again. For 2TB, how about the WD green 2TB with Thermaltake Max4 which has USB2.0 & eSATA (sorry no Firewire).

[Ari]

2tb is an awful lot of information to trust to one drive......I would look at some economical RAID solutions. I am really impressed by drobo boxes, but you can diy one on the cheap.......

[wlachan]

Ditto, that's y i always hv 2 copies of data on 2 seperate hds at all time (actually I have 3 right now lol). From what I have read, Drobo is a cool when it works. But when it went ugly, it brought those data to grave as well since it doesn't use standard raid configuration. Anyway, I have reservation about raid 1 only solution cos if the raid hw went crazy, both hds would be affected too. Not exactly a backup replacement.

[imtheguy]

It all depends on your requirements. As far as vendor, I use Newegg as my benchmark for price and service but everyone has their favorite. I am sure they have a bigger selection than B&H and they are just as reliable. As far as interface e-SATA is fastest if your PC supports it, if not, a box with both USB 2.0 and Firewire is pretty flexible. Manufacturer is not something you will notice when using it so I put little stock in that. Name brand is fine but only a few names make the drives and a lot of names make the metal box for external apps. Again, check the ones you like on Newegg and read the customer reviews. Decide what matters most to you: price, aesthetics, warranty, internal fan so it can run 7/24, speed, name brand, anything else that matters to you.

The most important recommendation I can give you as an IT pro is to use TWO external backup units even if you must use smaller ones to cut cost. That way you can keep one off-site (at a family member's house, at work) and one on-site (assuming your house) to do backups as needed. Then swap the two every week or two or after real significant events. If there is a disaster of any kind (fire, lightning that takes out everything plugged in, theft) you still have all your data and pics. Last but not least, do what 95% of people do not do and that is to verify your backups occasionaly by restoring the data to make sure they are reliable.

I have helped more than one office restart their automation from scratch after they lost EVERYTHING because their backups of customer data and billing either didnt exist or were stored in a nice small safe that was stolen along with all the computers over the weekend. Sad but true.

[imtheguy]

Ok, you confused the hell out of me posting the exact question in two different forums. After I responded to the first I hit this one and thought I had lost it.

[Jim Royal]

My backup strategy is in two parts: Internal backup and external backup.

My first line of defense is an internal Time Machine drive that backs up my entire system automatically. This is a rolling backup that tracks all changes going back about six weeks.

My second backup is a pair of extrnal hard disks to which I back up once a month. But I do not use external enclosures. I used bare drive mechanisms.

Why not use external drive enclosures? Cost and convenience. I have purchased a number of expensive external drive enclosures over the years, and have found that the pace of technology makes them a little too disposable for my taste. So, I now use a $30 SATA-to-USB adapter cable and plug the bare drive directly into the computer's USB port.

I then store the drive mechanisms in one of these cases:

Pelican™*Products*1300*Case

The case is full of cubed foam, cut to match the shape of the drives precisely. The case is airtight, water titght, and extremely tough. I store the case off-site as a hedge against unforeseen disaster.

And when I need additional storage, I just buy another drive mechanism, and carve out a new slot in the foam. Much less expensive and troublesome than external FireWire or USB enclosures.

I would have preferred my adapter cable to go from SATA to FireWire 800, but the costs of those adapters is obscenely high.

Hope all that helps.

[Jim Royal]

See my reply to the duplicate thread in the Post-Processing forum. No point in carrying on the conversation in two locations.

[Lowell Goudge]

there are a lot of comments here,

Ari "2tb is an awful lot of information to trust to one drive......I would look at some economical RAID solutions. I am really impressed by drobo boxes, but you can diy one on the cheap....... "

wlachan "After went through some dead external because of overheating, I would not buy any external w/o active cooling again."

the points here are really you need multiple back up , and back up should not be a contionually powered device but something you canm move away and lock up. otherwise it is primary storage.

a mybook 2TB is ok for temporary / back up applications, as are a host of other passivly cooled devices, but if you want to use something for primary storage, then it should go in a force cooled box because it will be on 100% of the time you run your computer.

[Lowell Goudge]

Originally Posted by imtheguy

I have helped more than one office restart their automation from scratch after they lost EVERYTHING because their backups of customer data and billing either didnt exist or were stored in a nice small safe that was stolen along with all the computers over the weekend. Sad but true.

A big deterrent for stealing the safe too, is the four, 6 inch long 1/2 inch diameter lag bolts and corresponding plugs that most suppliers recommend using to hold the safe down to a floor, or into a structure..

Does this make it theft proof, sadly not, and not intended to be.

it will, however slow any one down and cause them to make a lot of noise, and spend more time than a causal thief would want to, at the location.

As for off site, I am now seriously looking at the my passport drives, at 500GB. These are now about $140 and are small enough to fit in a small safety deposit box.

Unless you live in the US there is nothing safer than a bank

Sorry guys but I couldn't resist

[rparmar]

I have 3x 1TB. One pair is mirrored (manually). The third is off-site (or should be). Like others I would not trust all I have to one 2TB drive.

[Duck Dodgers]

Multiple enterprise drives, off-site. And redundant DVDs are not a bad idea either. (All drives fail; some fail waiting to be installed, i.e., while new.)