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External Hard Drive Shopping...
ShadowBlade
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey all,
Is there a Monoprice for hard drives? Looking for some cheap 1TB drives for back-ups and not sure if what I am finding are as cheap as they can be. Perhaps this is a bad idea for a hard drive? I have had my share of losses even on the "good" drives in my time.
Should I be looking in that "build" thread for this?
Is there a Monoprice for hard drives? Looking for some cheap 1TB drives for back-ups and not sure if what I am finding are as cheap as they can be. Perhaps this is a bad idea for a hard drive? I have had my share of losses even on the "good" drives in my time.
Should I be looking in that "build" thread for this?
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ShadowBlade on
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I picked up a Seagate 1TB 7200RPM external for around $99 on sale in a physical store about five or six months ago, and it's served me fine so far. The only issue I have is the power management feature, which means it essentially goes idle if it's not accessed in a while. If I want to transfer a large file I have to "turn it back on" by opening a document or playing a song from it first or else it will lock up.
If you were concerned about hard drive failure you could spend a little more money and pick up a Blu-Ray burner. Blank 25GB BDs look like they run around $2-$3 a piece though. This might be a better idea if you were looking for long term or vital data backup since the discs don't take up a lot of space and you won't have to worry about spontaneous failure.
Does the drive need to be external? Decent internal 1TB drives can be had for as low as ~$60-$70 on Newegg. If you later decided you wanted to be able to move the drive between systems you could always drop $20-$30 on a drive enclosure and turn it into an external drive.
One thing to look at if you're looking at external drives is to make sure they don't come with any "Security" or "backup" software built in. It's a pain in the ass to deal with and if you just get a normal drag and drop drive you can always find much better backup software online if you need to do imaging or something like that.
Thanks again.
As for pricing, internals can be found for as low as ~$110 on Newegg. There is an external from Buffalo for like $280. I have no idea why there is such a huge price jump. I don't know how much power a standard Blu Ray burner would require while burning, so I don't know what would happen if you tried to put it in an enclosure and power it with one or two USB 2.0 ports.
I'm kind of surprised no one else has chipped in any info, I'm sure there are plenty of people here who know way more about data backup than I do.
You would definitely need an AC adapter for a full-size drive, but most or all come with one.
Does your laptop have eSATA? It's the same speed as an internal drive, so it would be faster than USB.
eSATA would be a great way to go, but I've seen precious few laptops with an available eSATA port. Even still, if it's a backup, you're not going to be doing a whole host of read/writes all at once so a USB 2.0 should be more than sufficient.
Now with all that said, I also recommend looking into Dropbox. If you have a relatively small amount of data, cloud storage is an excellent way to back it up. Dropbox has the added feature of updating itself any time you alter your local folder and you're connected to the web. MaximumPC also has some articles regarding Dropbox and some of the ways you can add some functionality (for example, add an encrypted area).
I have a Seagate black armor for my laptop and I run all my steam games off it with no lag at all.
Although Seagate drives are prone to "clicking".
Oh and the speed I was questioning was just the access speed of the disk itself. No matter how fast the cable is, would a CD (Blu-ray) not be slower than a harddrive?
I want a backup system that'll handle my computer room spontaneously bursting into flame, and I had been debating between an external drive or an online backup system like Mozy, but the blu-ray disc option is really appealing.
How good is the compatibility of home-burnt discs and readers? It seems like even now you'll find CD players or DVD players that don't play nice with certain home-burnt discs and I'd hate to find that my backup discs are unreadable by a blu-ray player I purchase 5 years from now.
My understanding is that writable Blu-Ray discs do not have that issue.
I really had no idea they were that cheap now until a little while ago myself. I've been considering picking up a better video card and a Blu-Ray burner for my PC. I'd be paying around the same as the price of a decent standalone player but would also have the ability to write, which would be nice for data backup.
I'm now using a 1TB MyPassport Essentials (2.5") from Western Digital, which is lightweight and only requires a USB cable. It stacks nicely too. Just about any trusted brand of external HDD will do, imo. I just prefer WD due to personal experience.
My own experience with using discs (CD-ROMs, then DVDs) is that they are vulnerable to scratches. You may take care of your discs, but the problem is you won't know if any scratch is a problem until you try to access it... which may already be too late. In some cases, disc storage don't last as long as they claimed to be - I've lost data on CD's because they've been kept for many years. Discs don't last forever. I also find it a chore to label them.
The first one, I can understand. It was on all the time seeding things, so it probably just got worn out. The most recent one, however, I took very good care of and made sure to turn off (properly) when I wasn't using it. And I never downloaded anything directly to it, or seeded from it--just manually transferred things after I got them.
Despite that, it only lasted a year, same as the first.
Maybe I'm just unlucky, but I strongly advise you look into something that doesn't have as many moving parts. Discs seem like a good idea, if you have a way to keep them in good shape--cases and a disc tower would work nicely. At the very least, don't go with Western Digital.
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As to the discs degrading, at least is it cheaper to make multiple backups.
I've had decent success with Vantec, Rosewill, Bytecc, and Masscool. I would recommend Vantec of those. It's difficult to find reviews for external enclosures since there isn't a whole lot to them. They're basically metal boxes with USB controllers in them.
I filtered Newegg's selection to 3.5" enclosures since that's the form factor of a desktop hard drive.
Could a Bluray burner be put in this? I am not finding a clear answer there...
Dell product link: here
Enter coupon code at checkout: 2M4RQ0PPMB63VR
Good until August 7th (or until 500 people have bought one).
That's the only problem with Slickdeals-- they tend to be daily deals, special coupons, clearance sales, etc., which only last for a short amount of time. Killer prices, though. Expect a new hard drive deal to pop up every couple of days. If you want, you can create an account and they'll send you deal alerts, i.e. you can set it up to e-mail you every time a deal is posted with "hard drive" in the title. I find that I check their front page all the time anyway, so I don't bother with that.
As far as hard drive advice, I've had no problems with Western Digital or Seagate drives. In reading reviews on Newegg and other sites, WD seems to be the most respected for reliability. No hard drive is perfect, though; they're all going to fail after a while. Keep backups of your important/irreplaceable stuff. Seriously.
The problem I had with discs (not saying it's inferior) is that you sometimes don't know if data is lost or not. Sometimes the degradation affect certain files / locations, leaving the file structure intact so you can read the disc, but only know there's a problem when you access the file itself. This problem doesn't manifest in HDD's unless you have a crash (in which case you will most likely know, instead of happening it to you stealth-like like the case of discs.)
I'll admit I should have re-burned some of the discs more frequently. Perhaps that why I prefer HDD's (Enclosure or otherwise)
There's also the fact that it is easier to retrieve the data on a HDD. Depending on your needs, the BD may be better. For myself, I anticipated the need to retrieve the data from another PC, which may or may not have a supporting disc drive. BD drives are gaining presence in the desktop, so this may not be an issue eventually. But for now at least, USB drives are much more ubiquitous. You can consider a portable BD-drive, but that will increase your start-up costs even more.
In the end, it still boils down to what you consider are more useful features. BD's also have their strengths (see below).
I have friends with similar encounters - one had to replace her external HDD 3 times in a year. Personally I've not encountered this (touchwood!), but I do use my 1TB MyBook to backup my 1TB MyPassport these days, in any case...
My advice would be to buy a good internal hard drive and drop it into an external enclosure. Usually companies put the cheapest hard drives into their pre-assembled externals. If you want to do it yourself, check out the WD Caviar Green or Blue drives. They have the best warranty and lowest failure rates in my experience. As for enclosures, we use iMicro SATA/IDE ones at my shop. They are pretty cheap online.
And for backup software, I can recommend Cobian. It's freeware.