I’ve been thinking about getting an external hard drive to back up my computer to and to put all my photos and music on.
I’m just wondering if it will be prone to crashes. And if I then need to back up the hard drive to something else.
So my question is: how reliable are they? Can I get one and then put my data on it and not worry about it becoming corrupt or whatever?
Thanks in advance,
Cathy
No, there is always the chance of failure, so plan on it. If it’s data you can’t be without, or isn’t replaceable, then have it in more than one place.
Thank you.
Not worth forking out £60 of my extremely hard earned money then, maybe.
Cathy
But the chances of both drives failing at the same time is remote, so backing up to another hard drive is an effective means of protection in my book. If the backup drive gets fried, you’ll still have the files on your original drive and vice versa.
mmm. True.
The key with an external back up is that you should only have it powered up while you are using it. When it is not needed store it in a safe place according to the directions on the package or in the manual. Hard drive corruption from my experiance is due to drive life, read write occourances, and bad software. If you are like me and leave you computer on all the time the hard drive sits there and spins, Windows constantly reads and writes to the drive. If the external were to be left on and plugged into the computer it is more likely to fail. Also as with all electronics that have moving parts handle it with extreme care while it powered up, and a little less while it is not and you should have reliable data storage for a very long time.
Jason
An external hard drive contains similar hardware to your internal hard drive. The question is, where are you backing up your data? If it’s to nowhere, you’re going to be screwed someday. If it’s to CDs and/or DVDs, they are a lot more hassle to recover from, and they can also go bad in time. Beware of cheap writable disks, some may have a pretty short shelf-life (after recording). Always test your disks after you burn them, to make sure the data is actually readable.
So an external drive is a really good idea. Then some backup software to help automate the process, lest you forget to do it regularly. I have a Maxtor One Touch (250GB). Works fine with USB 2.0 or Firewire. Now they have a second geneeration (One Touch II) which got much better reviews. It’s supposed to come with a much better backup software product.
My OneTouch is about full, so I just bought me a Buffalo TeraStation
One terabyte of storage, unless you use one of the redundant RAID setups. I plan to use RAID 5, which uses one of the four 250GB disks to hold parity data, effectively backing up the other three disks. That’s 750GB of storage with a fallback in case one of the disks ever dies. I haven’t set it up yet, but it will run on my network, and be accessible from any machine on the network. Also I can plug the Maxtor into the back of it, to make it a network drive as well.
Anyway I did a lot of research on this, so if you have more questions feel free to drop me an email for fast response.
I stick stuff on writable DVDs rather than a hard drive. They have the advantage that you can make loads of them; keep a stack of backup discs in the house, keep a stack at work, at other people’s houses, wherever you like.
The shelf-life of a writable DVD isn’t as good as a hard drive if neither are in use, but given you can just make a replacement set every year or so, or as you update the stuff you want to keep, this isn’t a problem.
Phil
That is what I do at the moment.
In January my computer crashed and I lost all the data on it. Ofcourse, being the proud owner of at least half a brain (and an unstable ex computer) I had most of my stuff backed up. I hadn’t backed up the back up copies of the music that I’d copied from my cd’s onto my hard drive to put onto my mp3 player. Now I don’t fancy spending hours putting it back on again. That’s why I want a hard drive. Cos I’m lazy.
Cathy
John and Phil,
I wasn’t aware of a shelf life for writable CDs and DVDs. I’ve been creating family photo albums of our digital photos on cheap writable CDs and now I’m worried. I had planned on keeping the CDs for a lifetime just as I would regular developed photos. Now maybe I have to change my thinking. Of course technology will be rapidly changing and eventually the CD will be out, so I knew I’d have to swap the stored files over to a new media eventually. Sure wish there was an answer for long term storage of priceless family photos.
Thanks for the input and warnings.
Bruce
Exactly. CDs will remain common and readable for a long time, but they will be surpassed by better, more spacious and probably cheaper media in the next few years. Every time this happens, if you upgrade your data to the new media you’ll probably be fine.
Make sure any CD or DVD you burn is readable on a “generic” device, not just the one you burned it on. Otherwise, make sure you re-backup all that stuff before you throw away or replace the burner you used to make them.
fastlane62 is right about the wear & tear on hard drives. My 1st-generation Maxtor powers itself down when not in use. This is great for drive life, as it only spins when you call it. The downside is sometimes the computer loses track of it, and you have to un-mount and re-attach it for it to show up again. This is on my Mac.
My first line of defense will be backups on the external drive. Note: my primary computer is a laptop with only 80GB, so the external drive is more than just copies. But there will be archival backups of my important stuff, like photos, on DVDs. I make two of each, and keep one set as far away from the other set as possible. That’s the only way to reliably “fireproof” your data.
While this may be more advanced for most home users, never underestimate the power of RAID. If you’re not familiar, RAID is a technology that lets you instantly mirror data across multiple disks. Your computer only sees one disk, but in fact there’s two disks with the exact same data on it. (there’s many different types of RAID, but I’m just giving an overview here)
What this means is if one disk dies, you still have 100% of your data on another one. But if you delete files, they’re gone from both -so this doesn’t replace the need for backups!
At home, I run 2 300G disks in a RAID mirror (also called RAID 1) and every night I backup select parts to a 120G external USB hard drive.
There are two options that I would go for:
a 2nd internal, or an external hard drive: then use something like Ghost to make a perfect copy of the entire hard drive once every X days. X is dependant upon how much change you make to your system/data. With minimal changes , no need to ghost as frequently, as long as the data is not supercritical.
The advantage here is that when/if your master ide drive fails: you remove it, reconfigure the second drive as master ( may involve removing it from the external box if used) and you are back with a fully bootable system as it was when you last ran the ghost. 10 minutes work.
Use a system board with built on IDE RAID and let that take care of everything. This runs a pair of disks, keeping a real time copy of the first disk on the second disk. At failure it tells you which one to swap, KEEPS THE SYSTEM WORKING PERFECTLY and then recovers your data for you to a new drive when you buy and install it, effectively recreating your backup disk. I have only been involved with SCSI RAID systems, but an IDE one has to work in a similar way, albeit with more restrictions on useable RAID levels, and a probable lack of hot swap. On a SCSI system a dead disk generates a message, tells you it is dead. You pull out the dead disk ( pretty red light lit) push in the new disk, and go have lunch. The system rebuilds onto the new disk. The system as seen by users does not even blink. Rather like having your car repaired without dropping below 70mph on the motorway.
Backup to dvd/tape is OK-ish, but as drives get bigger it takes a hell of a lot of DVDs, and you only need one to be duff, and you can lose your most vital data. Imagine on a 200 Gig disk, having to feed in 30 or 40 DVDs. Cheap to do it once to DVD, if you need a regular backup, not so. DVDs then need more looking after than hard drives. Tape can also be a pain: backup to tape…and are you then sure you can recover from it? Many system admins find a crisis point here. It is also much much messier, as you need to build a minimum system capable of reading the tape before recovery is possible.
DVD/CD is a good option if you only have a small amount of data to keep safe.
Many hard drives have a guarantee of 5 years, which you may view as a fair indication of their reliability. In practice some will work far longer, and a number ( probably no more than 10-20%) will work for less, and you will then not be able to find the paperwork to invoke the warranty.
I would go for 1) or 2) and, additionally, back up any supercritical data to CD as well.
Nao
I read somewhere that floppy disks aren’t biodegradable, so I put all my sensitive data on a floppy disk, put that in a Mason jar and bury it somewhere in my backyard. I forgot to make a treasure map, though, so I hope I never have to “restore my backup”…
At the moment I only have a small amount of data - about 8 gb of my hard drive is used. And I back up my most cruicial data (University work) every time it’s changed onto a pen drive thingy.
But if I had more hard drive I would certainly fill it up with much more rubbish (cruical data).
I don’t mind it taking a bit of time to put every thing back on as at the moment I have slightly more time than money (being a combination of a student and working for the NHS is a financially leathal combination).
Say I decided to go for a hard drive, which is the ‘best’ (ie the best combination of quality and value for money)? I like the sony viao stuff but I know it’s relatively expensive.
Cathy
The Sony will use a bought in drive anyway: Seagate, Maxtor, Western Digital are three of the big hard drive names. I wouldn’t buy your drive from Sony, get the same stuff from your local PC shop cheaper eg www.aria.co.uk has been good to me.
Nao
I have two points to add to this conversation.
For critical data, more than one backup is a good thing, preferably in more than one location.
Keep an offline-backup (DVD-RW, CD, Unplugged Hard Drive, Tape, Usb-key…whatever). Keeping copies of your data on two hard disks is a good thing, but often the thing that kills one drive can kill the other (virus, powersurge, personal neglegence, malicious hacker etc)