External Storage

stinky_daddy

Hi All

I wonder if I could get some thoughts on the following please?

I have a 1.5TB HDD (Samsung Story) which is full, so am looking to upgrade to a bigger unit (will probably get x 2, so I have a back-up of the back-up if that makes sense as I don't want to transfer everything to a larger HDD, only for it to fail later on and all items stored there are lost lol).

Having done a quick search, I believe that Seagate took over Samsung HDD business a while ago.

Therefore, I can have thoughts on this Seagate drive please?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00UNA1O0W/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Alternatively, any other recommendations would be appreciated.

TIA

s_d

Inner_Zone

Have you read the 4000 plus reviews?

stinky_daddy

Inner_Zone wrote: »

Have you read the 4000 plus reviews?

not all of them but some yes, just thought I would see what the forum members might suggest.

s_d

were

you probably have the cheapest way of doing it, but if your data keeps growing, not the best. There is also something called 'bit rot' .

Also depends how technical you are. Possibly the best non commercial freeware option is ZFS running on linux. It is fairly cost effective too, however upgrades can be costly.

The next step down is hardware raid, but some would argue software raid, both have valid points and problems. Something like Synology is good. Drobo box is also not bad. However I would probably go for Unraid from Lime Technology for home use and expansion

All are costlier, and probably not as portable as your option. Also as you get into large drives across multiple disks that statistical error rate becomes more of a problem than a statistic.

Although bigger, not as portable and more costly, i feel that a multidrive synology box would be a better choice.

AndyPix

were wrote: »

i feel that a multidrive synology box would be a better choice.

This - With WD Red drives

stinky_daddy

were wrote: »

you probably have the cheapest way of doing it, but if your data keeps growing, not the best. There is also something called 'bit rot'

Also depends how technical you are. Possibly the best non commercial freeware option is ZFS running on linux. It is fairly cost effective too.

The next step down is hardware raid, but some would argue software raid, both have valid points and problems. Something like Synology is good. Drobo box is also not bad.

All are costlier, and probably not as portable as your option. Also as you get into large drives across multiple disks that statistical error rate becomes more of a problem than a statistic.

Although bigger, not as portable and more costly, i feel that a multidrive synology box would be a better choice.

Thanks - I will look at these options later tonight (just as an aside, it has taken me 3yrs roughly to fill the 1.5TB drive) so if I continue on at that pace, I would need to look at replacing the 5TB drive(s) in 7yrs (assuming of course I transfer the data over to the 5TB drive).

What is the back-up situation like, in case the HDD fails (or is it an on-line facility)?

TIA

s_d

AndyPix

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

DavidP24

stinky_daddy wrote: »

Hi All

I wonder if I could get some thoughts on the following please?

I have a 1.5TB HDD (Samsung Story) which is full, so am looking to upgrade to a bigger unit (will probably get x 2, so I have a back-up of the back-up if that makes sense as I don't want to transfer everything to a larger HDD, only for it to fail later on and all items stored there are lost lol).

Having done a quick search, I believe that Seagate took over Samsung HDD business a while ago.

Therefore, I can have thoughts on this Seagate drive please?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00UNA1O0W/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Alternatively, any other recommendations would be appreciated.

TIA

s_d

For convenience, if all you are getting is 5tb then this 4tb external at least does not need a power supply.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/4tb-seagate-maxtor-m3-portable-external-hdd-1xusb-30-bus-powered-black-with-safetykey-for-windows-ma

Can sometimes find these on eBay going cheap.

Have you looked into what you are creating, do you need it, are there duplicates?

If you have a large data requirement then a 12tb NAS may be an option.

If on the other hand this is years worth of data you may want to do some maintenance.

Free app like Yet Another Duplicate file remover is quite good and Treesize free version.

Getting 2 x 2tb is also another option but only if you are going to store one offsite or in a water and fireproof safe.

were

Depends what your data is. If it is family photos, these may dwindle in growth as time goes on. Films may become larger, especially as 60" require quite a lot of data to stay sharp

ZFS can really only be beaten by large commercial boxes like netapp. ZFS disks are store in pools, and once a pool is formed it can not be added to, but you can replace current drives with larger ones, one at a time, and let everything resync, then the next drive, eventually after all replaced, you can resize the whole pool. it is self checking, but may need a hand every so often. it supports block level dedupe, shadow copies, self checking and avoids bit rot or errors. Much better than the average raid system. You can put these pools onto any new ZDS system and the work

Unraid is raid 3/4 good because if it crashes each drive contains recoverable files, and they are not spread. You can add extra drives of different capacities, but you will have to blow away the parity drive and let it rebuild and this could take time, and puts data at risk. the only requirement is that the parity drive is as same or bigger than the largest drive. So generally speaking you won be buying upgrades, just you will add extra drives for storage.

I do not know where the price point sits with backups. Online is easier, but you get to a certain size and it become costly and in event of problems you need a fat pipe to restore it, rather than wait 2 weeks for 5Tb to come down.

stinky_daddy

Hi All

thanks to all for the advice so far.

In regards to the content, it is mostly films and music (not backed up).
I also have photos on there (which I have backed up across several cloud services).
Even with a bit of housekeeping, I am not going to get a lot of space back unfortunately.

I think I will go with the x 2 external drives for the moment as I can always then go with the Unraid or ZFS option.

TIA

s_d

Doshwaster

My philosophy is that all hard disks will fail: it's just a matter of when.

So, I wouldn't trust a single drive system for anything you wouldn't be prepared to lose. I'm a big fan of the Synology units. Currently I have a 2 x 4TB system with the most essential and irreplaceable data (eg. photos) stored in Google Drive.

There are cheaper 2-bay systems available than Synology but they are excellent pieces of kit with a lot of features. I had one drive start to fail last year but I just popped in a replacement and it rebuilt itself over night with the loss of no data.