Help to understand backups and where to save to.

immy1

I'm not sure but it sounds too complex for me to try.

[Deleted User]

immy1 said:

I have only previously bought drives after reading reviews and always purchased well know names such as Seagate. The one I mentioned which is failing now is a Maxtor portable drive. 

There's only 3 actual manufacturers of spinning hard drives nowadays and they are all well known. Maxtor are a brand of Seagate, your other choices and WD and Toshiba - anything else is a re-branded version of those 3.

Useful to know what you mean by "failing" though, all sorts of ways a hard drive can fail.

Portable hard drives (spinning disk) are more prone to failure than internal spinning disk drives, a slight knock or bang when powered on can cause the heads that run 1/16th of a hair width from the disk to strike the disk and accidental unplugging while running all contribute to shortening their life. Even changing the orientation of a spinning hard drive while it is running puts stress on the bearings (gyroscopic effect).

They are probably the most complex and precision engineered mechanical device in your house and despite them being around for decades, they simply can't be made any more robust.

Portable hard drives often contain the bottom end models to meet a price point which won't be as reliable as the upper end. 

A basic WD Blue will cost £30 for 1TB with 2 year warranty compared to an enterprise grade WD Gold 1TB £85 with 5 year warranty - you can guess which drives usually end up in a sealed plastic box and sold as a portable hard drive.

And then there is the box of electronics they sit inside, mostly down to a price for portable drives and sometimes that fails rather than the physical drive itself.

By choosing a NAS as mentioned by me and others above, you get to choose the drives you put in it and can opt for the better quality ones for longer life, I use WD Reds in my NAS and a Seagate Exos enterprise for my backup which are designed to have a much harder and longer life.

alan_d

Deleted_User said:

I use WD Reds in my NAS and a Seagate Exos enterprise for my backup which are designed to have a much harder and longer life.

Same, as the Seagates in my NAS have gradually failed (typically after around 20,000 hours running), i've been replacing them with WD Red. Haven't had any fail yet, but only upto 11,000 hours on the oldest.

My NAS is on 24/7 as it's also used as a CCTV server.

spurdog1

immy1 said:

Hi Neil

Thanks for your response. Like you say, I have been using an external hard drive and copy and pasting to it but I only have them  a maximum of 3 years and they start to fail.   Is there no alternative but to keep buying them?

I went to Currys with a failed drive needing replacement. They said "Seagate?". And it was the one that failed. 

immy1

Hi tallmansix

'Useful to know what you mean by "failing" though, all sorts of ways a hard drive can fail.'

I have using CrystalDisk to check the health of my drives. It reported issues with  the portable drive I have which I believe means that the drive is failing?  Funny though as when I checked the performance within the drive itself it did not flag up any issues.

I have tried to copy the report into the body of this message but I  have been unable to paste using the saved Snipping Tool file.  I've also copied the snip into Word and tried to paste here but that hasn't worked either so I am unable to give you full details of the CrystalDisk report.

Is this one a good choice for a NAS?

WD 8 TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0, Black

[Deleted User]

It isn't a NAS (network attached storage) - it is actually a DAS (direct attached storage) but that doesn't matter as long as it suits your needs.

I've never used the WD 8TB elements but it does get a decent review - note some alternatives at the end of the article that you might want to compare with:  https://www.techradar.com/uk/reviews/western-digital-my-book-8tb-2020

I have always worried about the design of the WD's - they look prone to being knocked over with being in the "book" format which isn't great but all depends on your setup and whether you are likely to do that - I have used the NAS versions for years and knocked mine over a few times.

Your next biggest decision is backup software - you don't need to spend money on that but decide on how you will do that to make it as automatic and seamless as possible.

immy1

I'll have a look at your  recommendations thanks.  I just need a reliable backup drive for my home PC.  I normally copy and paste my stuff over onto the drive when I backup once a month but a  continuous backup would be good.

cx6

i would recommend using allway sync it is free

CoastingHatbox

Hi @immy1,
I have sent you a direct message.


But for anyone else who finds this thread, this is the jist of it:


There are two main contenders for NASes, Synology and QNAP. I have not used a QNAP NAS, but I used to have a Synology and I felt it was reasonably good:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-DS216j-Bay-Desktop-Enclosure/dp/B01BNPT1EG/


I don't think there is much to pick between the offerings of those two companies. Here is an entry level QNAP equivalent that is slightly cheaper:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/QNAP-TS-230-2-bay-Desktop-Enclosure/dp/B083ZKQMFW/


Once you have your NAS setup, you will be able to setup a backup from your computer. Here is the official Synology guide:
https://kb.synology.com/en-global/DSM/help/DSM/Tutorial/backup_from_computer?version=6
That's jumping ahead a bit, but it is probably worthwhile you seeing the steps that are involved.


For disks, I'd recommend getting two from two different manufacturers as they are less likely to fail at the same time or in close proximity to each other:


https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-IronWolf-SATA-Hard-Drive/dp/B07DDKX6MK/


https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08L3H5PNB/


Finally, don't buy the cheaper Western Digital Red hard disk drive. The Red Plus is fine, but the normal "Red" is not a good choice for a NAS because it uses shingled magnetic recording which does increase the amount of storage on a disk, but it also decreases the performance and can cause problems when you backup large amounts of data or, if a disk breaks and you replace it, when the RAID mirror array on the NAS is rebuilt.

CoastingHatbox

spurdog1 said:

immy1 said:

Hi Neil

Thanks for your response. Like you say, I have been using an external hard drive and copy and pasting to it but I only have them  a maximum of 3 years and they start to fail.   Is there no alternative but to keep buying them?

I went to Currys with a failed drive needing replacement. They said "Seagate?". And it was the one that failed. 

We have drives in our servers from all three major manufacturers. They are all OEMs for the manufacturer of the servers. Considering how many hard disks we have, disk failures are quite rare and there doesn't seem to be any correlation between failure rates and manufacturers.

I know that is not reflected in the consumer end of the spectrum, but the point is all 3 manufacturers can make good disks.

I bought 2 3TB WD Reds - they were second hand, but low hours (power on hours < 200). They arrived in good condition with no bad sectors and the SMART data confirmed what the seller had told me and I ran badblocks on them with multiple passes - every read and write was consistent. I installed them in my server. One failed badly within a month and the other 6 months later.

I replaced them with 2 new 4TB WD Reds (what would not be called Red Plus) and those have now clocked up 15544 hours (1.77 years) without issue.

I have some 3TB cheap desktop Toshiba drives for less important data with 58758 hours (6.7) years - the spindles are a bit noisy. They still show no SMART faults and regularly pass SMART tests.

And then I have two old WD 1TB Green drives. One died just over the year ago, but the other is still going strong after 13.59 years. (The Power_On_Hours smart attribitue is a uint16 and has overflowed!). It is still running, mirrored with a newer drive in my CCTV server. These two disks also had a terrible reputation, especially when used with Linux.

How long disks last is the luck of the draw. Unless you are running hundreds of them, the statistics don't really matter. It is whether or not you are unlucky. And some people can be very unlucky.