Large backup - suitable way to connect the drive?

B0bbyEwing

I think one of my drives is failing so picked up a 4TB HDD to copy everything across.

Opening my PC up, disconnecting drives & connecting up this drive to the motherboard is one option & probably the obvious one. 

Actually ended up losing a lot of files doing that once. 

I have one of these and also one of these. And in case it matters I've linked you to the exact ones I've got.

I'm guessing putting it in the PC & connecting to motherboard will result in fastest speeds but tbh I don't really NEED to do much on the PC during the week as I only get a small window with work hours & just life so if one of the other links takes say 3 days for 4TB whereas direct to motherboard would be say 2 days then I'm not bothered for the sake of 1 day.

My main concern is dropouts. I may be worried over something that wouldn't / shouldn't happen but I'm here asking about whether connecting the drive using one of those links & going via USB3 port would be fine for such a large amount of backup or not?

GDB2222

If these are really HDDs, rather than SSDs, then I don’t think USB 3 will be the limiting factor. 

B0bbyEwing

GDB2222 said:

If these are really HDDs, rather than SSDs, then I don’t think USB 3 will be the limiting factor. 

I don't fancy shelling out on a 4TB SSD. I didn't think those would exist but it's been ages since I looked so maybe they do now. Regardless, I said HDD & not SSD so that's what we're working with - HDDs. 

So as far as connection issues, dropouts etc, you wouldn't expect an issue, be it connecting via either the enclosure or docking station? Either would be just as good as the other? 

I've no idea how long to expect 4TB worth of stuff to take but so long as we're talking days and not weeks then I can live with that. 

forgotmyname

The price you paid for those + the cost of a 4TB drive is likely to exceed just buying a ready build
brand name external drive.

Just be careful to backup to another device or online also.  Years back when 1TB drives dropped in price
I backed up all my personal photo's and videos to the new drive and it failed within 48 hours.

No problem sending it back but I had to do a massive data recovery mission to get the pictures back
from old computers I had started to strip after saving the data.

B0bbyEwing

forgotmyname said:

The price you paid for those + the cost of a 4TB drive is likely to exceed just buying a ready build
brand name external drive.

Yes except there's more to the post than that and while a moneysaving forum, that's not where my question is coming from. I was specifically asking about the reliability of the connection - connecting an external drive via USB, be it D.S. or enclosure, for such a volume of data. If it was just a few text files I wouldn't ask this question & just immediately go for the via USB route.

A "ready build brand name external drive" is much larger, so takes up significantly more space. I have 3 of these. 2 are full, the 3rd might be I can't remember.

I have a number of internal drives. I have a docking station & an enclosure (because I couldn't find where I'd put the docking station & later on found it) so easily connect up these drives when needed without the need to open up the PC each time.

I've just never copied such a volume of data via that method before, which is why I wanted to ask the question rather than just do it & find out 3 days in to an 8 day transfer* that it's the cause of the backup going wrong.


* I talk about days when in reality I have NO idea how long this backup will take. I remember having a data recovery program run on an 8TB drive which took days, hence why I just say days.

GDB2222

I think a day should do it, provided that the drive you are copying from works flawlessly. However, you said that it is dodgy, so ….?

What software do you use? I don’t think that you should just use the OS copy and paste.