Storage Solutions How reliable is a 1TB USB External Hard Disk (Western Digital)

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BikeAdvice

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I have used a lot of external hard disks before and I have 1 failed disk (a maxtor 250gb). I got it replaced with a new one in a week but all my media was gone. But it was just downloaded media and not so important.

I recently bought a 1TB WD external drive and I am using it to store all the personal videos I took in my camcorder. I have double backup of my photos but I can't do the same for HD videos because they are too large.

How much can I rely on this drive? Should I worry about it? What would you recommend for me in this situation?

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How about taking backups in Blu-ray discs?

Asus Internal SATA Blu-ray Writer - BW-12B1LT - www.deltapage.com

Not so costly!

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Bump. Anyone?
 
If i am not wrong even bluray discs may get damaged in the course of time making the date irretrievable. So instead of wasting your money, ATM you can go for a higher capacity HDD and backup your data. BTW how large is the data which you intend to backup ?
 
anfjavid said:
If i am not wrong even bluray discs may get damaged in the course of time making the date irretrievable. So instead of wasting your money, ATM you can go for a higher capacity HDD and backup your data. BTW how large is the data which you intend to backup ?
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That was what I was thinking about. Having a large hdd with backup on external hdd. My data is around 1 TB. I plan to reduce fat by deleting less important stuff.
 
vivek.krishnan said:
Get a NAS! Its the best you can do if you have such stuff. Use RAID. However it is not portable.
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Why an NAS?

How about using an external HDD (USB) and using the auto back up feature of windows 7?
 
why dont you just keep additional harddrives for 1:1 backup? no big issue. I keep everything in 1:1 as hdd can go bad any day of week.
 
net said:
why dont you just keep additional harddrives for 1:1 backup? no big issue. I keep everything in 1:1 as hdd can go bad any day of week.
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1:1 backup means? Is it like cloning? Can you point me to some links which explain about it?
 
BikeAdvice said:
Why an NAS?

How about using an external HDD (USB) and using the auto back up feature of windows 7?
Click to expand...

NAS allows you to use RAID. Plus you can use it also as a media server, download rig, etc.
net said:
why dont you just keep additional harddrives for 1:1 backup? no big issue. I keep everything in 1:1 as hdd can go bad any day of week.
Click to expand...

1:1 backup means mirroring. Thus 2 drives act as one single drive. the same data is backed up on both. if any1 goes offline/failure you can use the other. This is RAID 1 mode also.
 
Well , I am using a 2Tb external and I am storing data there .

How about get another 1 TB and keep the data there if that is so important !
 
vivek.krishnan said:
1:1 backup means mirroring. Thus 2 drives act as one single drive. the same data is backed up on both. if any1 goes offline/failure you can use the other. This is RAID 1 mode also.
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I think he did not refer to a RAID setup but simple 1:1 backups. i.e if you have a 1TB drive, keep another 1TB drive with the same data.

I do the same for all my hd rips I have been sourcing since 2008.
 
Gannu said:
I think he did not refer to a RAID setup but simple 1:1 backups. i.e if you have a 1TB drive, keep another 1TB drive with the same data.

I do the same for all my hd rips I have been sourcing since 2008.
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Is there any special utility for that or is windows backup is enough.?
 
BikeAdvice said:
Is there any special utility for that or is windows backup is enough.?
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Don't know of any special utility. I simply copy the files from one drive to the other and once it has been filled completely, I disconnect it and keep them safe.
 
No harm intended, but please do not buy WD hard drives, I have had cases with them where in it took around 2 months to get replacement and 3 out of 5 drives going bad.

Worst was the NEW RMA'ed hdd's received turned out to be bad. Then there was a 360 GB drive that i had replaced 4 times and a week ago again it went bad.

This is pathetic.
 
yashvisent said:
No harm intended, but please do not buy WD hard drives, I have had cases with them where in it took around 2 months to get replacement and 3 out of 5 drives going bad.

Worst was the NEW RMA'ed hdd's received turned out to be bad. Then there was a 360 GB drive that i had replaced 4 times and a week ago again it went bad.

This is pathetic.
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So far I have had 1 failed maxtor drive. Using 3 WD drives now and no one has failed yet. Expecting one to fail soon after reading your post :)
 
For fail safe backups you have to assume your hard drive will fail in the future.think about this-even you are asking for help after your data was lost.lesson learned the hard way!
If you have 1 tb data keep it on two 1 tb drives.keep them in seperate locations.If you are paranoid make a third back up to optical media dl dvd or blu ray.
I prefer atleast three copies i.e. two hard drives and optical media.
Optical media back up may be a pain in the ass but its a proven technology,i have 10 year old cd's that i can read without any problem.
Use teracopy to copy files and then verify CRC of source and copy.
If you are a bit tech savvy,i would recommend norton ghost.
I think seagate and WD drives come with a free copy of imaging utility based on acronis true image which is also very good.
Any hard disc can fail!!!!!!!! make redundant backups of your data!!!!!!!!!!!
 
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