Storage Solutions Reasoning behind using HDD for mass storage

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Guys,
I have this question to all folks who are using 500GBs and more for their storage capacity..be it movies, games or anything downloaded from net...

Since you dump everything on your HDD and suddenly, one day HDD goes kaput and u have to send for RMA, you would end up loosing all the data collections in an instant...whereas people dumping on DVDs like me, can retain most of data, if one or few DVDs goes off.

Please note...I am not trying to start a DVD vs HDD storage debate

I am asking you, as you might have a different reasoning for this situation, when u decided to dump all data on HDDs. I am just trying to learn from you so that i can also adopt the same, if useful to me :hap2:
Certainly juggling with DVDs is a pain.
 
I had posted a similar questions a few months back and it was quite a debate.....it all depends on how important the data is for u. For example , loosing movies can be depressing, but then these are things which u can 're-get'.

Many prefer to backup their stuff in multiple hdd's. Stuff like photographs , documents etc etc. U can have a backup of the same on a dvd as well......

As for me , I have a seperate 80GB hdd that is always in "OFF" mode. Comes on once in a month and gets synchronised with only the stuff that is valuable like documents / pictures. And then the hdd goes to sleep again. This way I can be sure of not loosing out on my valuable data. Ofcourse the data that goes to the synchorinised drive stays in the other drive as well.....So its redudant.

If u got a whole lot of disc and disc space , then u can run RAID to guarantee the redundancy of your data.

At the end of the day its ones personal decision / opinion.
 
Externals have a very less failure rate and a 500 Gb or 1 TB external is a viable option....

Otherwise there is always Raid 1....double the cost but higher reliability...
 
I too prefer to backup my Important data on two seperate drives.

Songs and Movies are gettable but personal data is not. Also as regards to movies a corrupt DVD or CD wuld not let you play the file but there are ways to play corrupt movie files on HDD with the movie skipping only for a few milliseconds at the corrupt part.

I use online storage for photos and other stuff.

Using HDDs is easier than handling DVDs.

And please do not start arguing by calculating price of 100s of DVDs is less than price of 500GB HDD and stuff. Because it is important to note that space on HDD is reusable and you can delete stuff that you are bored of.

I take this opportunity to present a personal experience of mine. I have an old seagate 40gb PATA HDD of which 3 IDE pins are broken and this HDD has been used and abused in all ways but has never given up on me. Believe me I keep my most important data on this HDD. And on the other hand I have a bunch of CDs and DVDs which throw CRC errors.

Its for you to decide.
 
i have 4 storage hdds...they are only used when i want to copy some stuff back on my main hdd

everything on them is re-downloadable (tho itll take a moth or so to do it)

critical data is encrypted and renamed as pron then put on torrents :P ... perfect backup
 
Unless next gen Optical storage is affordable, copying the data to an external is the most viable option or the pain in backing up on DVD's... I have mostly HD's on my 500 giger... 8GB 1080p vids so its really annoying to split them on 2 DVD's...

The simple option is to have that external & back up the image regularly... once a week or once a month...

Now my 500GB is getting full & I am really scared that something might happen to my HDD anytime... out of bad luck may be which I have a fair share of....

So will be getting the MyBook to clone my HDD there pretty soon.....
 
I generally backup all pics/documents to a DVD and picasa albums. Rest of the stuff is somewhere on DVDs (MP3s etc.).
 
Yes picasa is a good place for photographs but the resolution is limited.

Also External HDDs are less prone to going kaput i guess.
 
I used to back up my data on the DVDs but since about a month i did not backup my data and now i m keeping my fingers crossed that my hdd will be ok after RMA.
 
I have been using DVDs to backup my data for ages now. As a result i already have more then 300 DVDs which quite frankly are pain in the a$$ to manage. So far 99.9% of my DVDs are working perfectly ( Tochwood ). I store them carefully in my dvd case and very often use them to watch some movie or listen to some songs.

Backing up data on HDD does make your life a lot easier but the risk involved is too much. As pcgamer said , it would come as a big shock to me if my 5 years worth collection of movies ,songs and other data just vanish in thin air one day. Sure with high broadband speeds available these days i can re-get most of the data from the net but still....

Only recently i have decided to buy the WD My book 1TB HDD , not only to use it as a mass storage for my data but also because it will just make my life a lot easier if i would just have all my data in one place and i will not have to juggle through countless dvds to listen to a particular song.

So ... i guess i would continue to dump all my data to my HDD but i would also make a backup dvd for all of it just to be safe. :)
 
If you are talking about internal storage as well then the reason I got my 320GB additional HDD was mainly because the rate at which I was downloading the data was insane.I used to download random stuff from local LAN at 10MBps speeds & hence it would stuff up my existing 250GB within a week.Back up on DVD's became next to impossible at such fast speeds.So I had to invest in another 320GB HDD.

Now the joke is that our LAN is dead.:P Now all I have left is my Internet connection which I use to stuff things up again.I guess backing up is the most boring thing of all.I know how painful it was to back up nearly 210GB off my recently kaput 320GB WD HDD onto DVD's.I agree that DVD's are a bit more reliable but HDD's are usually the fastest mode of transferring data eventually.

Let's say my friend's come along one fine day looking to stuff up all those movies/games/porn/XYZ & finds out everything is loaded on DVD's then imagine the pain to loading one DVD at a time for each silly stuff.Whereas on HDD it's very instant.You just plug in the other HDD & away you go.It's a huge risk to leave all your important data on either media.But my end preference would always be DVD's as they are a bit more reliable compared to HDD's as the damage would be far less compared to HDD.:)
 
DVDs were a seemingly viable backup option but to be frank making a collection of 100s of DVDs is useless as far as I have experienced.

Once you watch some movie you are hardly going to watch it again.

Tell me frankly out of 300 Dvds how many have you gone through again.

If you do have time to go through them again and again definitely after some uses it will start showing CRC errors.

Whereas on a HDD you can delete movies that you are bored of or are not interesting enough as you thought they were back then ( which is why you would have written them on DVDs instantaneously ) and fill in with newer stuff. Also this would help not add to the junk that we create when we throw away dvds and cds into garbage.
 
hanzy said:
I had posted a similar questions a few months back and it was quite a debate.....it all depends on how important the data is for u. For example , loosing movies can be depressing, but then these are things which u can 're-get'.

Many prefer to backup their stuff in multiple hdd's. Stuff like photographs , documents etc etc. U can have a backup of the same on a dvd as well......

As for me , I have a seperate 80GB hdd that is always in "OFF" mode. Comes on once in a month and gets synchronised with only the stuff that is valuable like documents / pictures. And then the hdd goes to sleep again. This way I can be sure of not loosing out on my valuable data. Ofcourse the data that goes to the synchorinised drive stays in the other drive as well.....So its redudant.

If u got a whole lot of disc and disc space , then u can run RAID to guarantee the redundancy of your data.

At the end of the day its ones personal decision / opinion.
Click to expand...

+1. my backup strategy is even more paranoid.

Other than movies etc, I have imp data which i wouldnt like to lose, around 25-30 Gbs worth including personal stuff, books, setups etc. Songs I dont bother as I have a backup copy on my MP3 player anyway. Of course this included my OS backup image as well which I update once a month.

1. I have 2 250Gbs installed on my system. All imp data is essentially distributed on 1 drive. I use synctoy to select all required folders and then copy/sync all imp data to a single folder on my second HDD called backups. This is done usually once a week or more frequently if I feel I have changed lots of stuff, new photos etc.

2. On top of the above, I have a separate 80Gb IDE which I connect through a USB adapter. This drive does only backups :ohyeah: I connect it and use synctoy to sync the 'backups' folder from the second HDD to this drive. That way I have 3 copies of all my precious data. Of course movies/games etc are not included in these but the rest of the stuff is more imp. If I had unlimited space,....... :bleh:

3. Only limitation, I dont have an offsite backup, so a thief could cause me a lot of grief :P Next plan, the 80Gb IDE goes to a safe place at a friends home to be synced once a month only :)

Howz that for backups? So even if my system dies taking both my 250Gbs with it, I have all precious data backed up :ohyeah:

+ HDDs are faster and can be continuously updated each week.
 
ranjitpai said:
Once you watch some movie you are hardly going to watch it again.
Tell me frankly out of 300 Dvds how many have you gone through again.
If you do have time to go through them again and again definitely after some uses it will start showing CRC errors.
Click to expand...
Don't quite agree out here.I back up so that I can watch it & I can share it with someone else too.This makes it a back up for me & later on is passed onto someone else in turn.Don't tell me you don't have friends who would sooner or later ask you for some quality movies.;)
 
Once you watch some movie you are hardly going to watch it again.

Tell me frankly out of 300 Dvds how many have you gone through again.
Click to expand...

Not true man .... i have a collection of more then 800 movies , many seasons of popular TV shows , video songs etc etc etc. I have watched those same old movies many times. Actually it depends on the mood. If i am in romantic mood , i would search up and watch some nice romantic movie , again if some of my friends come over .... we would watch some crazy comedy movies. So yes i do watch those movies randomly. For example - I have all the seasons of Friends and god knows how many times i have re watched all the seasons and i still do not get tired of it. Its also about sharing stuff , i love sharing my collection with my close friends. As far as the CRC error is concerned a good media rarely gives it and even if it does mostly media with a lot of data files are usually the ones effected.

I believe we are getting lazier by the day. I mean how long does it take to backup a data on a DVD ? I usually burn 5-6 DVDs by the end of the week , all it takes me is some 1 hour. Optical media will always be a popular storage option. We are using DVDs now, in some years we will be using Blu-ray for storage. HDDs are never going to completely replace optical media imo.
 
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