This would be my recommendation as well. Either a shuckable external drive or a standard 3.5" drive with a USB 3.0 enclosure so you have the option to slot the drives into a NAS or server in the future.
Oh yeah, I backup all configs 4*day. The good thing about torrenting is even if I had catastrophic loss, as long as I have the list of torrents it should repopulate (assuming someone’s seeding).
Of course I also want to self host my personal photos/videos, and I can’t afford to lose those. I’ll have to look into seeing if any solutions support local storage plus maybe object storage as a backup.
Magnetic storage will likely last longer, and as it is a much older tech, is less likely to have firmware bugs and other problematic surprises. Plus, as you can see on diskprices.com, the cheapest medium per TB remains magnetic storage.
Then there are tapes. The drives sure cost a hefty sum, but if you have loads of data to backup, this is likely the cheapest option.
Finally, optical. Optical is great in the sense that is is physically a ROM, so data cannot get compromised by mishandling or other staff mistakes; but it still can have issues with the reflective layers peeling away from disks.
So, in the end, I would personally not recommend using SSDs for data backups, out of precaution. Sure, SSDs will likely retain all data just fine for years to come, but I want to be able to store data for as long as possible, with the peace of mind that only magnetic storage will afford me. Plus, if your data is worth backing up, it is worth whatever extra price or effort you will have to do with.
As for the other options, well, they all have their use case, but I don’t see much advantage for them in the general use cases. Just make backup copies of your data on magnetic drives, in a few physically different locations, with proper access control.
I had SSDs go bad, and mechanical hard drives too. The major plus for me is that with HDDs, it is somewhat predictable, while with SSDs it has always been sudden (in my experience, at least).
However, there are more parameters to consider. The storage temperature, the relative humidity, to backup frequency, etc. In the end, if you want a 100% time proof solution without caring for the costs, engraving a crystal, storing it underground in a lead-lined container, is probably the surest way to go. Everything else is a compromise.
Yeah but we’re talking 2.5 inch drives, and we’re talking about less than a terabyte of storage. There is no good reason to pick a physical drive HDD over an SSD when they’re practically the same price at that storage level. SSDs are simply safer to move, there are no moving parts, dropping an SSD isn’t that concerning, dropping an HDD can easily kill it. I mean think of this this way. There IS a physical reader that goes across the entire disk. That doesn’t exist in an SSD. It’s hard to do, but you can realistically take a hard drive and just SHAKE it to death with your hand, make the reader fall out of place. While shaking a solid state is more like just shaking a giant flash drive.
As NateNate60 mentioned: USB Flash. I second this as a cost effective alternative to anything else. Corsair Survivor, Sandisk Exteme Pro and Kingston DataTraveler Flash drives to 256GB are cheaper than anything else and just as reliable.
Should you want to go the SSD route, the Corsair MX500 drives purchased with any external esata or usb chassis is the most reliable option for the price.
You say that data is critical for your business, have you considered a cloud backup as well? AWS has very cheap storage options depending on the speed the file needs to be available at. Also I’d definitely not go with flash memory, bit flips can be a real danger. I’d go with a 1 TB HDD in an enclosure, additionally to a cloud backup
OP already says that multiple backups and cloud copies exist. I do not recommend mechanical hard drives because they’re inherently fragile. If OP really needs high-quality long-term archival storage that is robust and lasts forever, I will recommend a tape drive and do so with a straight face.
Bit-flipping is, frankly, a non-issue to such an extent that even considering it seriously is moving into tinfoil hat territory.
On its own, no, but it can be used, like any cloud storage solution, as part of a robust backup strategy. Particularly, if the desktop sync feature is enabled, every client machine that has the sync application installed will download and synchronise the contents of the Google Drive locally. If the Google Drive servers go kaput this still means you’ve essentially got several off-site backup copies of the data on Google Drive.
I agree with tapes if the data is large and not accessed frequently. Magnetic tapes are still one of the most information-dense mediums, surprisingly. WORM tapes are Write Once Read Many and are used by serious large enterprises for long-term archival storage.
This was what I was thinking about. I would definitely not use gdrive a a critical backup and the glacier tier at aws should be sufficient and cheaper than a hdd for years
Backblaze B2 is another option. Not sure if its as cheap as Glacier as its hard to compare usage based billing.
I pay about $1-2 USD/mo for 100GB. Storage is about $0.02/day, The rest of the cost is access costs.
I use rclone to do my own encryption. Most of the cost is probably backing up my phone nightly (Round Sync which is rclone on Android). Specifically signal results in a new 400Mb backup every night with 99% of the same data as the last backup.
I’d like to second the large flash drive idea. You can get a couple of them and a case to keep them in for less than $50 total and have multiple layers of redundancy
Want to minimise cost? 128 GB USB drives can be had for around ten dollars. Fifteen dollars will get you 256 GB. Stick with a cheap but reliable brand like SanDisk or PNY. It will last you years with proper care, even with regular use.
I do not really see a reason to invest in a “real” hard drive or external SSD for your use case. There isn’t enough data to justify it and USB drives can take a lot of abuse and still work.
Edit: There are a lot of fake USB drives sold online where the controller has been hacked to report a higher capacity to your operating system than actually exists, for example, reporting 512 GB when there’s actually only 64 GB of storage. If you try to store more than the actual capacity, your old files will be overwritten with the new ones. That’s why you should be suspicious of very high capacity drives (1 TB+) sold online for low prices. I would not buy any USB drive online that claims to have a capacity greater than 512 GB.
Regarding fakes, there are tools you can (and should) run on any new drive. I personally like h2testw, but there are others as well.
You should also avoid sketchy resellers. This includes Amazon, due to their policy of commingling and their response to counterfeits. Don’t buy from Amazon! Stick to trustworthy and first-party sellers. If buying online, make sure they don’t have a third party seller. In fact, probably best to skip any that even have a 3rd party “marketplace” system.
I don’t think there are really any fake 256 GB drives on the market. The real drives are priced low enough that there’s really not much profit to be made from selling fakes. It’s just not that much cheaper to make a 32 GB drive and flash fake firmware than to actually make a legitimate 256 GB drive. Or buy the AmazonBasics brand since only Amazon makes and sells them.
The sound is determined by what kind of drive it is. Consumer drives are for in-home use and are usually quiet. Enterprise drives are for dedicated server rooms or data centers and can get loud because it’s loud in there already.
I would recommend sticking with consumer level HDDs if this is a concern. The cost per TB isn’t as good.
I bought a 14 TB Seagate Exos and put it in a Fractal R5, which is a very good noise insulating case. I can hear clicking from anywhere on the same floor as that machine if I listen for it.
You could maybe pair two consumer drives together in JBOD to get the space you want, but that’s more expensive.
There’s no hard limit or standard, but I think 14 TB might be the largest you could find in a consumer HDD. The WD EasyStore goes on sale pretty often and sells for a good deal. Those should be quiet and already come in an external case. Look for reviews about it before buying.
I’ve been buying used 8TB HGST SAS drives on eBay for $50USD each, so far no issues but I really don’t care if they die. Basically disposable at that price point.
Hook them up, run a SMART test and see what their powered-on hours and error-rates look like. If it’s not a significant fraction of the MTBF, chances are you’ll be fine – assuming you’re using them in a RAID or ZFS array where a drive loss is not necessarily catastrophic.
Chances are enterprise drives will last far longer than 5 years easily in my experience, but in my opinion 15% off isn’t enough to justify not having a warranty. I see those sales often enough on legitimate drives.
Enterprise drive sales aren’t restricted in anyway, you just need to buy them from a reputable seller. I personally would avoid Amazon, there are tons of “deals” like the one you found on there and they don’t make it obvious. A legitimate seller example - www.connection.com/product/…/41308811?cac=Result
I was a bit off, they were 15% cheaper than the Ironwolf on the same website/from same seller (156, not USD, vs 179, not USD).
For a better comparison, I went to WD’s official store and for what I spent on these two 8TB Exos (312, not USD) I can get two 4TB Red Plus (310, not USD). Can’t make a direct comparison with other Seagates because their “buy now” section redirects me to Amazon, which, as you said, is not the best since they allowed third party sellers, but on there the 8TB Ironwolf is 250 (!!).
As you already know, I’m not in the US so I can’t buy from there. Unfortunately, Seagate’s “buy now” section (which should be official retailers) brings me to either Amazon or other chains that don’t have much else besides portable drives.
At this point I have two options, really: try again the same online store (which is kinda like Amazon, many third party sellers), but getting Ironwolf, which should be more likely to be “legit”, and of course check them as well when they arrive, or settle for two 4TB WD Red Plus (which isn’t ideal as I’m already nearing 2.5TB total, but should allow me to get by a while longer) bought directly from WD.
edit: looking at the link you provided, I paid 30% less for my Exos. Would that sway you towards keeping it without warranty (apart from the seller’s, which is one year I think)? Mind that I don’t need enterprise-grade drives, and I think even NAS drives are overkill for my needs. For example a WD Blue with its 55TBW per year might be enough for me (that’s 150GB a day everyday for a year, which is above my average writes), but those don’t come big enough (I need 6TB min to be comfortable) nevermind, they do come in 8TB size, just at a lower spinning speed (5640rpm), but they cost more (267) than the Ironwolf, and are SMR and have 128MB cache. Sounds like a bad deal!
I think you’re looking in the wrong places for the info you want You got what are known as OEM drives. These are primarily sold in bulk to system integrators like Dell/HP/etc. they are noticeably cheaper, but do not have a long warranty. Typically they have 90 days, which is enough to cover infant mortality. After that, the OEM basically self-insures - they have to eat the cost of replacement, but that’s offset by the lower price.
What you’re probably looking for are Retail drives. These have multi-year coverage directly from the manufacturer.
Read the terms of sale carefully- sometimes the seller is the one offering the longer warranty, same as an OEM. Then consider if you trust them to honor that warranty, especially considering that it will be a direct expense to them.
yep, looks good. should be new then, since they were still in packaging.
You have to decide for yourself if not having to send it back and the reduced price is worth not having a warranty from the manufacturer. does the seller have to provide warranty anyway in your country? I think this would be the case in my country, if the seller is a business, irrelevant what warranty seagate gives you
Some anecdotal evidence, take it or leave it :-) I have a 12x 4 year old Exos 7E8 (the previous generation) and I’ve not had any failure yet since I bought em. In the past, I had many (many many…) failed seagate drives but never within the warranty span
The amazing thing about those are that they are halfing the rebuild time. With large drives you get rebuild time of over 24 hours which is actually frightening.
Setup is a one time thing and yes you need to be carefull about it but i bet software support will come as soon as those get more mainstream.
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