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by Neilyb on Sun Nov 26, 2017 11:34 am
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Every couple of years I get to the point where I need more disk space. Last time I hit 2TB I bought 4TB disks, not I am hitting 4TB I am considering new 8TB units, or 10 maybe.

I have a simple backup strategy, Sync Toy Echo's disk A to disk B in my PC, and disk C sits in a drawer at work and is done whenever I remember to :o but this is my fire and theft backup.

I have no preference on manufacturer but do wonder which to chose, as there are so many and to over confuse things there are NAS and various other drives too? I am wondering if a cheaper slower drive is fine for the backup copy, as it will not be used for editing (most editing is done from an SSD anyway).

Any recommendations greatly appreciated.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Sun Nov 26, 2017 11:47 am
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My recommend would be to buy a housing that is actively cooled and has all the interfaces (Thunderbold, USB-C, USB3) and then just stick new drives in there as the need arises over time.

NAS is of course an option but that's a different game than just an attached external HD.

As for drives, I;d stick with a 7200 RPM drive but you probably don't need higher priced enterprise drives in your usage model that you have described.

On the consumer drive side, my preference is for the HGST models but they all tend to be fairly reliable as long as the drives are actively cooled.
 

by Neilyb on Sun Nov 26, 2017 12:04 pm
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Thanks EJ. Would running a USB 3 housing be fast enough for editing?
 

by E.J. Peiker on Sun Nov 26, 2017 12:09 pm
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Neilyb wrote:Thanks EJ. Would running a USB 3 housing be fast enough for editing?
Yes, absolutely.  USB 3 is very fast.  Sure Thunderbolt is faster but in general with a standard HD, the interface is faster than the drive, even with USB 3 so there isn't that much difference.
 

by Neilyb on Sun Nov 26, 2017 12:10 pm
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OK thanks!
 

by Neilyb on Sun Nov 26, 2017 12:19 pm
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Would this be the kind of thing? I would prefer to have USBC and TB too, you never know.

https://www.gearbest.com/hdd-ssd/pp_349 ... PzEALw_wcB
 

by E.J. Peiker on Mon Nov 27, 2017 7:44 am
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Never heard of the brand but something along those lines would work well.
 

by Neilyb on Mon Nov 27, 2017 9:23 am
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Thanks E.J!
 

by Phil Shaw on Mon Nov 27, 2017 11:57 am
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I don't think the case you are referencing has active cooling - can see no reference to a fan or temperature control. Personally I would steer away from large, inexpensive JBOD cases - they are easily dropped if you move them around much and they do get hot.
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by E.J. Peiker on Mon Nov 27, 2017 12:52 pm
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Phil Shaw wrote:I don't think the case you are referencing has active cooling - can see no reference to a fan or temperature control.  Personally I would steer away from large, inexpensive JBOD cases - they are easily dropped if you move them around much and they do get hot.
One of the pictures along the side does look like there is a fan.  It also has various levels of RAID in addition to JBOD configured via the switches...
Image
 

by Neilyb on Wed Nov 29, 2017 9:24 am
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That one along with the Icybox are cooled by a fan. My problem is that both seem to be noisy because of this and would sit next to me in the room.

My question to E.J, could something like this without a fan work, as it is not covered? https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B06XYJ ... 556L&psc=1
 

by Royce Howland on Wed Nov 29, 2017 11:16 am
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I'm not a fan of those open slotted enclosures. HD's still pump out a tremendous amount of heat during sustained, ongoing use (vs. temporary use to run small backup jobs). I'd be concerned that simple exposure to open air would not reduce the heat enough to help longevity of the drives. Plus the open enclosure allows the potential for dust & debris to fall into the connectors, which is not good. And spinning platter drives are noisy all by themselves; without being sonically damped at all by being inside a case, you might find the high-pitched noise & chattering of the drives is more distracting than the steady whir of a high volume / low RPM cooling fan in the back of a case.

I have a 5-bay eSATA RAID box sitting right next to my workstation at the moment, and I don't find it all that annoying as far as noise level. When I do notice it, it's often more because of the noise the drives are making, not the cooling fan.
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by Neilyb on Wed Nov 29, 2017 2:27 pm
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Thanks Royce. So many options. Is it worth considering using my two older 4TB disks in a box and striping, buying a single 8TB disk for the backups? I hate having disks and not using them, I have many hanging around and could probably use them in an Icybox or similar. I am getting beyond myself now :o
 

by E.J. Peiker on Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:52 pm
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I don't think that fan will be that noisy. I have a similar OWC housing and you can't really hear it.
 

by Royce Howland on Thu Nov 30, 2017 11:22 am
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Yes, employing your existing 4TB drives striped together in a small RAID 0 capable box would be a good way to use those existing drives while getting a single larger, marginally faster-performing volume out of the deal. Of course any such box should be actively cooled for best protection of those drives, as we're discussing above in this thread. :) I do that myself... I have a few dual-drive RAID 0 enclosures that I'm using with some surplus 4TB drives while upgrading all my main storage arrays from 4TB to 8TB disks.

Just for the sake of completeness, I'm sure you recall that RAID 0 offers no redundancy within itself. If either drive in the striped pair dies, the entire volume is instantly lost. So at least a pair of 8TB (or other large) volumes would be needed to back up the RAID 0 box itself.

Which leads to a side note on your initial post describing your copy internal A, internal B, external C approach. Though I may be reading it wrong, from the description it looks like to make a backup onto copy C, you have all 3 drives live on the system at the same time. I'd not do that myself. I believe in rarely-to-the-point-of-never having all my eggs in the same basket. If all copies of data are connected to a hot system at the same time, you're one mouse click, virus hit or lightning strike away from having 0 copies of your data. Stated another way, I prefer not to be only half paranoid -- at least one full copy (generally in fact more in my case) is not connected to anything at all times. :)
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by Neilyb on Fri Dec 01, 2017 2:50 am
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Let me clear that up Royce. Disk A and B sit in the desktop and get backed up regularly, or as regular as I feel enough files were added or removed. Disk C is also a copy of those but sits in a drawer here at work (I work full time, not as a photographer). So I should always have, if not a full, a 95% backup of my RAW files should anything happen at home.

So the idea is use the existing 4GB disks in a Raid 0 housing. New disk in in the PC to work from and use as master copy. I do have an SSD for processing the most recent images.

Thanks again!
 

by TimRucci on Tue Dec 05, 2017 1:21 pm
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Neilyb wrote:Let me clear that up Royce. Disk A and B sit in the desktop and get backed up regularly, or as regular as I feel enough files were added or removed. Disk C is also a copy of those but sits in a drawer here at work (I work full time, not as a photographer). So I should always have, if not a full, a 95% backup of my RAW files should anything happen at home.

So the idea is use the existing 4GB disks in a Raid 0 housing. New disk in in the PC to work from and use as master copy. I do have an SSD for processing the most recent images.

Thanks again!


My backup strategy is virtually the same as yours:  (2) 4 TB HGST drives in my desktop with one serving as an exact backup of the other. Then 2 external hard drives that only get connected to update backups, serving as a 3rd copy.   (I'm not a fan of Raid configurations).

The only reason for this reply is to mention that the reason I specifically chose the 4TB HGST brand (which is part of Hitachi), is that I read an article about 3 years ago before doing a new computer build, trying to determine the most reliable hard drives to use.  The article was from a company that uses thousands of hard drives, and it gave failure statistics for about a dozen different brands and sizes of hard drives.  It revealed that the absolute most reliable drive was the 4 TB NASD drive from HGST.  Some of the WD and Seagate drives had horrendous failure rates.  With a very large sample size such as mentioned in the article, I felt the statistics were very reliable.  The other sizes of HGST drives were also good, but all had a higher failure rate than the 4 TB size.

These drives are marketed as NASD drives but I have them formatted as regular hard drives without any partitions.  I actually installed a third 4TB HGST a couple weeks ago in my desktop, bringing my total to 3, but have not written any data to it yet.  I have used these drives for about the last 3 years with no issues whatsoever.  You can often find these drives at very competitive prices at Newegg. 

I have excellent ventilation with 6 fans moving air up from the bottom and sides of the cabinet and out the top.  My bios shows that the temperature of the motherboard is always around 88 degrees F, and the CPU about 93 degrees F.  This is an Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz (not overclocked), with 32 gb of memory.  It's always a good idea to know the temperature inside your computer because it can have a direct effect on the life of your hard drives.   Even with 6 fans the computer is very quiet.  There are good quality fans available that are quiet but still move a lot of air.  

To maximize the effect of ventilation, I have my desktop sitting on a wooden skid I built that elevates it a couple inches off the ground, and there is a hole cut out of the skid to allow air to move up from underneath the skid, into and through the cabinet through the fan mounted in the bottom.    I would never sit a desktop computer on directly on the floor, and especially not directly on a carpeted floor.  
http://www.pbase.com/tim32225 or
http://www.timrucciphotography.com
 

by Neilyb on Wed Dec 06, 2017 2:47 am
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Hi Tim, thanks for that.

One thing that confuses the heck out of me is all these drives. Some NAS, some Security, some Desktop. I did look at HGST but their range seemed to be NAS/Enterprise oriented. Does this mean they are made to run longer, have shorter/longer access times? I just did not know. So I bought buy the Seagate Barracuda Pro for my main disk and will put the two 4GB disks in the housing as a Raid0 array. This will only need to run then when I make backups and will also free up space in the PC, therefore less heat. Will be running two HDDs and two SSDs in my i7 PC which is mounted in my desk with plenty of air flow. I am running three HDDs right now.
 

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