How to go from here.

ding76uk

ding76uk

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After my scare thew other day I started thinking about where to go from here with my PC storage. Currently 500gb internal, 500gb ext Backup. I find myself shooting more and more and am in danger of soon filling up the Main HDD. Here is the crux of this.

Do I buy a 1TB internal drive as main backup and back up from that essential stuff to the 500gb external.

Option 2, Do I get a 1TB external and use 500GB internal and external currently have as main drives

Or is there an even better option.

I have alubody macbook, and wondered if went photoshop and ext monitor etc and used ext drives as main and backup to that would that be a better alternative?

Decisions decisions.
 
Don't use hard drives to store anything of importance to you long term. A good quality DVD or better still 2 or 3 copies stored in different places will be far safer.
 
External hard drives are also generally more unreliable than internal as unless you switch them off they spin constantly, which an internal drive won't do. This constant spinning shortens the life span, sometimes quite considerably. After the amount i've seen die after 12-18 months use, I wouldn't trust anything to an external hard drive.
 
I would look for a NAS box without drives then add two 1TB drives, set them to Raid (Mirror) and then use that, it shws at a 1TB drive but you then have a backup as the drives mirror each other
 
Western Digital is my personal choice of drive manufacturer.

A caviar blue will suit backup purposes just fine.

If you can afford the NAS idea, or even just the RAID 1 idea, then that's good, but if not, a big internal drive is your next best option.
 
is anyone bored of my saying "please dont use a RAID mirror as a single point of backup" yet?

personally i wouldnt recommend storing data long term on DVD-R as the dye can degrade over time. personally i have 2 external drives both that hold exact copies of my data (sync via allway sync), if one fails i still have the other. this would be the best solution in my opinion.
 
The thing is, it all depend how much you can afford to spend.

£100 or so on a pair of 1TB drives in RAID 1 is better than £50 on a single 1TB drive. I don't like using external drives for the reason I mentioned before, the failure rate is just too high for my liking. Beyond that you're into the territory of dedicated NAS boxes and such like. Online is an option for important stuff but uploading 8GB of photos at a time is just impractical.

To be honest, for the majority of people RAID 1 is probably overkill anyway.

Preferably you should always have multiple backups for everything but on some occasions that just isn't possible or practical.
 
divine` said:
External hard drives are also generally more unreliable than internal as unless you switch them off they spin constantly, which an internal drive won't do. This constant spinning shortens the life span, sometimes quite considerably. After the amount i've seen die after 12-18 months use, I wouldn't trust anything to an external hard drive.
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All 4 of my externals (3 eSATA and 1 NAS) Switch off when not in use.

Reliability isn't affected at all IME.
 
ding76uk said:
So then an internal TB drive would be the best bet? I can't see me being able to back up data to DVD when I sometimes have 8GB of usable from a shoot. I also heard DVD is not reliable way to backup.
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DVD is a darned sight more reilable that any make or type of hard drive. 8gb data? 2 discs, take you a few minutes tops.

By all means use a hard drive for short term storage, but don't rely on it to still be there in a couple of years.
 
Steep said:
By all means use a hard drive for short term storage, but don't rely on it to still be there in a couple of years.
Click to expand...

thats a touch scaremoungering to be honest. if that truely was the case then hard drive based SANs would of been made obsolete years ago.

as i said before writable disks are dye based which can degrade over years so how is that really more reliable long term?

if you value your data store it on 2 separate devices. simple.
 
If your mother board supports raid 1 ( mirroring ) that would be your safest internal option.
If one drive goes down, you will be warned by the software to replace it. when the drive is replaced the software will automatically rebuild the new drive.
Without going down the route of more expensive RAID options this is the safest way to keep your data internally, as the odds of both drives dying at the same time are slim. Not to say it wont happen if you get a lightening strike for instance.
To safe guard against the latter and data loss through mains spikes AN UPS would greatly help.

How far do you want to go ?
 
I want to go far enough to make sure that I will be able to keep my data. I have ext which is turned off when not in use, which backs up via syncing every week (if I do a lot more work then back up manually).

Think 1TB internal as backup(next purchase), main drive and ext drive should keep me safe as chance of all failing at once would be minimal. I don't know if my drive supports Raid1, but if it does would that be a good option baring in mind I will also have my ext backup which will be non raid? How difficult is it to set up Raid if Mobo supports it?

As for lightening, first sign it is unplugged and I use a protecting gang socket to prevent against this.
 
ding76uk said:
I want to go far enough to make sure that I will be able to keep my data. I have ext which is turned off when not in use, which backs up via syncing every week (if I do a lot more work then back up manually).

Think 1TB internal as backup(next purchase), main drive and ext drive should keep me safe as chance of all failing at once would be minimal. I don't know if my drive supports Raid1, but if it does would that be a good option baring in mind I will also have my ext backup which will be non raid? How difficult is it to set up Raid if Mobo supports it?

As for lightening, first sign it is unplugged and I use a protecting gang socket to prevent against this.
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You`ll need 2 identical drives connected.
You`ll also need the RAID controller enabled in the motherboards BIOS.
Once that's done, you`ll need to set the drives up in the RAID controllers BIOS. ( You enter the Controllers bios by pressing CTRL i on my board, but will probably be CTRL something else on yours )
Dig out your motherboard manual. This will tell you more on how to go about setting it up.

but as neil suggests an external method as well would be better
 
I'd take the WD drive out of those two. The F1s have a very good rep but i've seen a spate of failures of that drive recently over several tech forums I use. I think they may have suffered a bit in the quality control stakes with the sudden popularity the drive got.
 
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