Offsite External Harddrive Storage Question

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smurfettes

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Hello,
This is probably a very silly question.....

I have backup sorted for everyday use. I want to purchase another external harddrive (poss 2x 500GB so eggs not all in same basket or 1TB) which will take all archive photographs and then be stored offsite.

My question is: Does the device need to be constantly switched on/activated? regularly switched on/activated eg once a week/month? or is it possible to backup, then put it all back in in box and leave it switched off indefinately?
This is just a backup of all archive stuff. I will have access via another backup option.
It makes a difference as to where i locate this device as to how much attention its going to need.
The harddrives i use now, never get switched off, so really dont know what would happen.
Thanks all for your advice
 
External harddrives don't need to be powered on constantly. I have a Western Digital My Book for archives & just switch it on when I add files & then switch it back off again. Been doing this for a couple of years without issue (so far!).
 
F3TT said:
External harddrives don't need to be powered on constantly. I have a Western Digital My Book for archives & just switch it on when I add files & then switch it back off again. Been doing this for a couple of years without issue (so far!).
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Agree same here, only thing I would say is make sure you get an external drive with a power on/off button, the one I have (Hitachi Simpledrive 1TB)
doesn't and I have to unplug the power cable when not in use, which isn't a problem in it's self but the air is blue each time I drop the lead and it falls to the floor behind my units :annoyed:
 
You're better off keeping your offsite drive as a full copy of your regular backup drive. That way should the worst hapen, you've got a recent copy of all your stuff, not just what you consider "archived".
I do the same, take my off site drive back home once a week and clone the full contents of my backup disk onto it and then return it to my drawer at work the following morning.

They don't need to be kept powered on, and if you do the above it'll be switched on pretty regularly anyway :)
 
Have you looked at Mozy? It'll take a couple of months to do the initial backup but then it will chug away quite happily.

www.mozy.com

It won't be that cheap for a vast amount of data but it is an option.
 
backstage pass said:
Have you looked at Mozy? It'll take a couple of months to do the initial backup
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And several months if you ever needed to restore from it! Any backup option that saves your data somewhere that is, in effect, irretrievable is useless. Using the cloud to backup hundreds of GB is, at the moment, not a viable solution for anybody who may want to get that data back sometime.
 
hollis_f said:
And several months if you ever needed to restore from it! Any backup option that saves your data somewhere that is, in effect, irretrievable is useless. Using the cloud to backup hundreds of GB is, at the moment, not a viable solution for anybody who may want to get that data back sometime.
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unless youve got access to leased line fibre :lol:
 
You can only get certain critical files back if you need to.

I use it as a last line backup, ie if my 2 other back ups fail, I've restored some files from it to test it, but I wouldn't use it as my only back up, for the reasons stated above.
 
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