External Hard Disk Drives CAUTION! X2

[robracer]

Hi Guys,have had some bad experiences with EHDD's the first being a 2 year old WD 500gig unit that went kaput this was used to store artwork files that are repeatedly used by my staff. The unit went down & it was found that the unit was clicking rather than spinning so upon removal from the case & using an adaptor for the Hard drive & different power source the same thing happened in short the Seagate drive was faulty. I was luck that My tech after several attempts managed to rescue the stored data saving the expensive of hard core data recovery but this has left me with a doubt as to the use of HDD's.
Today I had a 1TB Lacie do the same thing... clicking + the on light flashing & puter will not recognise the drive these things are FARKED!!!
So much for Seagate Drives ... they are shite & they are the most common go figure

I am installing a 5-BAY RAID system next week to replace the first failed drive in the hope that the auto back up the raid offers will give added security with a duplicated copy but fark me do I need a back up of a back up?

I already have about 1.5TB artwork files that I need to cater for so is there any tec advise form members as to a better storage solution?

I am bloody FRUSTRATED!

[dave#3]

Rob,

You're quite right to say that most (all) "home spec" HDDs are not overly reliable. If the data is important to you I'd suggest a NAS box of some description which supports either RAID 1 or RAID 5. Further, you should consider backing up to tape frequently and taking the tapes offsite each night.

Yell out if you want a hand spec'ing, ordering or setting up any of this stuff!

[Rusty]

If you want data security, splash out on a decent tape backup. NEVER have only a single copy of critical data. Period.

For drives, yep, RAID 5 is the way to go. Preferably at least 4 disks (3 disk array + hot spare), but you can get away with 3. Basically the hot spare means that you can lose 2 disks and keep running. If you use SATA drives, make sure they're 24/7 rated (about $10 extra per disk). If you can afford it, my preference would be SAS (serial SCSI), but it's pretty expensive for the amount of space.

Can't stress the importance of valid backups enough. I've seen a LOT of money lost over the years because clients weren't willing to spend enough on backups. It's like insurance - one always complains about how much it costs, but it's a lifesaver when there's opportunity to use it.

[Smitty]

If you want data security, splash out on a decent tape backup. NEVER have only a single copy of critical data. Period.

For drives, yep, RAID 5 is the way to go. Preferably at least 4 disks (3 disk array + hot spare), but you can get away with 3. Basically the hot spare means that you can lose 2 disks and keep running. If you use SATA drives, make sure they're 24/7 rated (about $10 extra per disk). If you can afford it, my preference would be SAS (serial SCSI), but it's pretty expensive for the amount of space.

Can't stress the importance of valid backups enough. I've seen a LOT of money lost over the years because clients weren't willing to spend enough on backups. It's like insurance - one always complains about how much it costs, but it's a lifesaver when there's opportunity to use it.

pretty spot on

we have a similar setup as work...
RAID 5 with SCSI (a must do..SCSI drives if you want to rely on yr data surviving)
plus
we do 2 backups a night...one a disk to disk (we have a stand alone backup server..with a 1TB of disk space)
and
a tape bacckup using a SDLT unit (which i swap each day and go home with teh most recent)

at home I have two harddrives..one for programs OS etc
and one for data..Each is backed up to separate external (USB connected) hard drives (yeah 4 in total)

hth

Smitty

[Jonno]

Hard drives by mechanical nature will always fail, unless u can afford and even follow flash solid state memory (currently around 128gb per $800) all your choices are limited to hard spinning disk drives and considering you can get 1 terrabyte now for less than $200, flash memory couldnt even be considered an option.
All about........redundancy, redundancy,redundancy, and if 3 times isnt good enuff try more redundancy,redundancy,redundancy,redundancy,redundancy,redundancy, nothing like a good ghost backup to recover "everything on your system"within 10 minutes. still you need that drive to be bootable and working no matter what it is. When u lose everything and all you can see is a re-install that takes a full day of all your apps after window$ I can tell u straight up Acronis 11(paid for software) is perfect, plenty of freebies around that might do it but A11 has been the top notch application for me.

[robracer]

Hard drives by mechanical nature will always fail

This is where the problem seems to be, but I really don't want to go there again
I have even had CD's & DVD's erase after a few years of storage..... its a problem that wont go away for us & ultimately I need a long term solution.

[MrWasabi]

if you really want a long term solution then consider an SSD (Solid State Drive)
they are expensive as it is relatively new to the consumer marker, but they have no moving parts, so removing the mechanical failure of most drives.

No matter what hard drive you have however, as has been stated above, its all useless unless you have a solid backup system. We have a few hundred TB of storage at work, all optical drives that specs would scare the shit out of most people. Last week we had one go down, wasnt pretty but a quick restore (16 hours) and we were back in action.

At home i have a WD Mybook 1TB edition connected via USB. Its shit, ive already had a few scares and its got my whole life on it, pictures, music, applications and more (yes fonts as well ) its got no backup method at the moment, however im building a server with tape to do this as we speak.

Guess the point im trying to make is that drives will always fail, however backups dont have to.

[Rusty]

This is where the problem seems to be, but I really don't want to go there again
I have even had CD's & DVD's erase after a few years of storage..... its a problem that wont go away for us & ultimately I need a long term solution.

Solid state's not perfect, either, and it's more expensive than SAS. I don't believe it's worth the cost at the moment.

Any device that is used will ALWAYS fail eventually, no matter what. Reliability isn't just about minimising failures. It's also about minimising the results of the failures. RAID is a good start. SCSI is not the be all and end all it used to be. For simple value for money data storage, SATA is king. But don't forget the backups.

What's your power like? If there's a lot of electrical equipment around it's probably pretty dirty, which is one of the biggest HDD killers. You might find that reliability is substantially enhanced by a good UPS.

[robracer]

Solid state's not perfect, either, and it's more expensive than SAS. I don't believe it's worth the cost at the moment

True... give it 2-5 more years & they will have it nailed in cost & reliability.

If there's a lot of electrical equipment around it's probably pretty dirty, which is one of the biggest HDD killers

Clean office enviroment & both drives that failed were on desktops & never dropped .... but unfortunatly left on permanently