Tech opinions

posted on July 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

So last night I managed to send 200+ GBs of data five feet to it's doom.  It's not as bad as it sounds though as most of it was installers, game ISOs, etc. and can be easily found again.

Anyway, I'm in the market for a new external hard drive.

Specifically I'd like to know...
[list type=decimal]
[*]If anyone has suggestions on enclosures; I'm most interested in their impact resistance
[*]If anyone knows (or believes) that 2.5" HDDs (i.e. laptop drives) are more impact resistant
[li]What the best drives are. Personally I prefer Western Digitals.
[/list]

I'd also like some suggestions on what drives might be good for setting up a RAID 1 array for more regular backup. Obviously the biggest issue in this case will be longevity.

Thanks for your opinions.

[beserene]

posted on July 22nd, 2011, 2:47 am

Last edited by beserene on July 22nd, 2011, 2:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

If anyone has suggestions on enclosures; I'm most interested in their impact resistance[/li]

All the same: don't let it fall down, especially not while it's running - even 20cm can be crucial then. Of course there are some more protective cases for business purpose, but i doubt that's an option, and neither do they make a big difference.

If anyone knows (or believes) that 2.5" HDDs (i.e. laptop drives) are more impact resistant[/li]

No. Mostly business laptops (like IBM / Lenovo Thinkpads) and some Apple ones got a motion sensor that sets the hard drive to it's parking mode, once a motion threshold is reached, to avoid data loss. Another option are laptops that are constructed with military standards, or developed for "unfriendly" enviroments, like the Panasonic Toughbook.
The hard drive itself doesn't make a difference at all.

What the best drives are. Personally I prefer Western Digitals.

Depends on the production line. Overall i (personally) prefer WD HDDs, or Intel SSDs.

I'd also like some suggestions on what drives might be good for setting up a RAID 1 array for more regular backup. Obviously the biggest issue in this case will be longevity.

Two equal sized ones.
A Raid1 is actually not a good idea for a regular backup, it's supposed to be a backup if one drive fails in a continous running enviroment (like server) to keep the uptime, not for consumer (and real) backups against falling damage, viruses, "what so ever".
(in business Raid1 is NOT considered to be a backup)
Depending on how much you want to spend, and of course your personal needs, there are various options between "an external drive with an open source backup software, or manual backup with a copy handler (CRC check)", to more expensive solutions with redudant backups against nearly everything.



Last but not least: if impact resistance is the most important thing, SSDs are the way to go.

just my 2 cents



P.S.: why is the resistance so important anyways?

posted on July 22nd, 2011, 3:20 am

How broken is it? Ive had issue with mine but have been able to recover data and reformat a few times....

posted on July 22nd, 2011, 3:24 am

You could look into a NAS box for backup

posted on July 22nd, 2011, 2:21 pm

I have a cheap NAS and it works fine (doubles as a network mediasource) ... I also try to get a friends together so we can share our NAS over the internet for emergency. If you are looking for "safe" options, try those data-storing services. Might be cheaper than buying NAS/USB storage.

posted on July 23rd, 2011, 2:35 am

Last but not least: if impact resistance is the most important thing, SSDs are the way to go.

Agreed, unfortunately the cost of SSDs is still ridiculous for anything sizable. And it will probably be another five years (minimum) before the prices become reasonable.

How broken is it? Ive had issue with mine but have been able to recover data and reformat a few times....

Really broken. You can hear the head arms knocking against something before it shuts itself off. It fell five feet after all (about 1.6 m for the rest of the world).

You could look into a NAS box for backup

Yeah, I realize NAS would be ideal, but I'm not really in a position to look into it at the moment; it wouldn't really suit my needs. Although I will probably look into it down the road. Online storage I'm not thrilled about either; I guess I'd rather not throw stuff into the ether if it can be avoided.

posted on July 23rd, 2011, 3:55 am

I think my  first reply pretty much covered everything, except i still dont know what your real needs are.

So...
- why is the impact resistance so important?
- what are your needs? ;>