Re: USB hard drives -- recommendations?
Build your own.
Buy an enclosure, you can chose the USB/SATA chip within limits
yourself. I prefer metal enclosures for better heat dissipation.
For the disk to put into that enclosure, you could refer to the yearly
Backblaze report for some more statistical meaningful numbers than
"anecdotal" stories:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2018/
But keep in mind that the environmental conditions there will most
likely not match yours, and your mileage will vary. And, you will need
to be prepared to lose your drive *at any time* anyway, regardless of
how "good" the drive type seems to be.
So the criteria for choosing one are like this
- one of the major manufacturers
- meets your technical specs (size, speed, rpm, desktop/NAS type, ...)
- longest warranty (to minimize the risk of financial loss in the event
of a drive failure)
for the best price.
I don't know if the general impression that 3.5" drives are more robust
than 2.5" ones is (still) valid, but I always use 3.5" personally.
Jens
On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 05:34:37PM -0800, Peter Ehlert wrote:
> I avoid USB drives, in preference to internal drives... speed and security.
> When I use them I am extremely careful, because they all seem to have a
> spinning disk inside, not shock resistant, and subject to early failure due
> to heat.
> I do have several, but they are not what I really Trust to keep precious
> data.
>
> a separate box that is out of harm is best, even a separate low end computer
> to act as a storage device.
> syncthing is my tool of choice to sync from my laptop to a desktop
> then LuckyBackup on a schedule to Copy the sync folder into a second Storage
> drive.
>
> Sorry, no recommendation, others have already spoke up and they know more
> than me about USB storage
>
> On 1/25/19 9:24 AM, James H. H. Lampert wrote:
> > Fellow List members:
> >
> > Would anybody care to voice an opinion on USB external hard drives in
> > the 2 terabyte size range, for automated backup purposes?
> >
> > We've been looking at the Seagate "Expansion" and the WD "Elements";
> > I've noticed that on Amazon, both have a fair number of negative reviews
> > citing reliability issues. (We recently discovered that our current
> > Seagate had apparently failed on us.)
> >
> > Any opinions? Seagate? WD? Toshiba? Something else?
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