Nice case, where did you get it?
Check out the free program " virtual volume view " for cold storage management.
1 Like
I stand firmly by seagate and hgst. Canât beat 'em
Though, if you are looking at long term, use a tape. less bitrot.
Would be interesting to know what the drive temperatures were for both batches
1 Like
I previously used individual plastic boxes, then just went and got the first best alu case.
5 drive version
10 drive
Will do
If you arenât going to be helpful donât post.
1 Like
Hello,
I would love to hear your opinion on my new backup drive dilemma.
I have around ~2TB right now, what took me circa 10 years to collect (documents, photos, etcâŚ). Doubling this with some headroom in mind - I need 6TB backup drive.
Intended use: weekly backups of my desktop computer. (plug, backup, rest for a week, repeat).
Based on online research, Iâm going with WD Elements Desktop - no encryption, readable outside of case. Based on datahoarder subreddit, Elements <= 6TB WD blue drive almost guaranteed, >=8TB white drive probably.
I have two options:
- 6TB Elements for 108⏠(18âŹ/TB) - most probably WD blue
- 8TB Elements for 152⏠(19âŹ/TB) - most probably WD white (smallest capacity with white drive probability)
The 8TB drive will probably die before I will be able to fill it up. Iâm looking at it, as it they were same capacity, and whether paying 40% extra makes sense from point of reliability, durability over time. Is one going to be better/last longer than another?
Which one would you pick (and why)?
I suspect youâve been reading some misleading sites. Drive reliability is basically random across small sample sizes. The 6TiB drive is as likely to fail as the 8TiB one. The solution is to use a rotation strategy, ie, 2 drives and leap frog your backups. This is sensible anyway as if you have a corruption you will always have the n-1 version that may be before the corruption.
So if you are now buying 2 disks rather than one, go for the smaller size (perhaps even 4 TiB) and keep swapping until they are either full or one dies. You will find that your "next disk in a couple of years will be larger and cheaper.
2 Likes
Thanks for the reply Airstripone.
What I mean by drive dying is, that it took me roughly 10 years to hoard 2TB of data. Now factoring music/video quality increase, letâs say it will take me 5years to hoard another 2. I expect the drive to last ~5 years, max 10 and phase it out at that date (I have ~10yo+ 500GB mybook pATA drive, still working here).
We are at 4TBs and I have 2 as a headroom.
Iâm not considering 4TBs due to much worse price/TB ratio (90âŹ/4TB).
Thatâs what Iâm going to do. Keep using one for a month, move it offsite and bring the other on. Cycle them each month.
So, if you were me, wouldnât you worry about blue drive?
I read some horror stories about oils drying out in blue drives when used occasionally - once a week.
1 Like
The last few WD drives I âshuckedâ were either reds or white label. That is a 3TiB and 6TiB. That is anecdotal and probably doesnât help you, but donât assume it will be a Blue.
I think these anecdotes have been circling for years and there is no thematic basis for them. Yes one person once may have had a bearing die, but 10 million other people didnt, so didnt complain about it on reddit. Check the Backblaze analysis and you will see that within a margin of a few percent, all hard disks from any brand are basically materially the same. I prefer WD drives because they tend to be quieter, no other reason.
The other point for larger drives is they may be white label ones with the -3.3v âSASâ sleep feature. If your PC is older it may not be able to boot that drive directly outside of the USB caddy or a dedicated backplane. This may not be a problem for you but it can be annoying if you later want to use one of the disks in your main PC.
We just have to assume that a drive will die at any point, hence having two ready at all times.
Go with the 6TiB drives if that gives the best price to performance. Remember you should never fill a disk to more than 90% as the firmware can correct some sector errors and it uses a few percent of the space for this.
1 Like
Backblaze donât really identify How or Why their drives die, on the whole, unless it is remarkable- like a particular model all popped controller chips in the same six months or something.
Backblaze also runs through a Lot of drives, and basically shows that most models exceed advertised specs, from most suppliers.
Their use case is a little different to OPâs case, as OP would be using (presumably) a single external device.
So it wouldnât have the constant vibration and heat of the crammed BB drives.
On the other hand, once a drive is in a BB pod, it sits there, pretty much till it dies, where OPâs drive may be shaken and cajoled as it gets moved, creating more chance for physical damage if knocked over in use or such.
Either way, the white label and blue drives are generally pretty good, and If the drive is just used as a backup, When it dies (All drives die⌠eventually) itâs just a copy, the original data is on the main machine (Rightâ˝) and later, OP may get a second external USB drive, and rotate them?
I once got a Green label from a shucked USB, but that was a few years ago, and it still runs okay in an array like 5? years later
I like this âdrive boxâ. I think I need help 
WD has a nasty habit of using USB controllers directly on the drives, for some of their external drives. That USB controller will fail. At least with SATA-USB adapters you can take it out and recover your data.
WD also has this amazing (NOT!) head parking âfeatureâ called Intellipark, which is absolutely useless but will cause the drive to fail sooner. Good for their sales, I guess.
That said, WDâs with head parking disabled (or set to something more sane) have been very reliable for me. Specifically Blue and Black.
Oh and their mobile drives need APM disabled or theyâll spin down and up seemingly every minute. To save power⌠all 0.5W of it⌠riiight 
.
Just my 2p 
I think the USB think is mostly on their 2.5â drives? Like the little passport ones?
1 Like
Yeah WD Elements and MyPassport. Theyâre convenient (no extra power), but if they fail, goodbye data. Also terrible shock protection.
Iâve yet to see a newer external drive with 3.5" HDDs from them, I hope theyâve got normal SATA connectors + USB adapter inside, but I wouldnât put it past WD to use some special PCB on those too.
I think you can technically transfer the pcb between units in the same model, but might require un- and re- soldering the controller chip
This topic was automatically closed 273 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.