I need a drive to serve as a full system backup in case I have a drive failure
Newegg has a ST2000DM006 drive on sale, but my last seagate drive ST2000DM002 that i got “used like new” from amazon warehouse deals on prime day that had just over 2 years of power on time (really, you call that like new…) well that thing died just after the 30 day policy
lucky i did not loose any data
I could wait for the WD variant to go on sale, but that is a 5400RPM drive and i would prefer more speed for the use case of a once a month backup process
I am sure I am overthinking this and should get which ever is on sale at the time of ordering
How long are you expecting the backup progress to go for? If you are able to wait just a bit, go for the WD to avoid the gamble on Seagate’s.
Otherwise, as I said, it’s a gamble for the Seagate drives. Some said it’s been working well and that is from the most recent feedback from users. Others say they still have bad luck with them. But I think the Seagate drives will survive for a while if your backup solution in question is of a “cold-storage” type backup.
I have a 3TB Seagate Barracuda that I don’t power it on that often as it just contains raw video footage and I often store the drive away. All still working fine.
I can wait for a WD drive to go on sale
I would just be putting the drive into my hot swap bay long enough to copy/update all data to it from a live usb, aside from that time it would be in a drawer with a bunch of 40-160 GB drives
I have had very few drives fail on me personally, of the few that were WD i can not blame the drive, as 2 were salved from a junk system in a old structs with the roof caved in, so only the case to protect form elements and the other was killed by a poorly molded molex plug (it plunged in easier upside down than right side up)
I realize a sample size of 1 for seagate is a but unfair use as a avoid policy
If it’s just for casual stuff and nothing too important to store then I think the Seagates will do fine for you, if you see them on special and are cheaper than the WD. Because with Seagate not improving on reliability at recent times, I couldn’t trust them for anything important to store on there, unless I already have a backup solution for those data.
I really do not want to spend the money on a true send level redundancy (Full backup of a backup)
I’ll think I will just wait for a WD drive to go on sale, I decided i wanted one right after the sale on them ended last time (figures)
It is less about the data so much as getting back up and running if/when drive fails
Yeah. Bacckblaze love Seagate drives, because they are reliable for their price (20%cheaper, but only 10% less reliable or whatever)
Which is why they order them in the thousands.
I also used their figures to go for a few more expensive HGST drives for removeable backup drives, as well as their tactic of Seagate drives for day-to-day redundant storage.
For years I have had better luck with WD drives, but since I learnt to love redundancy , I have embraced more, cheaper drives in my main machines
blackblaze very regularly has drive failure and backup. they plan for it and have a solution and can implement that solution rather cheap and easily as they do it every day.
end users generally have no backup or have a raid array or similar technology they dont understand and cant recover form without help.
that mindset is very niche for very technology savvy users
Given that, if it is a backup drive, i’d go for it. Its main purpose is to account for primary drive failure which is unlikely to happen at the same time*
unless your house burns down, your PC is stolen, a power surge kills everything in the box, malware deletes the data from everything in the box, etc.
Backups - i’d get >1 external drive and keep one of them off-site, if you actually care about data - and keep the on-site one OFF-LINE unless being backed up to, if possible.
Off topic daydreaming a bit here, but my ideal would be some kind of remote system that stays off-line most of the time.
If your external backup is just unmediated access to a raw disk, badly timed ransomware or user error (rm -rf /path/to/mounted/remote) could wipe out your backups.
I wonder if anyone has implemented an iTunes style, “warn if N% of data has changed”, since that could prevent accidentally backing up the results of an error or infection. Or something more specific, maybe warning if particular files or types of files have been modified in a way not fitting the norm. << insert AI here
Never trust anything then… Drives from all manufactures die at random.
I have a couple of 2 tb and 4 tb seagates hdds, whith around 10000 hours of power on, and 4-6000 spin up cycles from cold. And they are 5-7 years old. None of them has failed me.
My nas has 10 4 tb seagate nas drives, it has been running non stop since June last year. No problems, no errors.
So the whole “dont trust seagate” is not valid.
All drives will fail, some does it immediately. Others run for 10 years no problem.
The key to healthy disks, is when you buy a new one, do a proper burn in tests. Let it “soak” for a few days. Just let it sit powered on. Then do som short and long smart tests.
There is a good guide on the freenas forum for hdd burn in testing, I can find a link later.
And when your hdd’s are running, keep a program running that monitors the smart data. I have had one external 2.5 inch drive die on me, but I got smart warnings, so I pulled all data off it before it gave up.
But of course: Back up you data. All drives will die eventually. So Backup your data. Preferably to two seperate instances.
But back on topic; seagate, wd, hgst, it doesnt matter. They will all die eventually. Buy what ever is on sale, do a proper burn in of the new disks, and keep 1 or 2 backups
One way around that is to have your backups on a filesystem that has regular snapshots (e.g., ZFS).
even if something nukes it via rm, you can roll back the filesystem to a snapshot.
So long as you maintain adequate space for snapshots.
exactly.
The last couple of drives i had fail were WD blacks. Does that mean WD is shit? No.
In the past 20 years I’ve never had a seagate fail. I’ve had plenty of them, including the 4x 3 year old ones in my current NAS.
Unless you’re doing thousands of drives across many brands, or citing a study that does such testing, then you’ve got no idea whether or not your drive(s) that failed from brand X are due to any inherent problem with the brand/model.
A separate system would keep you safe from rootkits or anything that could escalate to an account with control over snapshots. (I know, ransomware/malware is unlikely to be designed for ZFS/btrfs; I did say daydreaming )
Do you know of any other HD longevity studies we could compare against? I’m all for being cautious with over-assuming, but with limited data…
limited personal experience versus massive amounts of data dont cherry pick or texas sharpshooter. just because you played roulette and lived doesnt make it safe. you have the numbers in this thread and they arent good. their is no perfect drive true but their are worse drives then others. bathtub curve only works on non defective drives, which seagate has had and not recalled on multiple occasions. i do not work at blackblaze and have read most but not all of their blog post, but the only drive they completely pulled for failure reasons was the original 2tb seagate barracuda, because the failure rate graph was not a bathtub but a vertical line that never went down. they tossed ALL of them, thousands of drives because the cost of keeping them was not worth it.
Comparing backblaze’s failure rates to your own part-time backup drive life expectancy is probably pointless anyway.
They are spinning 24/7 serving millions of customers in a constant write heavy environment.
Your part time back up drive will likely get far better life. Or maybe worse due to many, many more power cycles. who knows.
Fact is, there are no bulk stats for your usage pattern available. Every vendor has warranty, and every vendor has a failure rate. Plan for the drive(s) to be a potential point of failure, get warranty if it does…
Based on backblaze’s stats I’d agree. But who knows how they compare in a desktop/home user scenario when the drive is regularly power cycled? Most deaths i have seen have occurred during power up.
All backblaze’s stats prove is that HGST are the most reliable for backblaze’s particular workload.
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