10TB HDD

Just been offered a 10TB HDD. These things worry me. Just how long do they take to back up ? I would hate to think of losing 10TB of data !

Do you actually have 10Tb of data?

The larger drives have much higher data density rate, lower flying heads and run error correction continuously.

I would advise a Raid Array of five 2Tb in a NAS device if storage and redundancy is your primary concern.

How would the disk be used? If it is used for small data file just backup/copy the files changed. A full backup of all the data on the disk is not necessary on a daily basis unless used on a multi user access setup.

What would you back it up to? Another 10Tb drive?

Matt

All hard drives fail it's just a question of when!

I have a NAS device with 4 x 8 Tb drives in raid 5 which gives around 21 Tb (you lose one drive in raid 5) of storage but do not treat it as a backup device and use an external 8 Tb USB drive for backups (currently sub 5Tb of data) which runs from the NAS as a background operation. Only files that have been added or changed are backed up once the initial backup is completed on a weekly basis. A USB 3.x drive directly connected is reasonable fast and should not take too long to back up but if there is only one data set then it is NOT a backup.

only thing that I backup properly is photographs (raw), everything else is on Mac Time Machine.

Even 4Tb is overkill for most people, other than that it is a case of 'mine is bigger than yours' syndrome.

My pet hate is people who store treasured memories on USB sticks/phone/computer withou t a backup, then come to me to try and recover them.

At work we distributed USB stick to staff (fatal mistake on a number of issues) but we were told to do it by senior management.

They now tend to trust what we advise...... lesson learned.

hdd backup has had its day, and im glad to be rid of them after so many fails. Everything on my pc is automatically backed up to the ms cloud so i can access everything anywhere. Will the cloud fail - unlikely given who runs mine.

What worries me about cloud storage is that there is no historic back up which I would need in the case of accidental deletion, overwriting or ransomware. All our family's shared files are kept on mirrored disks in a Synology NAS which in turn backs itself up to another NAS at my son's house. Either of these can be left backing up to a portable drive caddy without any of our PCs being tied up.

I'm not a total luddite though as I still use OneDrive to back up the data on my local disks.

Brian G

Edited By Brian G on 20/05/2021 12:48:05

While for small amounts of data stored in the cloud may be true but as data volume increases for digital photos and video the costs can soon escalate.

To say hard drive back up has had it's day is simply wrong, NAS devices use drives and offer a level of fault tolerance such that in raid array data can still be available.

Brian, certain cloud backup systems have historic backup and will retain iterations of files as required. You are, in fact, doing cloud backup - it's just that your son's NAS is the cloud. Your approach is a cost effective solution.

Matt

The biggest downside to cloud backup is the setup time.

Even with fast fibre, my setup time was 52 days at default settings, and 13 with it 'unthrottled'

Neil

Sorry to be slow. Busy on other things.

I have currently got 2TB and use most of it. I´m an estate agent so lots of property photos. I don´t delete on a sale, as we sometimes get instructions on the same property some years later and they can be useful. There is also the film collection, the music collection and books, on top of archived emails and client files.

Backing up just the changed files sounds right. Backing up everything takes days.

Thanks for all the input.

If you handle your own backup regime, just a recomendation for "Free File Sync". It is open source, allows filter criteria to be set and the setups saved, very quick, and so far has been entirely foolproof. It always seems to find the network paths OK even when Windows 10 is having a bad day with this.

HDDs are not all created equal, I've never had a failure so far apart from one in 2000ish

I always buy a Western Digital and I always buy it from somewhere like my local Argos, NOT the internet

Any might-have-an-issue drives tend to go to the smaller ebay type markets/retailers while the "perfect" parts of the production runs tend to go to pay-fulll-whack business users and higher end retailers

Don't look for a bargain

It's a bit like with microchips, the best part of the wafer was used to make xeons at intel, because they were for business users

Edited By Ady1 on 23/05/2021 17:16:47

+1 for FreeFileSync - been using if for a few years and works well.

Matt

Just loaded it. The Linux version. It seems to get mixed reviews.

Thanks !