What is the best HDD in terms of Reliability/cost?

[kopn]

Thanks for your reply.
What is POH?

 

[kopn]

Thanks for your reply.
In Russia Seagate costs much more than other brands.
What is the cheapest way (in terms of 1 mb) of back up?

 

[CWatters]

Thanks for your reply.
If I ASSUMEd that my drive was going to fail tomorrow I would use
mirror drives because I want to retain files which I created today.

I wouldn't. That way you only get one extra copy.

Why not use a program like Ghost to do a full image backup every night? You
could probably fit a weeks worth of backups on the same drive.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Thanks for your reply.
If I ASSUMEd that my drive was going to fail tomorrow I would use
mirror drives because I want to retain files which I created today.

Mirroring protects against a single drive failure and the files created in
some time period since the last backup. Single drive failure is NOT the
ONLY cause of data loss. Fire, theft, malicious or buggy SW etc. are all
threats.

Mirroring does NOT take the place of backup.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Thanks for your reply.
In Russia Seagate costs much more than other brands.
What is the cheapest way (in terms of 1 mb) of back up?

Big removable ATA HDs are the best solution generally. Keep it off site.

 

[Rod Speed]

Thanks for your replies.
What is the cheapest (in terms of 1 mb) way to back up?

Really depends on what you want to backup.

Lot to be said for DVD now, but if you want to do full backups of
everything, not just what you will slash your wrists if you lose, an
external hard drive is a lot easier to use and can be fully automated.
Much more expensive than DVDs tho so it can make a lot of sense
to just backup what matters to DVD and accept the fact that you
will have to do a full reinstall if the hard drive dies etc.

 

[Rod Speed]

What is POH?

Power On Hours, how long its been powered up for.

 

[Rod Speed]

Big removable ATA HDs are the best solution generally.

Lousy value compared with DVD if the data will fit on a couple of DVDs

Keep it off site.

Easier and safer with DVDs.

 

[kopn]

Thanks for your reply.
I would have to remember what files and folder I backed up last time,
what files and folders have changed and what files and folders have
been created since then, find them and copy to a DVD to make a new back
up. This is a time consuming task.
Internal oem drives are less expensive than an external hard drive.
What do you think about other HDD brands (Samsung...) than the
mentioned?

 

[kopn]

Thanks for your reply.
Does Ghost compress 7 times? Why to fit a weeks worth of backups on the
same drive, why to keep 7 copies of the same drive?

 

[kopn]

Thanks for your reply, Ron.
Fire, theft, malicious or buggy SW causing my data loss are less
probable than the drive failure.

 

[kopn]

Thanks.

 

[kopn]

Thanks for your reply, Rod.
Do you just copy (add) newer files and folders to a DVD for back up?

 

[J. Clarke]

Thanks for your reply.
If I ASSUMEd that my drive was going to fail tomorrow I would use
mirror drives because I want to retain files which I created today.

Exactly. There is no disk that is sufficiently reliable to be used to hold
without backup data that you can't afford to lose.

 

[CWatters]

Thanks for your reply.
I would have to remember what files and folder I backed up last time,
what files and folders have changed and what files and folders have
been created since then, find them and copy to a DVD to make a new back
up. This is a time consuming task.

No there are lots of programs that can do "incremental" or "differential"
backups automatically.

Internal oem drives are less expensive than an external hard drive.

but if you had a power supply failure BOTH internal drives could be toast.
At least with an external drive you have some redundancy.

Personally I would assemble your own external drive box. Get one designed
for a 5.25" drive and fit a 3.5" hard drive in it of your own choosing. That
way it will run cool.

I quite like these drive boxes but they can be hard to find....

See U7-1 or U6-1
http://www.stardom.com.tw/web/pro-sohotank.htm
Home page here..
http://www.stardom.com.tw/web/index_e.htm

The one I have is old and the power supply is an external in-the-cable type.

 

[CWatters]

Thanks for your reply.
Does Ghost compress 7 times?

It doesn't need to compress the data 7 times. It only copies the used
sectors. In my case thats about 12-15GBytes worth.

Why to fit a weeks worth of backups on the
same drive. why to keep 7 copies of the same drive?

The computer is used every day so every backup is slightly different. I can
choose how far I go back should I need to do a recovery. Actually I keep the
last 5 mightly copies and 2 weeky copies so I can go back upto 2 weeks if I
had to. Obviously I would try and use the most recent first but that might
not be possible if I had nasty virus for example.

I agree that it would be much more efficient (in terms of the amount of
storage used) to do incremental backup but my USB drive is 120G so storage
isn't really a problem.

I configure the backup program to split each image into 600MByte files when
it does the backup. That way I can copy them to DVD (or even CD) later. It
automatically deletes old backups so the hard drive never fills up and it
sends me an email to tell me about any problems it had. The only problem it
ever has is if I forget to switch the drive on!

 

[Joe Doe]

That is exactly the perception that the Seagate marketing department wants
you to have.

Simple fact--failing in less than five years is unusual for disks of any
brand.

Well if it involves no cost it would be easy for the competitor to match
this - why should they loose a marketing advantage? Hard drives are a
commodity business that is quite brutal in competition. Providing the
warranty reflects a real cost and risk exposure. The fact that the
competition chooses not to match tells you they think they do not want
this cost or risk exposure. Secondly, in a commodity business where you
compete on price having the shorter warranty might allow a company to
specify poorer quality parts and be able to sell at a lower price
knowing full well that the design life is now shorter.

I have had at least three Maxtor drives fail between 3-4 years (just out
of warranty).

Roland

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Power On Hours, how long its been powered up for.

More important than POH as a drive spec related to design life is power
on/off cycles.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Big removable ATA HDs are the best solution generally.

Lousy value compared with DVD if the data will fit on a couple of DVDs

Keep it off site.

Easier and safer with DVDs.

DVDs are too small and more expensive in the long run.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Thanks for your reply.
I would have to remember what files and folder I backed up last time,
what files and folders have changed and what files and folders have
been created since then, find them and copy to a DVD to make a new back
up. This is a time consuming task.
Internal oem drives are less expensive than an external hard drive.

NO, the drives themselves are identical. The only difference is the
external enclosure. A good external HD enclosure can be had for less than
$50.

What do you think about other HDD brands (Samsung...) than the
mentioned?

WDC, Hitachi, Seagate or Maxtor are all good.