Terabyte backup drives anyone?

I currently have 8 external hard drives, 6 of them in 250GB capacities and 2

in 500GB capacities. I always buy them in pairs and keep identical backups on

a pair (with DVDs serving as yet another backup of the backup).

 

After my initial hesitation to go for the 500GB drives (fear of failure,

etc.), I finally convinced myself that having to manage fewer physical drives

has become an advantage in and of itself since owning the first six 250GB

drives.

 

Of all the 8 drives in just under three years that I've been shooting digital,

I've had one 250GB drive fail (from LaCie) with minimal data loss. Knock on

wood. The drive was replaced under warranty and promptly backed up.

 

The last pair I purchased of 500GB drives still has almost 200GB space left on

each, but at the rate I click the shutter, I am guessing...maybe give it

another month or two, and I need to start planning ahead by a few

weeks...so....

 

While I've still got a few weeks to ponder this, I am toying with the idea of

going for my first Terabyte backup drive pair. I have 4 drives from LaCie, 2

from Maxtor, and 2 from Western Digital, so brand loyalty is not my thing but

reliability is. The new Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo 1TB drives are going for

about $450, and they're on my radar screen.

 

About the only thing that could possibly make these drives feel outdated would

be the implementation of a transfer protocol faster than USB2/Firewire...a

feature I'd welcome with open arms. But I don't know of any such standard

under way, unless I've been too busy doing other things.

 

Any expert opinions, advice, caveats...?

Avoid the 1TB drives. There are no 1TB hard drives, so these enclosures do something called RAID (RAID 0, to be exact), so that it spreads the data across two drives to get 1TB. The problem with this is that if one of the drives dies in the enclosure, all of the data is lost, since it stores part of one file on one disk, and part of the file on the other disk. In essence, this means that the probability of failure is doubled (2 drives to fail for data loss versus just 1) As for the interface, yes there are faster options. For firewire, there is a new itereration called Firewire 800 (AKA IEEE1394b) which is faster than the older firewire. FW800 (FW=firewire) is not plug compatible with FW400. In addition, there is a new interface called eSATA, which is as fast as FW800 as far as you'll be concerned. You can get cards for those interfaces for your computer relativly cheaply. For large amounts of space, you might just want to make your own external hard drive. Seagate has a 750 GB HD out now (the largest at the moment), and external enclosures for hard drives are cheap. Just make sure you get one with a fan.

I would suggest you investigate RAID storage as a suitable configuration would mean you have only a single (massive if you want many Tb++) logical drive, but internally it would be made up of a number of smaller drives. The system can include redundancy and internal backup/data duplication. I suggest a pair of drives puts the resposibility on you, where a RAID array does the job itself. The highest specification can include automatic data regeneration even after a catastrophic failure.

Nels, I'm in the market for an external enclosure for up to four EIDE drives -- any recommendations? Ideally I'd like one that could also take SATA drives.

I think the advice to use RAID is excellent in general, but not in your case. You're _way_ ahead of the pack already, in that you have a firm grasp on the need for redundancy.

 

By not using RAID, you are adding some extra workload to yourself, but at the same time, you give yourself freedom. You do not need to worry about dealing with mirror sets, RAID controllers, incompatibilities or all the other issues surrounding that.

 

RAID gives you 24x7 uptime (ideally); if you don't need that, then RAID is not for you. Also, you can easily take your two backups and store them in separate locations. If you made a giant RAID subsystem, then all your eggs are in one basket, so to speak. You would still be faced with making redundant backups :)

 

I'm in the dataprocessing business; like you, I have several terabytes worth of disks used for backups. I have two machines I use for backups - one is dedicated, running a commercial backup package that manages the backups for me. In that machine I have two removable SATA drive bays, so I can swap the drives out easily. I backup at the full data rate possible with the drive/controller in that machine.

 

On a second machine, I have a spare SATA connector. I simply open the case, connect a SATA drive, and backup remotely to that machine. I have about a dozen 160GB drives that I use in that regard. The swap takes me about 20 seconds once the machine is powered down. Backup is still done at full speed to the drives, and I run gigabit ethernet so the LAN is not a bottleneck.

 

As far as reliability goes, forget it. Keep up with the redundancy. ALL of the high-capacity SATA or ATA drives trade reliability for that capacity. They fail far more often than server-grade SCSI drives, and are not made to the same high standards. So just assume they will fail and deal with it accordingly.

Franklin, Thanks for the info on 1TB drives not being single drives. That was news to me. Just found the Seagate 750GB drive (Mfr. Part # ST3750640CB-RK) on sale for about $350 at J&R. This one seems like a single drive.

 

Jonathan, Sorry, but I bought all my drives online ready to go, and have no idea about enclosures.

 

Richard, Good info on RAID. I think you read my mind. I investigated a few of these so-called automated backup options (and use one from Acronis for work related material), but found them to be too simplistic for my use. The way I manually backup files, sorting them by date in specific folders and specific (pair of) drives is, while painful and somewhat time consuming, more precise and fool-proof. In addition to the three backups, I also make a fourth DVD based backup in a physically separate location, so yes, redundancy is the key. I don't need 24x7 up time, as I don't do photography for a living. I perform my backups usually over the weekends, and make sure that I don't clean out my 120GB pocket drive (where I first download all my pics before bringing them to other drives) unless I have performed at least two backups.

 

Such is the game for me right now. It's all manual and time consuming, but the system has worked well for me so far, and I don't see a compelling reason to change the process.

[[i investigated a few of these so-called automated backup options (and use one from Acronis for work related material), but found them to be too simplistic for my use.]]

 

I'd be hard pressed to find a situation that SyncBack could not handle.

 

http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbp-features.html

The "automated backup" we use at work is an enterprise-grade system -- Backup Exec, made by Veritas. But we use it to back up our servers. In your case, as I understand it, your actually taking your original files off-line, and making redundant copies at the same time. Correct?

 

For my own photo storage, I use a mirrored set of drives on my workstation at my home office, and use a windows port of rsync to backup everything important to my commercial office, over the internet. Then my office backup (see above) takes care of it once more.

 

Anyways, you know what you're doing. Carry on.

<p>Hi Nels -</p>

 

<p>Please be aware that most of the lower end RAID network attached storage solutions don't perform very well. In particular, the speed at which you can write data to the drives is seriously limited. This isn't a problem is it is your backup drive... but if you intend to use the RAID as your primary storage area, then this can be very problematic.</p>

 

<p>One thing to investigate is an external SATA array. This improves bandwidth substantially, but with some limits on placement of the backup device, etc.</p>

 

<p>I have found that you need to spend a couple thousand dollars to really get a good performing RAID box for active use. This amounts to basically another relatively high-end PC acting as a server, equipped with a PCI-E RAID controller and running Linux (non-server versions of Windows just don't perform well...).</p>

 

<p>This is a painful topic... and is only going to become more painful as we all push the shutter release more often (and scan our film images at 50MB or more each).</p>

 

<p>Regards -</p>

 

<p>--Steve<br>

January 5th 2007 - Las Vegas (NV) - "Hitachi this morning was first out of the gate to announce details about a 1 TB hard drive, which the company said will ship during the first quarter of this year. The announcement follows a brief statement by Seagate, which yesterday confirmed that it will also deliver a 1 TB drive within the next three months."

That's it! Just when I ordered the 750GB Seagate drive they announced the 1TB drives, obsoleting my yet-to-ship order. This world is going straight to hell in a hand basket.

Lately ALL hard drives being built are not as good as they were just a few years ago. Bottom line, they are crapping out. I'm not only a decent photographer, but I build high quality, top of the line computers for the pros; photographers and video guys. Terabytes scare the hell out of me for 2 reasons. Most companies cannot retrieve the broken sectors of the drives because they are just too big and too fried. Sometimes it can take a week to get the deleted info out of something so big and needless to say your bill will not be $1.98. $2500 to $5000 is more in line. Smaller drives are much easier to work with.

 

I recover drives for local photographers in the Los Angeles area all of the time, both the hard drives and CF cards with just about 100 percent results. I do not charge if I cannot recover the needed images, this only happens when the hard drive actually makes a clicking sound and the HD won't turn. I've had 100 percent success with all of the other types of hard drives and compact flash cards.

 

Point is stay with smaller Hard drives such as 250 gbs to 300 gbs. It is a heck of a lot easier to recover and repair old files and images.

 

I weighed hard drives from a few years ago and the hard drive being made now. 1/3 of the weight has been removed. No cooling systems. Terrible construction. I actually add 2 fans just for the hard drives just to keep them cool. Also people (jerks) are building some machines are getting so hot that they are water cooled, like a radiator. Silly people and designers that don't know what they are doing. should be fired. Stay away from places like PC Club.

Bob, I agreed with what you were saying until I read your last paragraph:

 

"I weighed hard drives from a few years ago and the hard drive being made now. 1/3 of the weight has been removed. No cooling systems. Terrible construction. I actually add 2 fans just for the hard drives just to keep them cool. Also people (jerks) are building some machines are getting so hot that they are water cooled, like a radiator. Silly people and designers that don't know what they are doing. should be fired. Stay away from places like PC Club."

 

First, manufacturers are purposely making drives lighter for efficiency. Hard drives are not like power supplies where weight reflects the quality of components. Second, I am assuming you meant 'internal' cooling on hard drives. Hard drives have never had internal cooling, nor have they had passive heat sinks placed on them direct from the manufacturer. All cooling has ?always? been from external fans, whether it?s from a computer case fan or a rack mount chassis with numerous fans just for the drives. There are a couple companies who design their drive casings with ?fins? that resemble regular heat sinks, that?s Western Digital and Seagate in their high end SATA line of drives. You are correct in adding a couple fans to keep the drives cool, however.

 

As far as the ?jerks? that are building machines that get hot enough to require water cooling, well, I will say this. Those are the enthusiast PC builders who want maximum performance from their machines. There is absolutely nothing wrong with water cooling. In most cases the computer becomes silent and requires only one fan for the radiator. These are great for HTPC?s and the like. Plus, water cooling allows the enthusiasts to over clock their machines CPU?s and GPU?s beyond the normal MHz/GHz range. Believe it or not, most manufacturers are embracing over clocking. That includes AMD and Intel. So, please don?t call them ?silly? or say they don?t know what they?re doing. You ?must? know what you are doing if you want to setup water cooling on a machine. One last note, there is nothing wrong with enthusiast websites (PC Club).

 

 

 

Nels, have you ever considered tape backups? I have over 1 TB of photos that I backup regularly to a DLT tape drive. The initial cost of the drive can be painful, but the media is reasonably priced, and most tape manufactures state that tapes produced within the last two years have a shelf life of up to 7 years, if not a little more.

Why use a tape drive? HDDs are so cheap now, they cost less per GB and are certainly faster. I keep 3 copies of my library, 1 in a safe dep box, one on the workstation, one on an external drive that goes with me. Unfortunately my library has grown to 700GB and it's becoming a bit of a headache, I wish there were an easier way.

Why use tape? Because you can make multiple copies of your TB+ of data at 1/16th the cost of buying multiple sets of hard drives. 250gb drives from newegg.com are about 74 bucks minus shipping. Thats 300 bucks per TB of storage minus the cost of the hardware to house it. Or, you can spend about 18 bucks on 400g tapes and make as many copies as you want for a fraction of the cost. Modern day tape devices are far from slow now. It only takes about 2 hours to back up 1TB of data to tape. That includes the time to switch tapes.

Hey Donnie, can you tell us where you can get a 400GB tape media for $18? I've looked on newegg and elsewhere before and each time it seemed like tape was more expensive. What drive/media would you recommend?

For those talking about RAID, it is worth qualifying what level of RAID you mean . For example at a very basic level, RAID 0 is striping and RAID 1 is mirroring. Therefore, the first provides for treating multiple physical drives as one logical drive but does not necessarily help you if you have an individual disk failure because the whole logical sector may be corrupted. Mirroring may help you if you have a drive failure as long as the corrupt data is not mirrored before you detect it. Normally mirroring provides a level of resilience in this event but backups are still advisable.