External hard drives vs DVD's

Yogesh Sarkar wrote in post #5930614
If the data is that important, then get an internet based backup system along with the normal hdd backup.

I'm going to change my vote as well, I would still keep a copy of the images on DVDs, but using something like Mozy, now that there is a unlimited plan, is not a half bad idea.

I think their plan is $4.95/month/machine for unlimited.

Mozy is good if you want to backup your best shots and files.
But I wouldn't want to try uploading gigs and gigs of photos(would be much faster just to burn them to dvd). Maybe look into setting up a server at home, its alot cheaper these days than most people think.

Optical discs don't always last longer than hard drives.

Personally, I store my old photos, movies etc. pretty much all on externals. I use two externals for each set of data, and upto three for critical data. I've been doing this for a few years now and has amassed around 4TB worth of hard disks.

I used to prop RAID setups, but that stopped after the halting of my gaming hobby (and subsequently, my desktop building predispositions), so nowadays I've just got 1-2 laptops and a whole heap of external drives.

I've had a few internal drives fail on me over the years, but rarely any failures with externals yet, mainly due to the fact that I hardly ever need to access the data once on the externals. One exception was one of my Maxtor 500GBs, which failed after two days. That particular line had an issue with cooling, so now I've always been very cautious with all 3.5' externals. I'll switch the power off as soon as I've finished with the backup, just to be safe incase I forget later and it ends up spinning for hours on end.

I've given up on DVDs for awhile now. 6GB is nothing these days and the hassle and time it takes to backup to them just doesn't make sense to me personally. Gigs per dollar wise, DVDs win by miles, but the time-is-money factor instantly dismisses it for me.

I have an internal drive with all my data. I backup daily to an external drive. I also backup daily to two other externals that I rotate through by taking them to my office.

Every day I take one to work and swap it for the other then take it home, back it up and repeat the next day. That way there is always a full backup in both locations and a third possibly in transit.

I also want to backup to DVD and leave at a relatives however I have nearly 200GB of photos alone which would be at least 25 DL-DVD. If I were to backup all my data it'd probably be about 1.5TB. That's a lot of DVDs.

While I'm using lots of hard drives I've read that they become less reliable the less frequently you use them. Apparently, if you don't run them regularly and heat them up the lubricants can get sticky and cause problems.

A point not covered on CDs' / DVDs' is that you do not know they have failed until you come to look at the data (maybe in five years). I use multiple HDDs' ( mix of internal & external), a big advantage is that they are used regularly and tested regularly allowing early signs of data reliability to be detected.

In 20 years of using personal PC's I have had (some) components fail, seen many floppy and optical discs fail, but never had a HDD fail, although I accept there will be others with the opposite experience.

External HDD work very well, but you really need to have 3 drives. You should have an internal that is your working drive and 2 externals that are your backups. One stays at home and the other goes somewhere away from home. I keep my off-site backup at work.

Not sure how accurate their claim is about unlimited storage, but so far I've put up about 8 gigs worth of photos on my Flickr Pro account and no problems aside from it being somewhat slow to transfer. But easily remedied by setting it to upload, go run some errands, and come back and done. Can't beat the price or $25 for a year. Obviously I have my photos on my internal HD, an external HD, and I burn a backup DVD, but having the unlimited Flickr account is just another backup plan.

Wilt wrote in post #5930480
Talk to the guy whose RAID failed when the fan when out, causing all the harddrives to fry!

Wow, unlucky. most HHDs will run happily even if quite warm, so I can only guess that this particular enclosure was rather poorly designed WRT thermal dissipation. This is one of the reasons I was considering whether it would be better to set up two single-drive NAS devices with a scheduled snychronisation between them, rather than a single RAIDed device.

aram535 wrote in post #5927949
Don't write on them with a Pen/Pencile/Sharpie, use a ball point.

Actually writing on a CD/DVD with a ball point pen is a Very Bad Idea - you can very easily damage the recording surface. Much better to stick to a regular black marker pen.

TMaG82 wrote in post #5941286
Not sure how accurate their claim is about unlimited storage, but so far I've put up about 8 gigs worth of photos on my Flickr Pro account and no problems aside from it being somewhat slow to transfer. But easily remedied by setting it to upload, go run some errands, and come back and done. Can't beat the price or $25 for a year. Obviously I have my photos on my internal HD, an external HD, and I burn a backup DVD, but having the unlimited Flickr account is just another backup plan.

This is an excellent idea, as long as you don't rely on it as your only backup. having offsite backups protects you against disasters such as flooding or fire.

As should be clear by now to anyone who's read this thread, no medium is infallible. The only real answer is to have multiple backups in multiple physical locations. I have my working copy on my desktop, plus a copy on my laptop, plus I upload offsite to a Dreamhost account. When I can afford it, I'll be adding a NAS device (or two) to my home network as well.

DVD's are not really good for storage due to their fragile nature and relatively small recording space. External hard drives are also a problem and offer very little extra protection as they can fail more often than an internal. An internal hard drive is really as good. If something goes wrong with the computer, you can remove an internal drive and put it in another computer as long as they're running Windows. I haven't yet found where that doesn't work.

I've also used an external drive to store my pictures then took it to the neighbor to store. The box is small and he doesn't mind. The idea being if my house burned down, I would still have my pictures.

There are external online storage available but I've found they're expensive when storing as much as I have to store but it would be safe. Back-ups are important but hard to manage for sure.

I'm actually going to try storing some video on Flickr later today. Limit of 150-250MB or so, and 90 seconds, but I can split it up.

I have a Raid 1 setup on the PC to protect against the immediate failure of a PC hard drive to save anything i havent already backed up. I have an external 750GB that I back up everything to. And I make dual layer DVD back ups of all my images which will soon be stored either in a fire safe or off site probably in my safety deposit box. So with all three of those methods used I am confident that Im well covered.

what's the story with Blu-Ray discs? they can hold i'm guessing around 25 gigs. how do they hold up?
in the grand scheme, cd's and dvd media are relatively inexpensive. even though a disc would be rated for 5 years, or 25 years, i'd still probably transfer the images to new media. same with the newer hard drives. some probably run about 100 bucks. just after a few years transfer them over.
this might have already been suggested, but i wouldn't store all the photos on one drive. most people have more photos than would fit on one hard drive, even with what i've read the comments on about these online services. i don't know what they would cost, but i wouldn't put all in one site. it's bad to lose images, but worst to lose them all. ok that was my one intelligent tidbit of information for the day.

just curious, of those that use externals, how many of you have had them fail or had issues.

i've felt pretty good with my system of saving on EHD 1 and backing up on e EHD 2 but you have me 2nd guessing it. I was thinking saving my processed Jpegs to DVD in addition to the above. what's a boy to do.

azpix wrote in post #5945703
just curious, of those that use externals, how many of you have had them fail or had issues.

i've felt pretty good with my system of saving on EHD 1 and backing up on e EHD 2 but you have me 2nd guessing it. I was thinking saving my processed Jpegs to DVD in addition to the above. what's a boy to do.

best not to ask weka2000 about this, he's managed to lose a whole drive's worth of data this weekend due to mechanical shock to the drive while running.

Personally I had a 2.5" external drive fail a few weeks ago. No idea when it died exactly, just went to use it & it wouldn't spin up.

azpix wrote in post #5945703
just curious, of those that use externals, how many of you have had them fail or had issues.

Make no mistake - all drives will fail - it's only a matter of when.