Reliable backup drive?

[Martinjmpr]

Can anyone recommend a backup drive they are comfortable trusting with their archived data?

I bought an inexpensive one off of Amazon and it's horrible. Being returned today. Multiple errors every time I try to access the drive.

Even some of the so called "rugged drives" on Amazon have terrible reviews.

I have an old Toshiba 1TB Convio backup drive that seems to work OK but the newer (2tb and larger) Convio drives also have bad reviews.

I mean, I realize that with any product that is sold in the 10's or 100's of thousands you're going to have some "duds" and people who get a bad product are much more likely to complain about it than people who get a good product are to rave about it, but the bad reviews worry me.

Obviously, if we're talking about a backup drive, reliability is pretty much the first, last and only consideration (I honestly don't care how long it takes to copy files, I usually set it up to run while I'm doing something else.)

As a side question, what are people backing up their data on? Conventional HDDs? SSD's? Heck they even make thumb drives in 128GB size at reasonable prices, I'm thinking of backing up my photos and music on thumb drives and then giving them to trusted family members to hold so that if, God forbid, our house were to burn down I'd still have a backup somewhere.

[gnihcraes]

Google drive or one drive. Cloud.

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[Grant H.]

For a spinning drive, I would say seagate. For SSD's, Samsung Evo or Pro. Hands down.

For your purposes, I would likely go with a Samsung Evo or Pro SSD (not QVO). That way there is no risk of drive damage with movement etc.

I went the route of building a NAS, as I'm not willing to trust anything to a single drive anymore.

Beyond that, I have R-Sync setup between my NAS, my brothers, and the one that we have at my parents.

This sets up drive redundancy and entire backup redundancy with multiple locations.


As to SSD vs conventional, I went conventional. For mass storage, SSD's are still crazy expensive, so I stick with spinning drives. For easy access, mobility, and "backups" on the road, I use a Samsung NVME SSD in a USB3.1 NVME chassis.

[CHA-LEE]

Given how cheap USB Flash Memory Sticks are today (128GB for $10, 256GB for $20) and their small size along with "Offline Ruggedness" that is probably your best and cheapest long term backup resource. They are cheap enough that you can make multiple copies of the same backups then distribute them in different physical locations as needed. Here is the sobering reality for a lot of people. The bulk of their data that consists of important documents and stuff like that is very small. Usually way less than 1GB for most people. The vast majority of the large space consuming content comes from Multi-Media data such as Pictures, Movies, Programs, Cell Phone Backups, and stuff like that. It's easy for us to be lazy in administering our Multi-Media content. But the reality is that we don't need 9790834234028309 pictures or movies of random stuff that accumulates on most of our PC's, Phones, Tablets or whatever devices we use on a regular basis. Taking the time to sort through the saved Multi-Media data on our devices and deleting what really isn't needed will dramatically reduce your backup footprint.

The hardest part for the average person is knowing what is really important to backup and what is not. There is a tremendous amount of bloat in applications these days so backing up a whole PC can consume a lot of disk space. This is where you need to pick the level of data administration you are willing to live with. I would rather backup unique data onto cheap USB Sticks then accept the fact that if my PC's hard drive takes a dump I will need to manually reload the OS and all of the applications then restore the unique data as needed. Some people don't want that level of data administration or manual rebuilding effort so they backup everything, which requires a high quality (and expensive) external hard drive or RAID of a size that is usually 2x - 5x the size of their PC's hard drive. It basically comes down to this... Ease of Use/Administration = Backup Solution Cost $$$$ or Not so easy Use/Administration = Backup Solution Cost $. Also consider that your time and effort is also worth something in $$$ as well. If my PC's HD fails and I have to manually rebuild it from scratch on a new HD that is usually a full day worth of work to complete. Everyone's time is worth something in $$$ so in the long run it is probably better to spend the extra money up front for a more costly backup solution so its less time consuming to recover from when it does fail.

[Grant H.]

Given how cheap USB Flash Memory Sticks are today (128GB for $10, 256GB for $20) and their small size along with "Offline Ruggedness" that is probably your best and cheapest long term backup resource. They are cheap enough that you can make multiple copies of the same backups then distribute them in different physical locations as needed. Here is the sobering reality for a lot of people. The bulk of their data that consists of important documents and stuff like that is very small. Usually way less than 1GB for most people. The vast majority of the large space consuming content comes from Multi-Media data such as Pictures, Movies, Programs, Cell Phone Backups, and stuff like that. It's easy for us to be lazy in administering our Multi-Media content. But the reality is that we don't need 9790834234028309 pictures or movies of random stuff that accumulates on most of our PC's, Phones, Tablets or whatever devices we use on a regular basis. Taking the time to sort through the saved Multi-Media data on our devices and deleting what really isn't needed will dramatically reduce your backup footprint.

The hardest part for the average person is knowing what is really important to backup and what is not. There is a tremendous amount of bloat in applications these days so backing up a whole PC can consume a lot of disk space. This is where you need to pick the level of data administration you are willing to live with. I would rather backup unique data onto cheap USB Sticks then accept the fact that if my PC's hard drive takes a dump I will need to manually reload the OS and all of the applications then restore the unique data as needed. Some people don't want that level of data administration or manual rebuilding effort so they backup everything, which requires a high quality (and expensive) external hard drive or RAID of a size that is usually 2x - 5x the size of their PC's hard drive. It basically comes down to this... Ease of Use/Administration = Backup Solution Cost $$$$ or Not so easy Use/Administration = Backup Solution Cost $. Also consider that your time and effort is also worth something in $$$ as well. If my PC's HD fails and I have to manually rebuild it from scratch on a new HD that is usually a full day worth of work to complete. Everyone's time is worth something in $$$ so in the long run it is probably better to spend the extra money up front for a more costly backup solution so its less time consuming to recover from when it does fail.

But my cameras give me the ability to snap like 100 hi-res images in less than 3 seconds, how is that not important data??? [Sarcasm2]

Great advice that everyone should consider when talking about "backups".

My setup, I'll admit, is way overkill compared to what most folks need. But 3 businesses (including email servers) exist with data backups on on the NAS boxes.

[whitewalrus]

I use a NAS with multiple disks. I also prefer the sea gate drives as I have had the best luck with them.

External drives tend to have more failures in my experience than internal drives. So I wouldn?t recommend one unless you are on a budget.

Cloud is great as you don?t have to worry about the physical damage. If you can get by on flash sticks, make 2 and store one offsite if you can.


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[XJ]

Ive been using WD solid-state portables from Office Depot for work stuff over the past few years.

Zero failures on either drive, and these ride around in my bag with zero regard for gentle treatment.

Not ideal for desktop use, but at least they aren't crap.

[UncleDave]

I have a large Seagate drive for back up and 2 2TB solid state drives from Samsung, none have failed me yet. for convenience and speed I love the SS drives, but the older Seagate is bigger and predated SS drives. So, it stays around.

[cstone]

I picked up a couple of 120GB Inland SSDs for $10 or $12 right after Thanksgiving from MicroCenter. Get a USB to SATA connector for about $10, and start a text file with useful commands like this one: xcopy "C:\Important Files" D:\Backup /c /d /e /h /i /k /q /r /s /x /y I assume you are running some version of Winders.

Setting up a RAID 1, using two drives is pretty easy, if you are looking for a NAS solution. Many wifi routers have USB ports with some rudimentary NAS features built into them. I don't use a NAS for backup purposes, but they are nice to share files with any computers in the house on the same network.

Because I wanted to get my family into the habit of being responsible for their own data, I provided everyone with a USB drive. As stated above, USB drives, purchased from MicroCenter or the Internet are very reasonably priced. They are not speedy in data movement, but they have pretty impressive storage capacity for their size and cost. Teach everyone how to copy folders containing data from their machine onto the USB drive. Let them know that they can backup data every hour, every day, every week, whatever interval suits them. Some users learn faster than others, but all of my users learned that THEY are responsible for their data...not Dad.

You probably already have most of what you need to do backups. The hardware has been pretty darn reliable for years. The weakness in most backup systems is the users who do not take responsibility for their data. Everything fails at some point. How much data can you afford to lose, or how much effort are you willing to put into maintaining your data? Once you've backed up your data, consider cloning the drive on a set interval and keeping a copy elsewhere. DD is the best, free disk cloning application I have ever used, and I have used a lot of forensic software.

[def90]

Get a RAID setup, that way if one drive fails you do not lose your data.

Also, read this:

https://www.unifore.net/product-highlights/wd-hard-drive-color-differences-blue-green-black-red-purple.html

[Gman]

For spinning disks, HGST. Samsung for SSD. - https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html

I would recommend going to the cloud. Or going to a NAS with RAID and replication to the cloud.

[brutal]

I use a 7TB Seagate to do several system full saves, including my work VM, then air gap it.

A smaller drive that stays online for Windows File History.

All important stuff INCLUDING all pics and vids are in a OneDrive folder that is sync'd and versioned in OneDrive cloud.

OneDrive is $99/year for 6 1TB user accounts (can be nested) and comes with all the O365 programs. My wife's laptop OneDrive "documents" folder is nested in my local OneDrive so if I need to scan something, etc. she has it on her computer. No brainer.

All our devices have OneDrive so I don't have to worry any more than occasionally making sure they are syncing on stuff I don't see every day. as much as many hate on MS, I've found OneDrive to be the best and simplest solution.

Work laptop host OS gets backed up occasionally but I really don't care. If the SSD craps out, they'll send me a new one with the corp image and I'll restore my latest VM backup and all my "local" changed project files are versioned to my server in the OneDrive folder and are in the cloud as well.

[Duman]

Dang! Got some hard core ninja computer folks on this site....

[Gman]

Speaking of OneDrive, you get 1 TB per user (up to 6) with a M365 Family subscription for $99/yr; https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-microsoft-365-products

We have a family account and my wife and I both have our own Microsoft logins/OneDrive storage and they're both linked to the licensed family account. We put shared content in the family account and we both have access to it...everywhere.

We also have the latest versions of MS Office installed, everywhere. The cloud-based versions are also available.

[Delfuego]

Seagate drives in a Synology nas. You can then backup to a USB local backup and then too Synology C2 cloud for off-site. Synology nas also comes with a ton of apps included at no cost (photos/drive/backup/o365 backup/plex/surveillance/virtualization/etc).

Don't trust your data to one single drive, vendor or a single location! Same shit we do in businesses...

[Little Dutch]

It really depends on how much you have to save, and what it is.
Unlimited photo storage with Amazon prime is invaluable to us, even knowing they are harvesting data and training their detection AI with them.
One of the cloud based file storage offering for every day stuff is usually the cheapest route. Word docs and such fit on a free OneDrive subscription nicely.
If you want to store all your home theater movies, building or buying a NAS is the way to go. If you build a NAS, seagate ironwolf drives are awesome, definitely want mirrored drives bough.

For anything you don?t want on the network, I?d suggest burned disks for risk free storage without leaks. I don?t trust portable drives much, but I?ve got a few I?ve used extensively for 3 or 4 years now with no issues, so maybe they are better than they used to be.

[Delfuego]

Makes sure your "cloud" is backed up somewhere too. 3-2-1 backup philosophy.

[Circuits]

Only way to ensure longevity is to rotate multiple physical platforms, and cloud services can supplement.

Bare minimum for real security? - two independent physical backup media, not stored in the same location. If you really love your data.

[O2HeN2]

So a sad story from 9/11...

Back in 2001 I was working for Compaq through acquisition of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

Years before storage had emerged as DEC's strong point* (aside - though management refused to acknowledge it very much). I had worked on their high-end storage products (RAID, remote mirroring, snapshots, etc.) for, at the time, 21 years. DEC/Compaq storage products were a significant part of the high-end storage market.

One post-9/11 story that filtered down to my engineering level was a customer that used my product - their data was so critical that they had enabled its remote mirroring functionality to keep an always-up-to-date copy of all their transactions at their remote site, so if either site was completely lost, they'd have an up-to-the-minute live backup of their data and could continue business.

Remote mirroring required a really fast connection, and back in the early 2000s fast was expensive (as well as not very fast compared to speeds these days). Also the more distance, the more expensive. So there was a tradeoff - how much do you want to pay versus how much distance do you want between your site and its remote mirror?

The company's corporate headquarters was in one of the World Trade Center towers.

Their live off-site mirror of all their data? In the other tower.

O2

*So strong that in the waning days of DEC as Palmer was chopping it up to be sold off bit by bit, a corporate consulting engineer observed:

"Of DEC's 50 million profit last year, storage contributed 100 million to it."

Those weren't the actual numbers, I no longer remember them, but it gets the point across.

[Martinjmpr]

Speaking of OneDrive, you get 1 TB per user (up to 6) with a M365 Family subscription for $99/yr; https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-microsoft-365-products

We have a family account and my wife and I both have our own Microsoft logins/OneDrive storage and they're both linked to the licensed family account. We put shared content in the family account and we both have access to it...everywhere.

We also have the latest versions of MS Office installed, everywhere. The cloud-based versions are also available.

I'm reviewing some backup drives on Amazon and all of them seem to have complaints of lost data, slow operation, poor customer service, etc.

So I'm now thinking maybe going to an off-site backup would be a good idea. So how does One Drive work? I basically get a subscription and then I can set it up as another drive on my computer and just transfer files to and from that drive?

What I'm asking here is whether I have to run some "backup/Restore" software every time I want to upload/download, or whether I can just use it as another drive, meaning that if I can't find one specific file, I can go onto my "cloud drive" and find the backup of that file, is that correct?

In our case, it's likely to be mostly photos. At this point I'm sure we have well over a TB of photos each. Obviously 99% of them are probably worthless but the 1% (growing kids, special moments, etc) are worth spending some money to keep safe.

Besides Microsoft, what other "cloud" backup services are available to a casual (home) user (as opposed to a business?)

[thedave1164]

The portable storage is not a backup, it is a copy.

You should have several copies stored at different locations for important data.

A cloud provider like BackBlaze.com has redundant systems that are a pretty safe bet for your data.

A copy is not a backup, and I don’t consider data backed up properly if I don’t have 3 different ways to restore it.

[brutal]

I'm reviewing some backup drives on Amazon and all of them seem to have complaints of lost data, slow operation, poor customer service, etc.

So I'm now thinking maybe going to an off-site backup would be a good idea. So how does One Drive work? I basically get a subscription and then I can set it up as another drive on my computer and just transfer files to and from that drive?

What I'm asking here is whether I have to run some "backup/Restore" software every time I want to upload/download, or whether I can just use it as another drive, meaning that if I can't find one specific file, I can go onto my "cloud drive" and find the backup of that file, is that correct?

In our case, it's likely to be mostly photos. At this point I'm sure we have well over a TB of photos each. Obviously 99% of them are probably worthless but the 1% (growing kids, special moments, etc) are worth spending some money to keep safe.

Besides Microsoft, what other "cloud" backup services are available to a casual (home) user (as opposed to a business?)

OneDrive is just a folder on your computer. The location (I think) defaults to your My Documents, but can be specified/moved.

I actually have my OneDrive folder on a separate drive from my Windows OS.

I moved all my important folders to the OneDrive folder. OneDrive runs as a background service and is always syncing files to the cloud location which is accessible from any device any time.

In addition, you get to download and use all the basic Office365 Apps.

There are additional safeguards you can take to make redundant copies of the data. I also use a file sync utility to also store the really critical files located in OneDrive in other locations.