Any recommendations for a backup drive? Should I spend the money for an SSD? I’m looking for something bulletproof although I know that doesn’t exist when it comes drives. Any recommendations or thoughts greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance
Doesn’t everyone just back up to the cloud these days ?
SSD’s are not optimal for long term offline storage, apparently. (I’ve been told over time the stored charge can dissipate and eventually the levels fall to a level where the drive logic can no longer reliably read it.)
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A small computer with a simple raid mirror is very reliable. Just make sure to do software raid, not motherboard options but os, and make sure to S.M.A.R.T. test every drive at least once a month.
For your cheapest option, nearly any desktop running Ubuntu would work. You could get two drives and set them up to mirror each other. Just put a smart test in cron. To get even fancier, install Nextcloud and let that handle automatically moving your files. Or you could just use any number of backup programs that let you pick the destination.
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I don’t think going with only online backups are a great idea in this age ransom ware that spreads across a network. Nothing is going to infect your offline/offsite backups.
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Remember the 3-2-1 golden rules of backup: 3 copies (of the content), on 2 different formats, 1 of which is offsite.
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My external drive failed last week and it keeps all of my home videos on it. Luckily, I had Time Machine backing it up. I got an 8TB WD drive for about $140. Well worth it.
As another backup, I use Backblaze. Another great service !
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Plenty of reasons many prefer their own disks over other people’s disks. Ongoing cost might be a concern, or lack of bandwidth (ISP caps and/or RTO concerns). And of course, privacy.
@SOCA depends how much data you’re looking to store, and what you want to spend. A NAS enclosure in a RAID config will be bulletproof (except for… you know… actual bullets!). That’s also a costly option requiring a modicum of technical ability.
If you’re just looking for a recommendation for a single disk, there’s a company called Backblaze that publishes failure statistics on the disks they use. Pretty useful to gauge the reliability of different disk models - Hard Drive Test Data
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I also have a 8TB external drive that I put everything on and keep it plugged into an old netbook that backs it up to Back Blaze. I pay $110 every 2 years. So i have the original, the 8TB drive and the cloud back up.
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Personally I spend my money on a cloud backup solution. Most of them offer unlimited space. The initial backup is painful but then the diffs just trickle up as needed. Not a bad idea to have a local USB disk or NAS backup too, for convenience, but local drives are not good sole backup options (think fire or natural disaster where both the computer and the drive are destroyed). Choose a cloud backup solution that does not retain the encryption keys so in the event they get hacked your data is still safe.
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I agree completely, thank you
I just use the seagate extension portable drive for my backups, A SSD only makes sense if you are backing up from one SSD to another…
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