External hard drive for desktop

TWiT Shows Ask The Tech Guys
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hello. leo, i have been a fan since you first appeared on cable! you and (can’t remember his name) did photoshop tips and everything. then the network changed a couple of times ha! i think it became the weather channel now ( :rofl:)

anyway, i need to store data on an external harddrive. it needs to be backed-up so i was thinking just a simple disk mirroring. 8TB would be fine, possibly even 4TB. its to store scripts, materials, bitmaps, customization settings and renders and video/animation renders and files. so maybe 8TB?

anyway, i have two network cards in my windows 10 enterprise PC right now. I was thinking it’d be great to have something i could plug into one of the network cards and map it as a storage drive like X: drive.

it’s for work and it’s long term! so i’d like to shy away from best-buy over the counter stuff. but that’s a gray line - i guess i’m saying i need back-up and i need something that won’t fail.

i’ve seen a lot of photographers/video editors use laCie devices, there’s one that catches my eye: LaCie 2Big Raid but that’s USB only i think.

any other suggestions?

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An external hard drive is going to have a dependence on your PC. (For example, if you used it with Apple, it’s likely going to have an Apple file system on it, or if you used it with Windows, it’s going to have NTFS on it.) That can be an advantage, but it can also be a disadvantage in that malware could easily hop on board as well.

It might be better to consider a completely detached network only device, like a NAS. Synology makes some two drive ones, as well as larger ones which you can leave bays unpopulated and grow into later. The benefit of a separate device is that you could also leave it running 24/7 if you want, and have it back itself (or portions) to the cloud if you’re considering doing 3-2-1 backups. (Three copies, including the original, on two different formats, one of which is offsite.)

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thanks, i think that sounds like the best way to go. it really covers all my bases/needs. apreciate it!