How long do external drives last?

How Soon Is Now

Have been wondering lately should i make a second copy of the real important stuff on my oldest drive?

Its a freecom 400gb drive i have it about 3 years or so and only time its ever moved is when im bringing it to a mates gaff its in good condition and theres about 10 gigs left on it.

I have two other drives both western digital 1 tb and 350gig one them usb powered ones. I only have these two both max a year or so and again there both in great condition.

So any ideas whats the best things to do to make sure drives last as long as possible and that i never lose anything cause id be slighty worried about losing things on that older drive theres alot stuff on it would take me a million years to find again.

Voodu Child

How long they last depends mostly on how much you use them. Plugged in all the time, only used for backups, moved from place to place, etc. It'll all affect how long the drive lasts. Plus, some drives are just crap, but I won't get into that here.

2.5" external drives tend to be a little more robust than their 3.5" counterparts, because the drives in them are usually laptop drives, designed to take a decent bit of movement and vibration compared to desktop drives.

You can run a health check on most drives to see how they're doing. Go to the WD site and you'll find some free software for your WD drives.

Make sure you've got all your stuff backed up no matter how long/short you think the drives life is.

How Soon Is Now

Ok cool

Should i just keep using hard drives to further make backup copys of what i already have so? I just think its mad spending more money on another drive to make copy of something u already have backed up lol if only was an easyer cheaper way of doing it without the need to keep at it.

Cuddlesworth

angerfist2009 wrote: »

Ok cool

Should i just keep using hard drives to further make backup copys of what i already have so? I just think its mad spending more money on another drive to make copy of something u already have backed up lol if only was an easyer cheaper way of doing it without the need to keep at it.

Raid1

Voodu Child

angerfist2009 wrote: »

Ok cool

Should i just keep using hard drives to further make backup copys of what i already have so? I just think its mad spending more money on another drive to make copy of something u already have backed up lol if only was an easyer cheaper way of doing it without the need to keep at it.

You just need to backup stuff in proportion to how important it is to you. So whether it's 'mad' or not doesnt really come into it. If its not important, don't back it up. If it is important, do. :pac:

How much data have you got, how important is it, and how is it split across your 3 drives?

How Soon Is Now

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Raid1

Any one type you have any mind or know of that wont cost an arm and a leg?

How Soon Is Now

Voodu Child wrote: »

You just need to backup stuff in proportion to how important it is to you. So whether it's 'mad' or not doesnt really come into it. If its not important, don't back it up. If it is important, do. :pac:

How much data have you got, how important is it, and how is it split across your 3 drives?

My oldest drive has pretty much everything on it Music films so on this extreme importance.

My second drive 1tb one has all my tv shows on it which is also alot and important cause the shows aint all straight forward to find.

And my third drive is empty at the moment but its the smallest and newest 350gigs.

Really i want something that i can put all my music on all my films and all tv shows and just keep it somewhere safe and only use it if i want to add more to it or i need to get something from it.

So what would be cheapest drive with most space that would last the longest if only used just as backup and put away in safe place not turned on much?

ronkmonster

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html
CyrstalDiskInfo

It'll read the SMART settings on the drive so you can see if its on it's way out.

Cheapest would be internal, Komplett have 1TB for 72€
Easons are also doing 1TB external hard drives at the moment for 80€
Seagate i think they are. have 1 at home i got few months back

How Soon Is Now

ronkmonster wrote: »

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html
CyrstalDiskInfo

It'll read the SMART settings on the drive so you can see if its on it's way out.

Cheapest would be internal, Komplett have 1TB for 72€
Easons are also doing 1TB external hard drives at the moment for 80€
Seagate i think they are. have 1 at home i got few months back

Thanks man ill check the drives when i go home see how they perform

I was looking maybe gettin one these after christmas
http://www.elara.ie/products/detailsfullft.asp?productcode=ECE1807767#spec

Im in no major rush i mean i cant see my 3 drives dying anytime soon lol its just something i was thinking bout last night cause i download alot like.

ronkmonster

I'm terrible for not having backups.
5.5TB of space in my sever to my 1TB external disaster waiting to happen

How Soon Is Now

I might just pick up a decent 1 tb drive in new year and put everything i want on it and just keep it as safe back up away in my room somewhere never switched on unless im deleting or backing up more files to it.

This type of method should make sure drives last good few years right ? lol if not i dunno i mean i know all forms of memory die after awhile but surely if u hardly ever use a decent western digital external hard drive its bound to last least 4 or 5 years.

iMax

With the cost of them it's worth having a second backup - PC -> External x 2.

I have an external which everything is backed up onto in case of fire etc (digital pictures can't be replaced) & network drive in the attic in case I was burgled (might seem OTT, but once you've lost data you don't want it happening again)

Voodu Child

angerfist2009 wrote: »

i cant see my 3 drives dying anytime soon

Famous last words :pac:

Im still not sure how much data you have (in GB) based on your replies and how well its backed up and split across your internal and/or external drives etc.

But it boils down to this - if a drive dies, do you lose important data? If you do, then you need to get it backed up onto another physical drive ASAP. If that means buying a new drive, or alternatively just re-arranging how you split data, so be it.

ronkmonster

If you barely use it, it would last lot longer than that

You might be best getting something like this
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=485263

A nas box and then getting 2 internal drives to slot in
You can then upgrade to bigger disk as you need too.
Then use your externals as your backup from that.

But the most important thing is to have 2 copies of your files
If your only copy of files are on your external drives, they aren't a backup

How Soon Is Now

Voodu Child wrote: »

Famous last words :pac:

Im still not sure how much data you have (in GB) based on your replies and how well its backed up and split across your internal and/or external drives etc.

But it boils down to this - if a drive dies, do you lose important data? If you do, then you need to get it backed up onto another physical drive ASAP. If that means buying a new drive, or alternatively just re-arranging how you split data, so be it.

Drive 1 freecom 400 GB my oldest drive 3 or so years old. It has about 15 GB remaining on it most of this is stuff i REALLY WANT rest is just slightly usefull lol more then half the drive is all stuff would take me long time finding again some stuff might never find again.

Drive 2 Western Digital Elements 1tb i only use this for tv shows so its more then half empty but im adding to this every week its VERY important.

Drive 3 Western Digital My Passport 350gig i dont use this much its mainly used for if im just throwing stuff on quick to bring to me mates house. Its nearly always empty and not plugged in.

How Soon Is Now

ronkmonster wrote: »

If you barely use it, it would last lot longer than that

You might be best getting something like this
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=485263

A nas box and then getting 2 internal drives to slot in
You can then upgrade to bigger disk as you need too.
Then use your externals as your backup from that.

But the most important thing is to have 2 copies of your files
If your only copy of files are on your external drives, they aren't a backup

Would it be worth the money you would spend to set one of these up just for home use?

I mean your talking couple hundred euro would not be cheaper and easyer to just have one big external hard drive thats rarely used and only used as backup then have my other external hard drives as first source of backup that is always plugged into my pc??

Voodu Child

angerfist2009 wrote: »

Drive 1 freecom 400 GB my oldest drive 3 or so years old. It has about 15 GB remaining on it most of this is stuff i REALLY WANT rest is just slightly usefull lol more then half the drive is all stuff would take me long time finding again some stuff might never find again.

Drive 2 Western Digital Elements 1tb i only use this for tv shows so its more then half empty but im adding to this every week its VERY important.

Drive 3 Western Digital My Passport 350gig i dont use this much its mainly used for if im just throwing stuff on quick to bring to me mates house. Its nearly always empty and not plugged in.

So basically you have about 800-900GB data, about 1750GB storage space, and no backups at all? You could split your data across the drives as it is, it would be a start. But you'd start to run out of space very quickly.

I think I would just get a 1.5TB drive (can be gotten for about €105 link). Use that as your new primary drive - put everything on it - movies, TV shows, music etc. Then split the backups between your other drives, so you have a backup of your movies folder on the 1TB drive, your TV folder on the 400GB drive, etc. You can use sync software (like SyncToy) to make sure your backup folders are up to date.

How Soon Is Now

Voodu Child wrote: »

So basically you have about 800-900GB data, about 1750GB storage space, and no backups at all? You could split your data across the drives as it is, it would be a start. But you'd start to run out of space very quickly.

I think I would just get a 1.5TB drive (can be gotten for about €105 link). Use that as your new primary drive - put everything on it - movies, TV shows, music etc. Then split the backups between your other drives, so you have a backup of your movies folder on the 1TB drive, your TV folder on the 400GB drive, etc. You can use sync software (like SyncToy) to make sure your backup folders are up to date.

Ok so if i was to buy a new primary drive and have this as the drive i download straight to then have backup drives one drive for movies and the others for music and other for tv shows how long would the drives last working this way? I mean if i already have my original drive about 3 and a half years that is being used alot its my main drive will this last much longer?

ronkmonster

Replace the oldest of the drives too. Drives would generally only have 3 years warranty, if that.
keep it for your moving stuff to friends house.

Voodu Child

angerfist2009 wrote: »

Ok so if i was to buy a new primary drive and have this as the drive i download straight to then have backup drives one drive for movies and the others for music and other for tv shows how long would the drives last working this way? I mean if i already have my original drive about 3 and a half years that is being used alot its my main drive will this last much longer?

As a home user, you can't predict with any degree of accuracy when a drive will die. It depends on too many factors. But if you've a 3-year old well-used drive, its safe to say that its more likely to fail than a new drive. Don't count on it as a main point of storage.

The important thing is that if/when a drive dies:
a) You know about it, and replace it immediately
b) You have the data on another drive

If you have that covered (and you don't currently) then thats a basic level of protection, probably sufficient for most home users. You can go further with multiple backups, raid arrays, offsite backups etc. and its really up to you how far you want to go and how much you want to spend. It depends how important the data is to you etc. But right now you've got nothing, so you should aim to get at least one level of redundancy implemented asap.

How Soon Is Now

Ok great thanks everyone for the replys gonna have look at all my stuff when i get home from work see what be best solution and check what condition the drives are in .

ronkmonster

How much storage does your pc have?
I personal prefer having the data on internal drives and only backups on external drives. What if your external drives are in same area and a liquid fell on them.

A 2TB (Allowing few years of growth) internal drive for all your data and then backup onto external drives (possibly replacing 400gb - but check with that tool before deciding) that you put away after backing up.

Maybe even do DVD backups of tv series over time. Leave at friends house. Cheap offsite backup if you're really worried

How Soon Is Now

ronkmonster wrote: »

How much storage does your pc have?
I personal prefer having the data on internal drives and only backups on external drives. What if your external drives are in same area and a liquid fell on them.

A 2TB (Allowing few years of growth) internal drive for all your data and then backup onto external drives (possibly replacing 400gb - but check with that tool before deciding) that you put away after backing up.

Maybe even do DVD backups of tv series over time. Leave at friends house. Cheap offsite backup if you're really worried

I didnt really bother with much hard drive space on my pc when i bought it from alienware its probley bout 300 gigs or so i only use it for installing software anything i download goes straight to my external drives i reckon if i set the 3 i have up proper and maybe get one more external drive all should be fine. I was mostly just worried about my main external drive with all my movies and music software so on as it is the oldest.

ronkmonster

angerfist2009 wrote: »

I didnt really bother with much hard drive space on my pc when i bought it from alienware its probley bout 300 gigs or so i only use it for installing software anything i download goes straight to my external drives i reckon if i set the 3 i have up proper and maybe get one more external drive all should be fine. I was mostly just worried about my main external drive with all my movies and music software so on as it is the oldest.

Honestly I'd not use the 400Gb old drive for storing files. Use it for moving stuff but not for important stuff.

Not worth the risk when 80€ gets you 1TB and safety for another few years.
I do daily zipped backups of my documents and few other really important files after losing stuff few times. And I keep 3 days worth of backups. Hard to do with movies though.

How Soon Is Now

Ya ill be in the shops on Friday maybe ill have a look then i know there cheaper online sometimes as well to.

Should be ok for christmas anyway but ill see what i can do with the drives when im at my pc next.

ronkmonster

€80 is in eason shops. Not online
I have one at home and no problems

How Soon Is Now

Cool ill have a look sure dunno which way my money is going at the moment with it being christmas and what not :P

But i would feckin kill meself if i lost the stuff i have on these drives so ill deffo have to do something when i get the chance soon. Another thing i was wondering the usb cables you get with drives are there certain ones that give better speeds or should they all be same?

All the usb ports on my pc are usb2 and i find sometimes the data transfer rate can be so fecking slow and other times its much quicker.

ronkmonster

cables never seemed to affect my speeds
but external would be slow in comparison to internal.
speed dropped could be due to pc being busy at time.

i do know windows is very slow at copying loads of individual files.
so 1000 files of 1mb would take longer than 1 file of 1000mb

K.O.Kiki

USB just straight out loses to Firewire & eSATA.

How Soon Is Now

So i went and checked the three of my drives last night the last two western digital ones i bought are grand just the first and oldest ones i noticed to things.

On the results which i was given using the drive check tool someone posted early on in thread the old 400 gig drives shows caution instead of good something about bad sectors i forget the proper wording.

And when i was copying my moves to my 1 tb drive it keeps crashing when i go to copy a certain movie strange as the file itself actually works.

You can hear a clicking noise coming from the hard drive scary **** last time i started hearing that on a drive it died not long after it wouldn even let me eject to safely remove.

roberthurley14

recode the drive to NFTS unsing cmd line and it get added life

How Soon Is Now

roberthurley14 wrote: »

recode the drive to NFTS unsing cmd line and it get added life

Would that not affect the drive or access to the files in anyway?

ronkmonster

The program I listed gave a yellow warning or red warning?

Video software would probably be more tolerant of errors due to having to read from dvd discs with possible scratches, dirt etc.

Get everything else off it and I'll look up another tool that may help.
It might be worth do a chkdsk e:\ /R on it
e:\ being the drive letter

it might fix it enough to get the movie off it.

How Soon Is Now

ronkmonster wrote: »

The program I listed gave a yellow warning or red warning?

Video software would probably be more tolerant of errors due to having to read from dvd discs with possible scratches, dirt etc.

Get everything else off it and I'll look up another tool that may help.
It might be worth do a chkdsk e:\ /R on it
e:\ being the drive letter

it might fix it enough to get the movie off it.

Yellow warning

I actually had a similar problem like this before and i just deleted the file and downloaded it again was ok i am just wondering what caused it.

The actual film has been on the drive for a long time and i have played it and was fine its only since i went to copy it to another drive that i got this problem. I am using a program called i think its terracopy to copy over files i find its quicker then what windows uses and gives u more options and power.

ronkmonster

Yeah, Teracopy is a good program.

When copying files it has be able to copy every single part of it.
In video playing, there would fault tolerance.

I work in IT and I just replaced drives when they get any warning.
You could probably fix it temporarily with chkdsk or changing to ntfs, but eventually it will die.

How Soon Is Now

Ill maybe buy one after work if i get time and just clear everything off the old drive use it when im bringin stuff to me mates.

ronkmonster

when you've cleared everything off it. do a chkdsk on it.
It'll keep it somebit in order until it packs in.

Worth running that program every now and again just to keep an eye on things.

Windows 7 picks up on SMART failure automatically. Didn't tell me which drive though (have a hd in my pc to recover data which is also yellow warning)

How Soon Is Now

I am using win7 meself actually.
When you shut your pc down should u eject every hard drive your using before plugging them out?

ronkmonster

No, when you shutdown it'll finish up everything automatically (as long as it shutdowns properly - no turning off at switch ).
So when the PC is off, your safe to remove.

I only worry about safe removal if i write to it personally.

How Soon Is Now

Ok grand i only ever ejected it when the pc was on but was starting to think maybe i had to when it was off before i pluged out my mains as well.

Just out of interest are the best external harddrives on the market Western Digital or do most the companys kinda have there own selling points?

ronkmonster

No too sure, I prefer Western Digital for reliability for my internal drives.
I'm always willing to pay a little more for them. But that said my external isn't WD. Its a Seagate I got in Easons.

Probably best to look up general hard drive reviews online. Sames drives used just in a case.

Some do have extra features, which are really up to the buyers wants/needs.