Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Care and feeding of external hard drives

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 06-03-2014, 04:07 PM:

I have accumulated about a half-dozen external hard drives to hold my growing collection of DCPs, plus pictures and other "stuff." Some of them contain backups of backups, basically. What should a person do to keep these things from failing to work on some future use? Should they be "exercised" from time to time? How, and how often?

Are there any brands/types that are better than others? I've got a couple of the WD Passports and a Book, and one Seagate I think. No problems with any of them yet.

I look forward to the day when a person can get about a hundred terabytes of reliable cloud storage on the cheap.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 06-03-2014, 04:34 PM:

It may be a bit late now, but rather than having a hodge-podge of miscellaneous hard drives you might be better off with a good Network Attached Storage device. I've been using an Intel SS4000e for quite a few years without any problems, so far.

The advantage of gadgets like these is that they are hot-swappable RAID devices that are always online (for doing backups to) and if there is a problem with any of the drives the device will email you to let you know. (You give it an email address to send problem reports to as part of the setup.)

I wouldn't be particularly interested in the "hundred terrabytes of cloud storage" even if it was free, frankly. When my data lives on my own hard drives, I know where it is. I can read it, archive it, modify it and delete it as I choose. If it's on someone else's service that I'm renting, anything could happen to it. Nobody else looks after your stuff like you look after your stuff. That goes for everything from your data to your car.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 06-03-2014, 06:19 PM:

quote: Frank Cox
you might be better off with a good Network Attached Storage device.

My particular problem is, I am doing work in any of 3 different buildings (home, store, theater) depending on what time of day it is. By the time I get some projects done, they've been worked on in all three places so portability is key.

I agree with you about the cloud storage.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-03-2014, 06:31 PM:

Setup a VPN between all 3 locations, then get a NAS and be done with it.