2016 - best archival HDD

[JHZR2]

Could be laptop size or 3.5" type.

Interface: USB 3.0 via a USB-sata converter.

Use: once every few months otherwise stored in a safe deposit box.

Size: 2-4TB or larger if there's a compelling reason.

Transfer: expect 5-20 GB per transfer in one event. Files 20-200MBeach.

It seems from a cursory search on Amazon, that 5400 rpm drives are more and more prevalent... And there aren't as many 7200+ options. I'd guess it's because SSDs are used anywhere that performance is necessary.

Recommendations on brand model?

 

[Danno]

Always been a big fan of WD Black hard drives. Bought many and all lived.

This would be my choice given your criteria.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6-716-_-Product

$10 more for 4TB capacity.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=22-236-807

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: Danno
Always been a big fan of WD Black hard drives. Bought many and all lived.

This would be my choice given your criteria.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6-716-_-Product

$10 more for 4TB capacity.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=22-236-807

These are not WD Black drives. These are basic WD drives in black enclosures.

 

[Donald]

I would buy a RAID enclosure from StarTech. They have several. If your serious about backup, you want RAID. These are RAID in the enclosure. Your PC thinks it's a single HDD.

 

[Jim_Truett]

I currently have four 4TB Seagate 5900 RPM drives and four 3TB Seagate 5900RPM drives running 24/7/365 in a media center NAS setup. Almost two years on these drives, 0 problems. I had eight 2TB drives in the array prior to that for three years. A mix of WD greens and Seagate LP. 0 problems. I've been running one of those old 2TB 5900RPM drives in my DVR for a year without issue.

I have one 2TB WD green drive sitting here that I got from a friend to test. It was an offline archival drive. it died with little use. Pretty sad.

We have a saying at work: Data is a privilege, not a right. Whatever you do, have a backup copy. we have some of the best mechanical drives money can buy in our SANs at work, and still have a failure every few months.

I would probably use two 2.5" 2TB drives for size given the safe deposit box storage.
Seagate 2TB

 

[doitmyself]

JHZR, in my recent search of external hard drive enclosures, I also learned quite a bit about HDDs (mostly 3.5"). Here are some of the conclusions that I learned:

- Raid is not a form of backup. Backup requires that you have multiple copies in multiple locations.

- Hitachi seems to be a common HDD brand at the enterprise level, but still not necessarily the one to choose. Many (not all) of the professional level external hard drives mostly use Hitachi HDDs. Check out: Caldigit, G Technology, OWC, CRU, Avator, Glyph, LaCie(Seagate owned). All VERY expensive, with OWC being the most reasonable.

- Seagate and Western Digital exchange reliability ratings, cyclic every few years based on producing a big goose egg every now and then. Ford vs. Chevy for sure.

- 5400 implies more reliability because of less mechanical wear and heat. With improvements to hard drives occurring almost annually, many claim this has not been proven, but facts are non existent. Many 7200 options in 2TB and under. Many believe that smaller is better (2 TB or less)for reliability, but again, there are few facts to support this. 2.5" vs. 3.5"....2.5" seems to handle jostling better, many imply 3.5" is more mechanically reliable????

- Study the Backblaze reliability data with caution. Their first release put WD over Seagate. Their latest one was just the opposite....go figure. For some fun, look up ALL of the Backblaze info, including this one: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2014/02/17/backblaze_how_not_to_evaluate_disk_reliability/

2015- https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q4-2015/

2014 - https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive-q4-2014/

My conclusion? Have several backups in multiple locations, knowing that any and all brands will fail. Having numerous cheap setups might be safer than relying on one expensive one. Toss a coin for choosing.

 

[uc50ic4more]

I have seen those graphs above many times and have gravitated toward favouring the (former) Hitachi (HGST; now owned by Western Digital, if I recall correctly). They're priced similarly to the other brands, as well.

Since performance is not a critical issue I would also default to a 5400rpm drive.

 

[dparm]

Curious: are you against an online archive? HDD failures will never be a concern in that scenario.

BTW 5400rpm is fine for a higher-capacity drive. The data is more densely written so the arm isn't moving as far.

 

[Andrew1972]

A name brand with full redunacy at your our home.

I use rsync running on a banana pi running open vault to my parents house as a backup. Works pretty well.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: dparm
Curious: are you against an online archive? HDD failures will never be a concern in that scenario.

BTW 5400rpm is fine for a higher-capacity drive. The data is more densely written so the arm isn't moving as far.


Ive got over 1TB of stuff to archive. That's a LOT of uploading and managing online. Im not opposed, Ive not necessarily looked that close.

The ability to take a bare HDD and put it in a storage case in the safe deposit box is pretty simple...

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Ive got over 1TB of stuff to archive. That's a LOT of uploading and managing online.

Agreed, especially if your service provider has monthly data caps.

 

[itguy08]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Originally Posted By: dparm
Curious: are you against an online archive? HDD failures will never be a concern in that scenario.

BTW 5400rpm is fine for a higher-capacity drive. The data is more densely written so the arm isn't moving as far.


Ive got over 1TB of stuff to archive. That's a LOT of uploading and managing online. Im not opposed, Ive not necessarily looked that close.


I've got close to 2TB in Crashplan. It may take a month or 2 to get it all up there but once it's there updates are minimal and done pretty quickly. I never worry about backups as it's all there. Restores are quick and efficient and the price is reasonable.

The only thing I back up locally is photos and it's more for moving from desktop to laptop if needed. Other than that all backup duties are online.

I used to do the safe deposit box route but it always lagged by a few months as getting to the bank was a PITA. And many safes are not rated for media in a fire/flood/whatever. Much easier to put it somewhere else in the cloud.

 

[dparm]

Yep, Crashplan is unlimited for a good price. Upload may take a while, but if you're worried about a cap, just throttle it so it slowly uploads over the course of 60 days or something.

There are other services like OneDrive or iCloud that allow you to pay for more storage.


JHZR2,

What are you attempting to "manage"? Isn't the point of an archive that it's fire-and-forget? CrashPlan handles all of the differential/incremental stuff for you.

My two cents is that copying stuff to hard drives, taking it to a safe deposit box, etc -- that whole process -- is a thing of the past. Make it someone else's problem by just uploading into the cloud.

 

[JHZR2]

Well this is why Im asking

Buying $100 HDs now and again has a cost too, just like Crashplan or anything else.

Ill explore this...

Thanks!

 

[spackard]

I think you need an air-gap backup.
People are shooting off ransomware that encrypts your data and you pay them, within 3 days, to get a key to decrypt it.

A file server that does snapshots can save you from this also, but it's more complicated to run. (If you're doing cloud backups make sure your cloud provider can support not just live restore but restoring from an older snapshot.)

 

[PandaBear]

I would check and buy a model that has been out for at least 1 year and enough newegg reviews to tell me whether it has a design issue or not.

As you can see from the chart, the reliability is always all over the place because of new technologies being immature or manufacturer being too aggressive, or conservative and left money on the table (being too reliable when they could squeeze more density out of it).

And whenever merger (between vendor and drive maker or between drive makers) happens, you can be sure that the new drives can be anything good or bad when the merged company started mixing components together, or not selling new generations of components to their competitors.