Several people here have asked why I have not "just purchased a NAS drive", or something to that effect. So to save my fingers typing a reply again and again, here is my answer: 1. There is some confusion here between NAS and RAID. NAS means "network attached storage" -- ie a storage unit connected via a network. Some NAS units have multiple drives configured as RAID (which I explain here: th-cam.com/video/flOhCU0sgvQ/w-d-xo.html ). But NAS does not inherently imply the use of RAID. 2. A RAID NAS unit does protect against drive failure. But it does not provide back-up redundancy. This is because any RAID NAS unit -- like any external hard drive -- can be knocked out by a single event, such as a strong power surge or PSU failure (which could fry all of the hardware), theft, a water leak, physical accident, etc. The idea that you can buy a NAS/RAID unit and via its use alone never have to worry about backup is hence flawed (see my video on the 3-2-1 rule here: th-cam.com/video/rFO6NyLIP7M/w-d-xo.html ). 3. NAS is limited to the speed of Ethernet -- currently a max of 1 gitabit, which is six times slower than available via the latest eSATA devices (such as the LaCie D2 Quadra hard drive I show here). 4. It all depends on what you want to do! :) Here I have shown hardware that I use to make deep backups -- ie backups that are kept off-line (none of these drives are ever constantly connected to a PC), with the same data backed up to multiple drives stored in multiple locations, with most kept in cases that are waterproof and shockproof (to a degree, anyway!) and far away from my PCs. I also use these drives for large (100GB+) backups taken on a fairly infrequent basis (every c.10 to 14 days). Using a NAS/RAID unit would hence provide less physical security, less electrical security (as the drives would be constantly powered), and would be slower. There are lots of good uses for a RAID NAS or a home server for file storage purposes. But for my purposes a number of external hard drives held securely in different places is a better solution. 5. I will come back to these issues in a future video! :)
I'm afraid you're mistaken about the "speed of Ethernet". There are several Ethernet standards, which can go in excess of 100Gbit. The current maximum for ethernet over copper Cat5/6/7 is 10Gbit. Although you're correct that the current consumer standard is 1Gbit.
ExplainingComputers Hey Christopher! I recently (on September, arrived on November because of issues) bought a 5TB External HDD. It costed $110 (before tax & Import Fees Deposit) during discount (from $130) It's the Seagate Expansion 5TB. It's cheap actually and I could get speeds above 100 MB/s sequential but people online could get close to 1.5 Gb/s (note I wrote Gb) on the drive. I'm not sponsored and thank God the drive is still good. And I filled more than half in less than 6 months. Genius.
WAROMLUPKFC99 Well I suggest you if you have a 2-core CPU the drive amount is 6-8 drives or 12 drives for cold storage. (6 for high speed, 8 for normal use) to have the most storage with the least power. Although buying less cores will increase the power consumption. 😕
I can remember a Data Center manager proudly showing off the one TB storage his center had, bragging it was "one of only five" in the Eastern U.S. that size (early 1990s). It was the size of two double door commercial refrigerators side by side and required special power and cooling.
Our first business computer system, in about 1988 or so, had a 40 MB HD!! The supplying company proudly stated that it should be some time before we needed anything bigger. Less than 2 years later we needed an upgrade to a massive 80 MB, they were shocked! I should mention that the system ran bespoke software for our company, and when I asked what Windows was, something I found on the system by chance, they replied "don't worry about that, you don't need to use it"!!
The IBM 3380 Direct Access Storage Device was introduced in June 1980. It uses film head technology and has a unit capacity of 2.52 gigabytes (two hard disk assemblies each with two independent actuators each accessing 630 MB within one chassis) with a data transfer rate of 3 megabytes per second. Average access time was 16 ms. Purchase price at time of introduction ranged from $81,000 to $142,200. Due to tribology problems encountered between heads and media, the first units did not ship until October, 1981.
Another hard drive story! In the mid eighties I was working in a DP area and the IBM service man was proudly showing me the latest HD he was installing. It was less then 500 meg and about the size of a carry on suitcase. What really amazed me was a glass window at one end of the drive that he explained was to watch for magnetic material accumulation as it wore off the drive signalling imminent failure !!!!
I had to double check that I was watching an up to date video. I use a Synology NAS for my centralised storage at home and I have another NAS in a different location as a off site back up. All of my periodical backs ups happen automatically. It's very slick.
Dear Chris, thank you for another awesome video. I love that small problems that you usually have (problem with box opening, wrong screwdriver etc.), that does your videos so so real.
I run a security system business. Keeping records for the work we have done is a must. I used to have 2 2tb drives in my main tower and they were breaching capacity. Built a storage server with 4 x 6tb drives mirrored giving us 12tb of raid storage. No more clutter for a few years
I totally get what you are saying Mr ExplainingComputers. I am an Electronics and Computer Engineering Technologist that was in the military for 20 some years and you do exactly what needs to be done to get the maximum amount of security (I don't think they get this part too good) and amount of data backups that should be done. Users giving total control to manufacturers and programmers to do all of your backups with no intervention by the owner of the data to me is just not safe enough. I've told countless people to do some of those things to their home backup systems, but people only learn after they have failures with their no backup or first backups and then understand the need for 2nd and 3rd (Enterprise/Military) backups on various mediums and off site off line. You do great videos, NAS has its place, 3rd backups and off site off line backups have their place too.
Before I got the Pelican case(s) I tested lots of different Tupperware and other common plastic boxes by holding them submerged under a few inches of water. Every single one leaked water into the box! So for water protection alone, I use Pelican. :)
It's amazing how you can bring us these amazing, but high quality videos every Sunday! I really enjoy your content and always wish for more! Thank you.
+ExplainingComputers It's really calming to watch your videos because you take time to explain things and don't rush things (for example with the ports, I'm used to stop the video because many other youtubers show them for maybe 2 seconds and skip to the next part)
I built a NAS/RAID box out of a disused rackmount case about 8 years ago and some odd bits here and there and stuffed it with twelve 2tb drives for a total of 20tb after RAID-5 parity. I have two 1gbt ports on this machine and can bond them for 2gbt if I needed to. Could even go faster if I wanted to work at it more, lol. But for my purposes it works out. I don't require off-site storage although honestly I should consider it.I like the little cartridge system you have set up. Could also use a simple SATA dock and use the drives bare also. (I actually have such a dock which is USB 3.0). Although the cartridges certainly offer protection of the connectors, PCB's, etc. on the drives themselves. Yes this comment rambled a bit, lol. Anyway thanks for sharing your storage upgrades with us. Always enjoy watching your videos even if it's on a topic i'm very familiar with.
Always like your videos. FYI: A friend of mine has a company that makes packing boxes like shown in this video. The outside white Lacie box is cardboard (thickness of a cereal box), but the brown box container on the inside is corrugated material. You mentioned in your video you were taking the drive out of its cardboard box :) I guess if you are in the business of building boxes, you are sensitive to those kind of things. Love the videos, thanks for my weekly tech fix.
I considered the question about backup all our photos, videos and all data for archive only. After comparing current solutions, I chose the tape drive HP Storageworks HH LTO-3 (the better and faster SCSI external tape drive for this generation). The 3rd generation is now cheap (~150€ or better for 97% lifetime) if you take it on eBay, but, of course, this is not new material, so it's important to have the informations about the lifetime of the drive. I also found new cartdriges for ~20€ / 400gb uncompressed (up to 800 compressed), and a SCSI Adaptec in a HP Microserver. For sure, the first cost is higher than hard drives, but after that, this is a very solid backup, and cartdriges are strong for conservation and easy for storage. But yes, I know you used this in your company, but for the current price, this is a interesting alternative if you wish make backups for a long archive, in addition to hard drive especially if you need to load back your backup ! Anyway, this is a very informative channel, thank you for your videos !
Great video, it always amazes me how my and others storage needs continue to grow exponentially. I remember 100 mb hard drives and I used a 40 gb for a long time and it was good, and enough storage. but now in late 2018 I have 27 TB of local storage on hard drives and ssd’s and I barely feel like it’s enough...crazy how much things have changed since the 90’s.
Having some storage with me at all times is a life-saver. I keep my 32gb sandisk cruzer blade USB along with my keys. Wery handy for my audio files that i transfer between school and home.
Looking forward to the video you mention in point 5. Very interesting arguments. Nevertheless there are ways to use a raid NAS server as backup effectively when well protected behind a firewall , locked and connected to mains through an UPS.
This guy is the OG wealth of knowledge if he didn't exist I don't think a lot of these new yuppie YT tech shows like Linus and shit wouldn't have half the video ideas 💡
Crazy to think that not so long ago a 500GB drive was seen as massive and all the storage we will ever need. Now I'm sitting here with 6TB of drives and they are almost full :/
You should also count on a special 'fire & heat proof' safe just in case your house burns down. I've learnt that intense heat destroys the data, not just the flames themselves.
I think it's pronounced La Cie. French for The company. In my opinion, it's just Seagate trying to hind behind another brand. I just have never found Seagate to be reliable based on the experiences of friends, family and co-workers. I personally wouldn't trust them with my data, but I'm sure there are plenty of people that do.
Seems doubtful many of us who really got going in computing when 1.44 mb floppies were the cat's meow have ever run out of storage (much) since those meager days passed.
I love your videos and the way you carefully explain everything. And the unboxings are genuine (e.g. when you struggle with the packaging) - I like this realistic touch. Wish I found your channel earlier - and your second channel is also interesting. Hope to see many more videos in the future!
While I do enjoy your video on Storage Update, I personally got tired of buying all the back up drives like your LaCie unit and the empty enclosures as well, and I went directly to a USB 2.0 interface Hard Drive Docking Station, that allows me to plug in SATA hard drives directly into it, and can handle up to 2 terabyte hard drives that I store in Hard Drive storage boxes (I buy from China) on my desk! In fact my data storage used to be a number of self made Hard Drive Enclosures, which I still have a few kicking about, but I don't use them much anymore after I amassed as many as 30 units all with 320 GB IDE hard drives in them, even though they too connect via a USB 2.0 connection as well! So in short my "solution" now is the 8 2 terabyte hard drives I use now as I stated, and I simple buy a new hard drive, stick it in the dock, initialize it and move on with my life without all the added money spent on empty enclosures! For me GoHardDrive On eBay out of California has the best prices on SATA 2 terabyte hard drives at around $45 to $60 and I have bought all my hard drives from them recently as well, as most of the time those drives are brand new and they are "enterprise" class hard drives as well! But still you do have a great video and I do enjoy watching your channel often enough as well!
Love your videos i would love to see a video comparing brands of HDD's and models as well so us as consumers know what is most reliable as well as what is the most bang for our buck :-)
great video ... i used a 500gb drive in a NDAS(network direct attached storage ) for years ... this has the advantage of simply showing up in windows as a local disk unlike NAS which requires a bit more tinkering .... however NDAS drives have become impossible to buy and now i simply use a 1tb external drive attached directly to my router and mapped using windows ( to appear on all computers on the network ) .. the advantage with this is not only can i see the files using windows map network drive but can also access them on my android devices using "es file explorer " ..... network storage can be troublesome if your a content creator and require massive network storage but for the general pc home user like myself its much easier than you think .... keep up the good work mate
As he said "just before" I guess it isn't his birthday yet and in some countries it's considered bad luck to get congratulations early. Well done guys, now his harddrives will fail all at once, a ram error corrupts all the data on his SSD and for good measure his steam account will get hacked.
The Lacie is a great drive, used to use them when i was involved in film making. Although very overpriced imho. But be aware, despite them looking very rugged, we had a failure after one was knocked over, i recommend not using the stand!
I just got my first 4 TB 2.5 inch laptop drive the other day... Needless to say, I was very surprised when I took the enclosure apart to find such a chunky drive... It's a Western Digital Passport btw... In Yellow, lol... Thought it would be easier to keep track of in my truck since I like to keep a copy of my entire network with me in the truck while I'm out on the road...Kinds sucks right now though... I don't have a PC with USB 3.0 or 3.1... I'm using a 2014 model Dell Inspiron 3542 running an Intel Celeron dual core @1.4 GHz... I don't have to say that ~21 MB per second over a USB 2.0 connection is too slow when you're shifting TERABYTES of information... It's been running for around 18 hours now... It's moved about 800 GB so far, with 985 GB left to go, and that's just one section of one drive.
Great Video .. as always :-) and also your comments are great and they show you professional skills. .. Thumbs Up.. As I work in the Computer Industrie myself (as a Desktop Support Engineer) I knew how important proper backups are . :-) Greetings from Germany
I was very surprised to see a 15mm blue drive. I've only really been seeing the 15mm drives in SAS format in recent years. I used to see them a lot more in the 90s and used to have a 2GB seagate IDE drive that was 2.5mm x 15mm from an old laptop.
Windows 10 right click on start, one of the options is disk management. Though I normally do windows key plus r and type in "diskmgmt.msc" as I'm a certified geek.
I have a old PowerMac G4 which is stuffed with storage which i use as NAS for storage of most my files, I also have a small WD Elements 2TB USB drive which I think is great and it's very small considering it's storage size which I use for complete image backups. Good video, interesting watching about storage I think anyway.
Also i might add, Samsung does offer a 2TB 2.5" 9.5mm drive. I have been using a set for about a year now and they indeed very handy drives. www.seagate.com/www-content/support-content/samsung/internal-products/spinpoint-m-series/en-us/samsung-m9t-internal-ds.pdf
Yes you are correct. They are sold under the Seagate brand now. But the actual label on the disk still says Samsung Spinpoint, and mine a mare late 2015. I guess they are still manufactured by Samsung maybe?
I have a PC with just *one* hard drive. After 5 months, only used 500 GB out of my 2 TB hard drive (most of it is from games) which came with my PC. I also had a Atom laptop (now I have Lubuntu installed) which had 320 GB, and only used 40 GB on Windows 10.
There is a nice firmware update for those drives originally limited to 2 TB. I've just use it on one of mine and it now supports a 5 TB. The firmware dates back to 2011 but the one on my drive it was from 2008.
I can't believe how many times you were asked about NAS, especially considering the specific efforts you made to explain it. Makes me want to scream READ THE POST! You're a man of great patience Sir. 😇
It would be nice if you could show us how you organize your backup structure with that nice charts and diagrams you usually use fr other things. I know you have several computers doing diferent kind of stuff, and now you show several drives, how will you orginize all of that?I.e. the 5 tb new drve,, will be connected to what computer? Will them be turned on all the time or are you having any dfrive poower control circuit? and when the backup will run? This kind of rules are quite complicated for me to create, and I finally end relying in Deja-dup for a day to day backup. Thanks!
What a great idea for a video! Noted with thanks. In answer to your last question, none of these drives are constantly powered or connected to any PC. All live in different locations well away from computers, and are connected and powered about once a fortnight.
This seems very complicated! Apart from my NAS (which holds the primary copy of all things), I've standardised on the 2.5 inch WD Passport drives for all backups. The 4TB versions are USB3, and the volume they sell of these means they're actually cheaper than getting a bare drive and making your own.
I'm always interested in storage and how folks go about it. At this juncture you must have accumulated many drives and I'm curious as to how you manage old drives. I generally repurpose/consolidate drives and data, wipe drives to military grade specs to donate or sell. I however, still have many drives, including drives with every OS I've ever had. I enjoy on occasion having a go with windows 95, the 24 year evolution is quite stunning. I store my drives in my dads old gun safe in the cellar, of all places. It's a two-tone behemoth and allegedly fire proof, but rest assured, I'm a firm believer in your 3-2-1 backup regimen 😁 Interestingly, I use the same StarTech drive caddy as you, I hate plastic...something about metals durability 👍
Like you, I generally re-purpose -- moving up to larger and larger units, copying data across (which also protect against data fade). But I keep the old, working HDDs. :)
Thank you for replying! You are quite gracious to take time to respond! Your videos are marvelously easy to follow and understand, I'm working my way through all of them and learning! You are a natural teacher! Thanks again 😊
@@stevelee838 I've done various NAS videos here fairly recently, but have no personal use for a NAS. Without upgrading everything to 10 gigabit Ethernet, backing up -- let alone editing -- ProRes video over a network is a non-starter. And no NAS is a credible single backup solution -- it can only ever constitute one element of 3-2-1. So I'll be sticking to multiple offline drives (on site and offsite) connected as required for deep backup, as this gives me the fastest and most robust solution. For videos and other stuff in production, I use a mix of on-machine scratch drives and external SSDs for backup (no file ever hits the edit line before I have three copies on three drives with a least one offline). Maybe I should make a video about all this! :)
@@ExplainingComputers Thanks for the detailed reply Chris, wish I had a fellow geek friend like you living near me, it would be very "wild" to explore all this "exciting" Computer Technology :D
I have several WD drives myself for my two Linux Machines and I used the old WD drive that was in my Acer Aspire One 725 as backup storage with an enclosure. Yes I bought the same netbook you did only I used it to install Arch Linux.
Yes but an old archiving system used Data8 tapes and a Data8 drive which would fit into the system unit like a DVD/RW drive would have been a good system to use,Morten Hojarth uses a Lenovo Data server system for storage and uses ESXI as the OS.
Thanks for another great video Chris. Your strategy for backing up large video files seems quite sound indeed. I wonder if you could tell us the effect of size differences between videos created on 32 bit machines, versus the newer 64 bit windows machines? Possibly not very significant, but wanted ask. Thanks.
Hi Chris, I am a great fan of your channel, and look forward to the release of each new video. This one on storage, has me particularly interested. However, it was not what you talked about in the video, but rather, what you didn't talk about, cloud storage. I am particularly intrigued that someone as knowledgeable as you in the area of IT, still; apparently, has a preference for storing your data on physical devices that you control. Given your "day job" as Futurist, I presume that you have given much thought to the subject of storage, and the cloud, so I assume that your decision is based on an analysis of the risks of entrusting your data storage to the cloud, rather than just adopting an, "I've always done it this way", approach. I work for myself as a consultant, and entrust my data, including my clients data storage to the cloud. Perhaps I shouldn't? I would be really interested in your thoughts. Regards Neville
Thanks for your positive feedback on the channel. On cloud, I personally store a lot of data in online -- eg all of my word processor documents, DTP files, presentations, and so on. I also do all of my writing in Google Docs, and wrote one of the first books on cloud computing back in 2010. So I am a big fan of cloud. :) However, at least with the infrastructure currently available in the UK, cloud backup is not an option when working with (pro) video. I regularly backup tens and sometimes hundreds of GB of files in one go. And I need to temporarily backup even more data -- for example last weekend I captured about 500GB of ProRes working data that needed short-term backup. And at several hours a GB upload, this cannot be backed up to the cloud in the UK. I also sometimes plug in a "backup" drive and access a video file directly from it. And, like many video producers (this is very much part of the day job!), I sometimes need to take a drive with video files on it to a facilities house -- and sometimes to leave it there a few days -- so have to have a number of high capacity drives around. So certainly I think it is a good idea to backup to the cloud where possible. But the drives I included in this video are part -- and only part -- of a video production infrastructure. More broadly, posting this video has made me think seriously about ever doing another video looking at my own hardware (the whole NAS discussion here was most unexpected -- see my pinned comment at the top). This video was in no way presented as "this is how and why I backup and generally manage data -- there is nothing in it about that process. And there is no suggestion here that the hardware that I have bought is what would be most suitable for others. Rather, I simply bought some new drives and thought "hey, this may make a video!". But some people -- and I don't mean you! -- have raced in to judge my whole production pipeline based on no knowledge of it whatsoever, and that has been quite a shock. :(
Good evening, Chris. This appeared in my recommendations several years late! Just curious, how are your WD 2.5" drives holding up? I have a 320GB Black from 2009, originally in a laptop, taken to university and carried around between rooms and in a car for 90 minutes every day. The laptop died, but the disk still soldiers on in a USB 3 caddy. Two WD Blue disks, one 320GB and the other 500GB, both failed, even though they had a relatively care-free life compared to the Black one. One couldn't be picked up in Windows anymore, but I could very slowly image it in Linux. The other had the heads stick to the platter, while it was spun up and bring read from! I opened that and manually turned the spindle to un-stick it, and retrieved the data since the last back up. Both disks reported no issues via SMART, or were slowing down or making unusual noises - sudden failure in both cases. No issues with a Seagate 1TB 2.5" disk so far - 26,882 hours powered on and counting.
By chance, I am returning to my 2.5 inch backup drives in a video very soon. I've only had one failure -- a 2TB WD Blue that failed after barely a few 10s of hours -- a sudden failure, just like you had. I've never had a WD Black fail.
Also was known as "My Computer" in previous version of MS Windows. I personally prefer using one of the following terms; "end-user workstation" / "workstation", "desktop and / or portable computer" or even better, "terminal".
Ok so I love the videos you do, and I like the video here that I am replying to as well! BUT I have a few questions!! At around the 6:56 mark, you mentioned the "drive bay" and I can see the Infosafe name on the cartridge that you mounted the 1 tb 2.5 inch drives in!!! BUT where can I buy (and who makes) the bay part that is internally mounted in the computer case, and where can I buy the cartridges!!! Believe it or not I was one of "those fools" that bought a iOmega Jazz Drive years ago and shortly there after it dies! I wrote iOmega and complained they sent me a replacement drive unit, and within three months that one died as well! Since then I have been looking for a storage option that would allow me to just "hot swap" in drives like the port you show here, but this is the first time in all these years I have seen anything like this!! So can you please let me know where I too can get one of the ports you are inserting the Infosafe drive cartridges into and where to get the cartridges as well!! Thank you for your time!!!
thank you I will have to search around then I guess!! StarTech huh? I hadn't heard about them before!! But I will have to check eBay then maybe I can find one used!! Thank you again!!
I have more-or-less given up on USB3 external drives or docks, as I often have to fight Windoze so much to make them work, that I have settled on NAS systems. I know this is not what you are doing here, but have you or anyone else reading this, had constant problems with USB3 drives on Windoze? Flash drive are no problems, nor is any other USB device, but large USB3 drives have caused me nothing but stress when Bill keeps reporting: "This devices has malfunctions and Windows doesn't recognise it." Plug the EXACT same drive into Linux, and it picks it up every time. Same drive, same cables, SAME PC running Puppy Linux from a Live USB stick, so not a hardware issue, cos Linux on same box picks up any USB drive I throw at it. Windoze seems happy enough with mapped network drives via SAMBA in Linux, but USB3 and USB2 drives give me hell on Windows systems. Only seems to be the big drives - 4TB or larger. 8GB RAM, Windoze 8.1 64-bit.
It didn't come with any - plug-n-play, any Windoze version. I have seen this before with USB things from drives to USB-serial ports. Bill's USB handler does not seem to handle all that well with SOME things. Linux never seems to bat an eyelid at these sorts of issues - USB always works. Oh well. Does not matter. I have everything on NAS now anyway, but it is curious.
I believe that nowadays you better always choose GPT, first if you use drives more than 2TB it's a must, second as I understood only GPT drives supported by UEFI
That's interesting to see how thick that WD 2TB 2.5 drive is, almost looks to be the same thickness as a Velociraptor drive. I've got a 2.5" Seagate 2TB drive, and whilst it's not as thin as the 1TB, I definitely don't think it's as thick as the WD equivalent. Interesting how they all vary, I guess it depends on the quantity of platters.
If im not wrong, Firewire are serialized, so you can connect multiple drives together in by plugging the empty firewire to the next unit? Also, Why not use like a NAS or similar for backups? That way its always avaliable, but it will need a seperate system to run on, and you can have failure tolerance (by using RAID 5 or 6, I do not suggest using RAID 1, since its slow and you will need twice as much storage than whats actually avaliable). USB is always great to have on hands :), my projects are pretty small (and consist of code instead of video), so i only got a 32 GB Samsung.
I've answered the NAS point several times below. In short, none of my new drives are for online backup, and NAS provides no redundancy (only drive-level fault tolerance if running RAID). Drives in a NAS are also more likely to fail, as they are constantly powered. They are also in the same location. A single major power problem, flood, fire, physical accident or theft can destroy all data on a NAS unit. NAS units have many uses, but they are a means of deep or secure backup.
Ech, the mirco USB 3 cable is still so awful! I think it would've been nicer to have the StarTech enclosure use a Type C plug and then have a Type A plug to Type C and a Type C to Type C plug.
My 128GB Corsair is still working very well. It is my main on-person backup drive -- all of my video projects in production are backed up to it pretty much daily in an 80GB VeraCrypt partition, so the drive gets really hammered (frequently writing 10-20GB/day), and it has never let me down.
cjmillsnun heck tape drives are still popular for enterprise backup solutions, I think a single tape could hold 20 terabytes and they're also cheap. The issue is... well... sssssslllllllllloooooooooowwwwwwww
3. Spinning hard disk do not write quick enough for gigabit speeds to matter + a decent NAS will have 2-4 Gigabit ports that can be bonded anyway. 4. Use a cloud service to back a NAS up in case of fire, flood or theft.
I'm on UK internet and I currently have several TB backed up to Amazon services. A NAS can do this for you automatically and to a schedule that would do it incrementally at night. You also can not do anything about bit rot either.
For a long time I backed up to individual hard drives, then I set up a NAS using FreeBSD and using 6 sata drives in a RaidZ2 on ZFS and I haven't looked back (I can lose up to two drives in the pool and still maintain data integrity). That machine is also hosting a dhcp server, web server, gitlab server, dlna server and Logitech media server. You should check out a FreeNAS system, it has a lot of the same bells and whistles without as much technical difficulties. I back up my primary NAS to a second NAS, it's called paranoia. ;^}
If you need to archive large amounts of data that will last at least 10 years or more, its better to use tape (LTO). Hard drives, flash drives, etc. will suffer from bit rot after just few years of storage, so I don't trust them for long term storage. In addition, tape cartridges fairly inexpensive as well. A LTO-4 tape drive can be had for about $200 or so.
Would you make a video explaining how to do the following? I sometimes do not have internet and I want to be able to connect to my WD CloudEX2. Could you explain how to create a connection (either wireless or with Ethernet cables) from the WD Cloud to a Windows PC that is permanent? I want to access my Cloud (without internet) on a regular basis. This was the most similar video on which I could post this question. Like your channel very much. Thanks
Thanks for your kind feedback. Though I've no need for a NAS (see my pinned post here). These drives are for duplicate backups and are kept disconnected in different secure locations.
I see the new drive is fitted out with a Seagate drive, which as a brand, has been consistently unreliable. Western Digital has proven reliable, particularly the Blue series for backing up. Since this video initially talked about back up storage, it's more important to go for reliability, rather than performance, since it's assumed you would typically be pulling your data on a day to day basis, from a more local drive within the computer. It's also important to note that powering down a PC on a daily basis, or when you are finished using the computer, does reduce the drives life expectancy. My brother uses WD drives, of various ranges, depending on the computers needs, and powers down regularly. He's replaced at least 50% of all drives purchased, which fail shortly after the warranty. I myself run my PC continuously, with no down time, and have only ever, in the last 15 years replaced 1 IBM drive, and that was due to a recognised fault with the 60 and 120GB drives, which continually crashed or hung the PC. Needless to say, the drive finally failed, prompting the switch to WD drives.
There are indeed Segate drives in the Lacie Quadras. But I don't mind this as every other drive I use is WD, so I am hedging my bets. I always close down a PC overnight when it is not working, and have only ever had one drive failure in 20 years. So I don't think you can generalize that PCs left on do not have drive failures, whereas those left powered do not. Not least you have to remember that drives will park and spin down when not in use (well, unless you let Windows mess with them!), so it is only wear on the electronics that is saved, not the mechanical parts of the drives.
Several people here have asked why I have not "just purchased a NAS drive", or something to that effect. So to save my fingers typing a reply again and again, here is my answer:
1. There is some confusion here between NAS and RAID. NAS means "network attached storage" -- ie a storage unit connected via a network. Some NAS units have multiple drives configured as RAID (which I explain here: th-cam.com/video/flOhCU0sgvQ/w-d-xo.html ). But NAS does not inherently imply the use of RAID.
2. A RAID NAS unit does protect against drive failure. But it does not provide back-up redundancy. This is because any RAID NAS unit -- like any external hard drive -- can be knocked out by a single event, such as a strong power surge or PSU failure (which could fry all of the hardware), theft, a water leak, physical accident, etc. The idea that you can buy a NAS/RAID unit and via its use alone never have to worry about backup is hence flawed (see my video on the 3-2-1 rule here: th-cam.com/video/rFO6NyLIP7M/w-d-xo.html ).
3. NAS is limited to the speed of Ethernet -- currently a max of 1 gitabit, which is six times slower than available via the latest eSATA devices (such as the LaCie D2 Quadra hard drive I show here).
4. It all depends on what you want to do! :) Here I have shown hardware that I use to make deep backups -- ie backups that are kept off-line (none of these drives are ever constantly connected to a PC), with the same data backed up to multiple drives stored in multiple locations, with most kept in cases that are waterproof and shockproof (to a degree, anyway!) and far away from my PCs. I also use these drives for large (100GB+) backups taken on a fairly infrequent basis (every c.10 to 14 days). Using a NAS/RAID unit would hence provide less physical security, less electrical security (as the drives would be constantly powered), and would be slower. There are lots of good uses for a RAID NAS or a home server for file storage purposes. But for my purposes a number of external hard drives held securely in different places is a better solution.
5. I will come back to these issues in a future video! :)
I'm afraid you're mistaken about the "speed of Ethernet". There are several Ethernet standards, which can go in excess of 100Gbit. The current maximum for ethernet over copper Cat5/6/7 is 10Gbit. Although you're correct that the current consumer standard is 1Gbit.
ExplainingComputers lmao
ExplainingComputers Hey Christopher! I recently (on September, arrived on November because of issues) bought a 5TB External HDD. It costed $110 (before tax & Import Fees Deposit) during discount (from $130) It's the Seagate Expansion 5TB. It's cheap actually and I could get speeds above 100 MB/s sequential but people online could get close to 1.5 Gb/s (note I wrote Gb) on the drive. I'm not sponsored and thank God the drive is still good. And I filled more than half in less than 6 months. Genius.
ExplainingComputers Btw the server I use to watch this is in GMT +4.
WAROMLUPKFC99 Well I suggest you if you have a 2-core CPU the drive amount is 6-8 drives or 12 drives for cold storage. (6 for high speed, 8 for normal use) to have the most storage with the least power. Although buying less cores will increase the power consumption. 😕
I can remember a Data Center manager proudly showing off the one TB storage his center had, bragging it was "one of only five" in the Eastern U.S. that size (early 1990s). It was the size of two double door commercial refrigerators side by side and required special power and cooling.
Great story. How things have changed.
Our first business computer system, in about 1988 or so, had a 40 MB HD!! The supplying company proudly stated that it should be some time before we needed anything bigger. Less than 2 years later we needed an upgrade to a massive 80 MB, they were shocked! I should mention that the system ran bespoke software for our company, and when I asked what Windows was, something I found on the system by chance, they replied "don't worry about that, you don't need to use it"!!
It'd be so cool to watch that video
The IBM 3380 Direct Access Storage Device was introduced in June 1980. It uses film head technology and has a unit capacity of 2.52 gigabytes (two hard disk assemblies each with two independent actuators each accessing 630 MB within one chassis) with a data transfer rate of 3 megabytes per second. Average access time was 16 ms. Purchase price at time of introduction ranged from $81,000 to $142,200. Due to tribology problems encountered between heads and media, the first units did not ship until October, 1981.
Another hard drive story! In the mid eighties I was working in a DP area and the IBM service man was proudly showing me the latest HD he was installing. It was less then 500 meg and about the size of a carry on suitcase. What really amazed me was a glass window at one end of the drive that he explained was to watch for magnetic material accumulation as it wore off the drive signalling imminent failure !!!!
I had to double check that I was watching an up to date video. I use a Synology NAS for my centralised storage at home and I have another NAS in a different location as a off site back up. All of my periodical backs ups happen automatically. It's very slick.
This guy is hilarious. I love watching him and hearing his English expressions. I also learn a lot from him too. Good show, mate!
I'm glad you enjoy the show!
@@ExplainingComputers Good Wholesome Entertainment + Education
i learn a ton from this gentleman. Good show sir. it is always important to go back and revise the basics ..
Chris, your diction is impeccable, as always; you are a joy to listen to.
Many thanks. :)
Mr. Screw Driver is not a happy camper... upstaged by a punk Allen key yet again.
OK, top comment of today. But next week at least Mr Scissors gets a productive look in! :)
A welcome return!
3DOTNEWS This has the potential to become the nerdiest comments based soap opera ever.
Dear Chris, thank you for another awesome video. I love that small problems that you usually have (problem with box opening, wrong screwdriver etc.), that does your videos so so real.
Love the "works for everybody, doesn't work well for anybody" remark. Nailed it!
I run a security system business.
Keeping records for the work we have done is a must.
I used to have 2 2tb drives in my main tower and they were breaching capacity.
Built a storage server with 4 x 6tb drives mirrored giving us 12tb of raid storage.
No more clutter for a few years
I totally get what you are saying Mr ExplainingComputers. I am an Electronics and Computer Engineering Technologist that was in the military for 20 some years and you do exactly what needs to be done to get the maximum amount of security (I don't think they get this part too good) and amount of data backups that should be done. Users giving total control to manufacturers and programmers to do all of your backups with no intervention by the owner of the data to me is just not safe enough. I've told countless people to do some of those things to their home backup systems, but people only learn after they have failures with their no backup or first backups and then understand the need for 2nd and 3rd (Enterprise/Military) backups on various mediums and off site off line. You do great videos, NAS has its place, 3rd backups and off site off line backups have their place too.
Thanks for the Pelican idea! That is indeed better than a Tupperware container. (I guess I've only been worried about water, so far.)
Before I got the Pelican case(s) I tested lots of different Tupperware and other common plastic boxes by holding them submerged under a few inches of water. Every single one leaked water into the box! So for water protection alone, I use Pelican. :)
It's amazing how you can bring us these amazing, but high quality videos every Sunday! I really enjoy your content and always wish for more! Thank you.
Many thanks. The weekly schedule is sometimes tricky! :)
+ExplainingComputers It's really calming to watch your videos because you take time to explain things and don't rush things (for example with the ports, I'm used to stop the video because many other youtubers show them for maybe 2 seconds and skip to the next part)
I feel like I went back the 80's or something lol. Great channel.
I built a NAS/RAID box out of a disused rackmount case about 8 years ago and some odd bits here and there and stuffed it with twelve 2tb drives for a total of 20tb after RAID-5 parity. I have two 1gbt ports on this machine and can bond them for 2gbt if I needed to. Could even go faster if I wanted to work at it more, lol. But for my purposes it works out. I don't require off-site storage although honestly I should consider it.I like the little cartridge system you have set up. Could also use a simple SATA dock and use the drives bare also. (I actually have such a dock which is USB 3.0). Although the cartridges certainly offer protection of the connectors, PCB's, etc. on the drives themselves.
Yes this comment rambled a bit, lol. Anyway thanks for sharing your storage upgrades with us. Always enjoy watching your videos even if it's on a topic i'm very familiar with.
watching ur vids is extremely satisfying and informative , always love the clarity of explanation and camera work and angles
Thanks.
Always like your videos. FYI: A friend of mine has a company that makes packing boxes like shown in this video. The outside white Lacie box is cardboard (thickness of a cereal box), but the brown box container on the inside is corrugated material. You mentioned in your video you were taking the drive out of its cardboard box :) I guess if you are in the business of building boxes, you are sensitive to those kind of things. Love the videos, thanks for my weekly tech fix.
I considered the question about backup all our photos, videos and all data for archive only. After comparing current solutions, I chose the tape drive HP Storageworks HH LTO-3 (the better and faster SCSI external tape drive for this generation). The 3rd generation is now cheap (~150€ or better for 97% lifetime) if you take it on eBay, but, of course, this is not new material, so it's important to have the informations about the lifetime of the drive. I also found new cartdriges for ~20€ / 400gb uncompressed (up to 800 compressed), and a SCSI Adaptec in a HP Microserver. For sure, the first cost is higher than hard drives, but after that, this is a very solid backup, and cartdriges are strong for conservation and easy for storage. But yes, I know you used this in your company, but for the current price, this is a interesting alternative if you wish make backups for a long archive, in addition to hard drive especially if you need to load back your backup !
Anyway, this is a very informative channel, thank you for your videos !
Great video, it always amazes me how my and others storage needs continue to grow exponentially. I remember 100 mb hard drives and I used a 40 gb for a long time and it was good, and enough storage. but now in late 2018 I have 27 TB of local storage on hard drives and ssd’s and I barely feel like it’s enough...crazy how much things have changed since the 90’s.
This is so true.
6:30 its very interesting seeing 4 generations of the same product. thanks for the picture!
Having some storage with me at all times is a life-saver. I keep my 32gb sandisk cruzer blade USB along with my keys. Wery handy for my audio files that i transfer between school and home.
When you run out of storage, give the Western Digital My Book a try! These drives can reach speeds of up to 191MB/s.
Looking forward to the video you mention in point 5. Very interesting arguments. Nevertheless there are ways to use a raid NAS server as backup effectively when well protected behind a firewall , locked and connected to mains through an UPS.
This guy is the OG wealth of knowledge if he didn't exist I don't think a lot of these new yuppie YT tech shows like Linus and shit wouldn't have half the video ideas 💡
Crazy to think that not so long ago a 500GB drive was seen as massive and all the storage we will ever need. Now I'm sitting here with 6TB of drives and they are almost full :/
You should also count on a special 'fire & heat proof' safe just in case your house burns down.
I've learnt that intense heat destroys the data, not just the flames themselves.
Totally agree.
I think it's pronounced La Cie. French for The company. In my opinion, it's just Seagate trying to hind behind another brand. I just have never found Seagate to be reliable based on the experiences of friends, family and co-workers. I personally wouldn't trust them with my data, but I'm sure there are plenty of people that do.
Seems doubtful many of us who really got going in computing when 1.44 mb floppies were the cat's meow have ever run out of storage (much) since those meager days passed.
I love your videos and the way you carefully explain everything. And the unboxings are genuine (e.g. when you struggle with the packaging) - I like this realistic touch. Wish I found your channel earlier - and your second channel is also interesting. Hope to see many more videos in the future!
While I do enjoy your video on Storage Update, I personally got tired of buying all the back up drives like your LaCie unit and the empty enclosures as well, and I went directly to a USB 2.0 interface Hard Drive Docking Station, that allows me to plug in SATA hard drives directly into it, and can handle up to 2 terabyte hard drives that I store in Hard Drive storage boxes (I buy from China) on my desk! In fact my data storage used to be a number of self made Hard Drive Enclosures, which I still have a few kicking about, but I don't use them much anymore after I amassed as many as 30 units all with 320 GB IDE hard drives in them, even though they too connect via a USB 2.0 connection as well! So in short my "solution" now is the 8 2 terabyte hard drives I use now as I stated, and I simple buy a new hard drive, stick it in the dock, initialize it and move on with my life without all the added money spent on empty enclosures! For me GoHardDrive On eBay out of California has the best prices on SATA 2 terabyte hard drives at around $45 to $60 and I have bought all my hard drives from them recently as well, as most of the time those drives are brand new and they are "enterprise" class hard drives as well! But still you do have a great video and I do enjoy watching your channel often enough as well!
Love your videos i would love to see a video comparing brands of HDD's and models as well so us as consumers know what is most reliable as well as what is the most bang for our buck :-)
It just wouldn't be Sunday morning without Explaining Computers!! :)
Thanks.
great video ... i used a 500gb drive in a NDAS(network direct attached storage ) for years ... this has the advantage of simply showing up in windows as a local disk unlike NAS which requires a bit more tinkering .... however NDAS drives have become impossible to buy and now i simply use a 1tb external drive attached directly to my router and mapped using windows ( to appear on all computers on the network ) .. the advantage with this is not only can i see the files using windows map network drive but can also access them on my android devices using "es file explorer " ..... network storage can be troublesome if your a content creator and require massive network storage but for the general pc home user like myself its much easier than you think .... keep up the good work mate
Should call this video "Explaining Cardboard Boxes".
nice An explainingcomputers just before my birthday :)
Happy Birthday! :)
hello
As he said "just before" I guess it isn't his birthday yet and in some countries it's considered bad luck to get congratulations early. Well done guys, now his harddrives will fail all at once, a ram error corrupts all the data on his SSD and for good measure his steam account will get hacked.
The Lacie is a great drive, used to use them when i was involved in film making. Although very overpriced imho.
But be aware, despite them looking very rugged, we had a failure after one was knocked over, i recommend not using the stand!
still more ports than the latest macbook!
I love this video. Can't wait to see the 1TB flash drive video in 3 years.
I gues you did not find 1TB flash drive.
Did you ?
I just got my first 4 TB 2.5 inch laptop drive the other day... Needless to say, I was very surprised when I took the enclosure apart to find such a chunky drive... It's a Western Digital Passport btw... In Yellow, lol... Thought it would be easier to keep track of in my truck since I like to keep a copy of my entire network with me in the truck while I'm out on the road...Kinds sucks right now though... I don't have a PC with USB 3.0 or 3.1... I'm using a 2014 model Dell Inspiron 3542 running an Intel Celeron dual core @1.4 GHz... I don't have to say that ~21 MB per second over a USB 2.0 connection is too slow when you're shifting TERABYTES of information... It's been running for around 18 hours now... It's moved about 800 GB so far, with 985 GB left to go, and that's just one section of one drive.
4TB 2.5" is amazing! :) Note that your 2014 Dell should be able to be fitted with a PCIe to USB 3.0 expansion card . . .
Great Video .. as always :-) and also your comments are great and they show you professional skills. .. Thumbs Up.. As I work in the Computer Industrie myself (as a Desktop Support Engineer) I knew how important proper backups are . :-) Greetings from Germany
I was very surprised to see a 15mm blue drive. I've only really been seeing the 15mm drives in SAS format in recent years. I used to see them a lot more in the 90s and used to have a 2GB seagate IDE drive that was 2.5mm x 15mm from an old laptop.
Windows 10 right click on start, one of the options is disk management. Though I normally do windows key plus r and type in "diskmgmt.msc" as I'm a certified geek.
Hey Chris, your videos are good. You are doing a good work ! You deserve more subscribers 👍🤘
Thanks. :)
And the drive you unboxed in this video was the first USB 3.0 Lacie D2 Quadra hard drive you have ever owned!
:)
I have a old PowerMac G4 which is stuffed with storage which i use as NAS for storage of most my files, I also have a small WD Elements 2TB USB drive which I think is great and it's very small considering it's storage size which I use for complete image backups. Good video, interesting watching about storage I think anyway.
Nicely done. Good pick of parts.
Huh I didn't know 2.5 inch drives come in different thicknesses. Thanks for mentioning it. :-)
Congrats! I too get very excited over new storage. Looks very nice!
Also i might add, Samsung does offer a 2TB 2.5" 9.5mm drive. I have been using a set for about a year now and they indeed very handy drives.
www.seagate.com/www-content/support-content/samsung/internal-products/spinpoint-m-series/en-us/samsung-m9t-internal-ds.pdf
you were able to still get samsung branded spinpoint hdds just a year ago? Their hardware division was bought by seagate around 2009 or so.
Yes you are correct. They are sold under the Seagate brand now. But the actual label on the disk still says Samsung Spinpoint, and mine a mare late 2015. I guess they are still manufactured by Samsung maybe?
I have a PC with just *one* hard drive. After 5 months, only used 500 GB out of my 2 TB hard drive (most of it is from games) which came with my PC. I also had a Atom laptop (now I have Lubuntu installed) which had 320 GB, and only used 40 GB on Windows 10.
There is a nice firmware update for those drives originally limited to 2 TB. I've just use it on one of mine and it now supports a 5 TB. The firmware dates back to 2011 but the one on my drive it was from 2008.
This is extremely useful info for me. I will certainly check it out! Thanks.
@@ExplainingComputers Glad I could contribute to your wonderful videos!
oldschool Lacie.. i remember getting these regularly back at the shop for being faulty..
I built my own home server with 4x 4TB in RAID10 last month. Still working on external and cloud backups.
That is a nice RAID array. :)
Nice Work
Is that a Fujitsu siemens machine your'e working on ?
Thanks for showing how to format a drive without the 'format' option in Windows 10!!
Each to their own solution for data protection! But remember nothing lasts forever!
I can't believe how many times you were asked about NAS, especially considering the specific efforts you made to explain it. Makes me want to scream READ THE POST! You're a man of great patience Sir. 😇
I will go and lie down in dark place now . . .
To think my dads first harddrive was 40 megs and it was as big as a document scanner. Bought it in the late 80s.
Anything not on two devices isn't backed up!
I totally agree! :) Not something understood in all of these comments I'm afraid . . .
Well i have some Data on 1 Rasp NAS,...
on a USB Portable HDD,...
That Turns itself off,...
I think i might get another one
It would be nice if you could show us how you organize your backup structure with that nice charts and diagrams you usually use fr other things. I know you have several computers doing diferent kind of stuff, and now you show several drives, how will you orginize all of that?I.e. the 5 tb new drve,, will be connected to what computer? Will them be turned on all the time or are you having any dfrive poower control circuit? and when the backup will run? This kind of rules are quite complicated for me to create, and I finally end relying in Deja-dup for a day to day backup. Thanks!
What a great idea for a video! Noted with thanks. In answer to your last question, none of these drives are constantly powered or connected to any PC. All live in different locations well away from computers, and are connected and powered about once a fortnight.
This seems very complicated!
Apart from my NAS (which holds the primary copy of all things), I've standardised on the 2.5 inch WD Passport drives for all backups. The 4TB versions are USB3, and the volume they sell of these means they're actually cheaper than getting a bare drive and making your own.
Great Video.
And as one who also opens many boxes weekly, thanks for the Laughs.
I'm always interested in storage and how folks go about it. At this juncture you must have accumulated many drives and I'm curious as to how you manage old drives. I generally repurpose/consolidate drives and data, wipe drives to military grade specs to donate or sell.
I however, still have many drives, including drives with every OS I've ever had. I enjoy on occasion having a go with windows 95, the 24 year evolution is quite stunning. I store my drives in my dads old gun safe in the cellar, of all places. It's a two-tone behemoth and allegedly fire proof, but rest assured, I'm a firm believer in your 3-2-1 backup regimen 😁
Interestingly, I use the same StarTech drive caddy as you, I hate plastic...something about metals durability 👍
Like you, I generally re-purpose -- moving up to larger and larger units, copying data across (which also protect against data fade). But I keep the old, working HDDs. :)
Thank you for replying! You are quite gracious to take time to respond! Your videos are marvelously easy to follow and understand, I'm working my way through all of them and learning! You are a natural teacher! Thanks again 😊
Thanks for the video!!! Can SSDs be used for back up instead of HDDs?
It's been 3 years now, would love to see an update :-)
Good video idea, noted.
@@ExplainingComputers Chris, how about setting up a server/Nas for your home system?
@@stevelee838 I've done various NAS videos here fairly recently, but have no personal use for a NAS. Without upgrading everything to 10 gigabit Ethernet, backing up -- let alone editing -- ProRes video over a network is a non-starter. And no NAS is a credible single backup solution -- it can only ever constitute one element of 3-2-1. So I'll be sticking to multiple offline drives (on site and offsite) connected as required for deep backup, as this gives me the fastest and most robust solution. For videos and other stuff in production, I use a mix of on-machine scratch drives and external SSDs for backup (no file ever hits the edit line before I have three copies on three drives with a least one offline). Maybe I should make a video about all this! :)
@@ExplainingComputers Thanks for the detailed reply Chris, wish I had a fellow geek friend like you living near me, it would be very "wild" to explore all this "exciting" Computer Technology :D
I have several WD drives myself for my two Linux Machines and I used the old WD drive that was in my Acer Aspire One 725 as backup storage with an enclosure. Yes I bought the same netbook you did only I used it to install Arch Linux.
Yes but an old archiving system used Data8 tapes and a Data8 drive which would fit into the system unit like a DVD/RW drive would have been a good system to use,Morten Hojarth uses a Lenovo Data server system for storage and uses ESXI as the OS.
More storage than i will ever need!
Thanks for another great video Chris. Your strategy for backing up large video files seems quite sound indeed. I wonder if you could tell us the effect of size differences between videos created on 32 bit machines, versus the newer 64 bit windows machines? Possibly not very significant, but wanted ask. Thanks.
Thanks for this. 32 v 64 bit Windows (and other software) has no impact on the size of video files produced.
Almost 200 000 subscribers, good luck!
Hi Chris,
I am a great fan of your channel, and look forward to the release of each new video.
This one on storage, has me particularly interested. However, it was not what you talked about in the video, but rather, what you didn't talk about, cloud storage.
I am particularly intrigued that someone as knowledgeable as you in the area of IT, still; apparently, has a preference for storing your data on physical devices that you control. Given your "day job" as Futurist, I presume that you have given much thought to the subject of storage, and the cloud, so I assume that your decision is based on an analysis of the risks of entrusting your data storage to the cloud, rather than just adopting an, "I've always done it this way", approach.
I work for myself as a consultant, and entrust my data, including my clients data storage to the cloud. Perhaps I shouldn't?
I would be really interested in your thoughts.
Regards
Neville
Thanks for your positive feedback on the channel. On cloud, I personally store a lot of data in online -- eg all of my word processor documents, DTP files, presentations, and so on. I also do all of my writing in Google Docs, and wrote one of the first books on cloud computing back in 2010. So I am a big fan of cloud. :)
However, at least with the infrastructure currently available in the UK, cloud backup is not an option when working with (pro) video. I regularly backup tens and sometimes hundreds of GB of files in one go. And I need to temporarily backup even more data -- for example last weekend I captured about 500GB of ProRes working data that needed short-term backup. And at several hours a GB upload, this cannot be backed up to the cloud in the UK. I also sometimes plug in a "backup" drive and access a video file directly from it. And, like many video producers (this is very much part of the day job!), I sometimes need to take a drive with video files on it to a facilities house -- and sometimes to leave it there a few days -- so have to have a number of high capacity drives around.
So certainly I think it is a good idea to backup to the cloud where possible. But the drives I included in this video are part -- and only part -- of a video production infrastructure.
More broadly, posting this video has made me think seriously about ever doing another video looking at my own hardware (the whole NAS discussion here was most unexpected -- see my pinned comment at the top). This video was in no way presented as "this is how and why I backup and generally manage data -- there is nothing in it about that process. And there is no suggestion here that the hardware that I have bought is what would be most suitable for others. Rather, I simply bought some new drives and thought "hey, this may make a video!". But some people -- and I don't mean you! -- have raced in to judge my whole production pipeline based on no knowledge of it whatsoever, and that has been quite a shock. :(
See that you thought lacie just made swiss cheese ! As bevis would i need some NAS 4 my Nads .Lets Raid the Frig !
Good evening, Chris. This appeared in my recommendations several years late!
Just curious, how are your WD 2.5" drives holding up? I have a 320GB Black from 2009, originally in a laptop, taken to university and carried around between rooms and in a car for 90 minutes every day. The laptop died, but the disk still soldiers on in a USB 3 caddy.
Two WD Blue disks, one 320GB and the other 500GB, both failed, even though they had a relatively care-free life compared to the Black one. One couldn't be picked up in Windows anymore, but I could very slowly image it in Linux. The other had the heads stick to the platter, while it was spun up and bring read from! I opened that and manually turned the spindle to un-stick it, and retrieved the data since the last back up.
Both disks reported no issues via SMART, or were slowing down or making unusual noises - sudden failure in both cases.
No issues with a Seagate 1TB 2.5" disk so far - 26,882 hours powered on and counting.
By chance, I am returning to my 2.5 inch backup drives in a video very soon. I've only had one failure -- a 2TB WD Blue that failed after barely a few 10s of hours -- a sudden failure, just like you had. I've never had a WD Black fail.
Good idea to use cartridges :-D I thought we left them in the C64 cupboards ;-)
13:17 "Computer" is also called "This PC" in Windows 8 and 8.1
Ah yes, true!
It's actually called "Computer" in Windows 8 and "This PC" in Windows 8.1
Also was known as "My Computer" in previous version of MS Windows.
I personally prefer using one of the following terms; "end-user workstation" / "workstation", "desktop and / or portable computer" or even better, "terminal".
Ok so I love the videos you do, and I like the video here that I am replying to as well! BUT I have a few questions!! At around the 6:56 mark, you mentioned the "drive bay" and I can see the Infosafe name on the cartridge that you mounted the 1 tb 2.5 inch drives in!!! BUT where can I buy (and who makes) the bay part that is internally mounted in the computer case, and where can I buy the cartridges!!!
Believe it or not I was one of "those fools" that bought a iOmega Jazz Drive years ago and shortly there after it dies! I wrote iOmega and complained they sent me a replacement drive unit, and within three months that one died as well! Since then I have been looking for a storage option that would allow me to just "hot swap" in drives like the port you show here, but this is the first time in all these years I have seen anything like this!! So can you please let me know where I too can get one of the ports you are inserting the Infosafe drive cartridges into and where to get the cartridges as well!! Thank you for your time!!!
It is a StarTech product, but right now their webstie appears to be down, so I cannot provide a link.
thank you I will have to search around then I guess!! StarTech huh? I hadn't heard about them before!! But I will have to check eBay then maybe I can find one used!! Thank you again!!
Where and how can I get an old, new or refurbished 5-1/4 inch floppy disk drive that works?
I have more-or-less given up on USB3 external drives or docks, as I often have to fight Windoze so much to make them work, that I have settled on NAS systems. I know this is not what you are doing here, but have you or anyone else reading this, had constant problems with USB3 drives on Windoze? Flash drive are no problems, nor is any other USB device, but large USB3 drives have caused me nothing but stress when Bill keeps reporting: "This devices has malfunctions and Windows doesn't recognise it." Plug the EXACT same drive into Linux, and it picks it up every time. Same drive, same cables, SAME PC running Puppy Linux from a Live USB stick, so not a hardware issue, cos Linux on same box picks up any USB drive I throw at it. Windoze seems happy enough with mapped network drives via SAMBA in Linux, but USB3 and USB2 drives give me hell on Windows systems. Only seems to be the big drives - 4TB or larger. 8GB RAM, Windoze 8.1 64-bit.
VauxhallViva1975 you sure the drive doesn't just require a special driver?
It didn't come with any - plug-n-play, any Windoze version. I have seen this before with USB things from drives to USB-serial ports. Bill's USB handler does not seem to handle all that well with SOME things. Linux never seems to bat an eyelid at these sorts of issues - USB always works. Oh well. Does not matter. I have everything on NAS now anyway, but it is curious.
I really enjoy your videos, sir. Makes me happy. :)
I'm glad to hear they make you happy. :)
Conveniently, I also ran out of storage space on the same day.
I believe that nowadays you better always choose GPT, first if you use drives more than 2TB it's a must, second as I understood only GPT drives supported by UEFI
That's interesting to see how thick that WD 2TB 2.5 drive is, almost looks to be the same thickness as a Velociraptor drive. I've got a 2.5" Seagate 2TB drive, and whilst it's not as thin as the 1TB, I definitely don't think it's as thick as the WD equivalent. Interesting how they all vary, I guess it depends on the quantity of platters.
Mr Barnatt, if you ever come to the US and visit Las Vegas, I'd love to treat you to a good dinner.
If im not wrong, Firewire are serialized, so you can connect multiple drives together in by plugging the empty firewire to the next unit?
Also, Why not use like a NAS or similar for backups? That way its always avaliable, but it will need a seperate system to run on, and you can have failure tolerance (by using RAID 5 or 6, I do not suggest using RAID 1, since its slow and you will need twice as much storage than whats actually avaliable).
USB is always great to have on hands :), my projects are pretty small (and consist of code instead of video), so i only got a 32 GB Samsung.
I've answered the NAS point several times below. In short, none of my new drives are for online backup, and NAS provides no redundancy (only drive-level fault tolerance if running RAID). Drives in a NAS are also more likely to fail, as they are constantly powered. They are also in the same location. A single major power problem, flood, fire, physical accident or theft can destroy all data on a NAS unit. NAS units have many uses, but they are a means of deep or secure backup.
PS: yes, you can chain firewire drives. :)
mad as a bag of frogs I love your videos
I'm really surprised you didn'y say Allen the key
Ech, the mirco USB 3 cable is still so awful! I think it would've been nicer to have the StarTech enclosure use a Type C plug and then have a Type A plug to Type C and a Type C to Type C plug.
Heard about some problems with Corsair Voyage 64Gb GTR failing a lot, how is your 128Gb GT holding?
My 128GB Corsair is still working very well. It is my main on-person backup drive -- all of my video projects in production are backed up to it pretty much daily in an 80GB VeraCrypt partition, so the drive gets really hammered (frequently writing 10-20GB/day), and it has never let me down.
Who says mechanical drives are dying? I certainly don't think so.
Mechanical drives will be around for some years yet. They make ideal backup storage.
cjmillsnun heck tape drives are still popular for enterprise backup solutions, I think a single tape could hold 20 terabytes and they're also cheap. The issue is... well... sssssslllllllllloooooooooowwwwwwww
Hi, nice video as always, thanks for it :) One thing on my mind - why do you have 11.9GB of unallocated space on your main drive?
Are you referring to the unallocated space on a system drive SSD? If so, it is to improve the life and performance of the drive.
0:50 No you didn't Christopher, you said something like "F*#@sticks!"
Yes, this is indeed correct! :O
Fiddlesticks, H.E double hockey sticks.
3. Spinning hard disk do not write quick enough for gigabit speeds to matter + a decent NAS will have 2-4 Gigabit ports that can be bonded anyway.
4. Use a cloud service to back a NAS up in case of fire, flood or theft.
Backing up hundreds of GB in a go over the web is not an option on a UK Internet connection I'm afraid.
I'm on UK internet and I currently have several TB backed up to Amazon services. A NAS can do this for you automatically and to a schedule that would do it incrementally at night. You also can not do anything about bit rot either.
For a long time I backed up to individual hard drives, then I set up a NAS using FreeBSD and using 6 sata drives in a RaidZ2 on ZFS and I haven't looked back (I can lose up to two drives in the pool and still maintain data integrity). That machine is also hosting a dhcp server, web server, gitlab server, dlna server and Logitech media server. You should check out a FreeNAS system, it has a lot of the same bells and whistles without as much technical difficulties. I back up my primary NAS to a second NAS, it's called paranoia. ;^}
If you need to archive large amounts of data that will last at least 10 years or more, its better to use tape (LTO). Hard drives, flash drives, etc. will suffer from bit rot after just few years of storage, so I don't trust them for long term storage. In addition, tape cartridges fairly inexpensive as well. A LTO-4 tape drive can be had for about $200 or so.
Would you make a video explaining how to do the following? I sometimes do not have internet and I want to be able to connect to my WD CloudEX2. Could you explain how to create a connection (either wireless or with Ethernet cables) from the WD Cloud to a Windows PC that is permanent? I want to access my Cloud (without internet) on a regular basis. This was the most similar video on which I could post this question. Like your channel very much. Thanks
Makes me wonder why nobody has come up with a reasonably priced tape backup system that gets decent capacity.....
Thanks’ Chris, your videos are always interesting.
I have an advice, check Synology NAS, I'm sure you will be enthusiast.
Thanks for your kind feedback. Though I've no need for a NAS (see my pinned post here). These drives are for duplicate backups and are kept disconnected in different secure locations.
I see the new drive is fitted out with a Seagate drive, which as a brand, has been consistently unreliable. Western Digital has proven reliable, particularly the Blue series for backing up. Since this video initially talked about back up storage, it's more important to go for reliability, rather than performance, since it's assumed you would typically be pulling your data on a day to day basis, from a more local drive within the computer.
It's also important to note that powering down a PC on a daily basis, or when you are finished using the computer, does reduce the drives life expectancy. My brother uses WD drives, of various ranges, depending on the computers needs, and powers down regularly. He's replaced at least 50% of all drives purchased, which fail shortly after the warranty. I myself run my PC continuously, with no down time, and have only ever, in the last 15 years replaced 1 IBM drive, and that was due to a recognised fault with the 60 and 120GB drives, which continually crashed or hung the PC. Needless to say, the drive finally failed, prompting the switch to WD drives.
There are indeed Segate drives in the Lacie Quadras. But I don't mind this as every other drive I use is WD, so I am hedging my bets. I always close down a PC overnight when it is not working, and have only ever had one drive failure in 20 years. So I don't think you can generalize that PCs left on do not have drive failures, whereas those left powered do not. Not least you have to remember that drives will park and spin down when not in use (well, unless you let Windows mess with them!), so it is only wear on the electronics that is saved, not the mechanical parts of the drives.
Once you go black, you never go back. I've had a profusion of 2.5" wd blues and greens die :-)
Great video as always
The hard disk failed in my active directory domain server and it was a pain without it. Wish I had backups on it