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  1. Originally Posted by smitbret View Post
    If your house burns down...
    OK, a thing or two needs to be said regarding the potential of losing your backups in the event your house burns down since this a repeating refrain (pun intended).

    There are three forms of damage that can occur in a fire: heat, water, and smoke/soot. If your backups are in the vicinity of where the fire starts then they are toast because they will be destroyed by all three: heat, water, and smoke/soot. If your backups are somewhere else then they run the risk of being destroyed by water and smoke/soot. However, you can mitigate this risk by storing your backups in airtight containers like a sealable plastic bag. In almost all cases, no matter what the backup type (hdd, optical media, tape), it will survive the fire just fine especially if kept in a small fireproof safe.

    So while keeping offsite copies of backups is best practice, there are some simple things that can be done as well.
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  2. Originally Posted by gll99 View Post
    The best you can hope for is anecdotal evidence.

    I had an Hitachi 1TB internal drive that crapped out in less than a year.

    I have a number of Seagate internal drives, not counting the smaller ones which are 500 MB and under, they are:
    one 3TB (on xp using the Seagate DiscWizard to split and install),
    two 2TB,
    two 1.5TB.
    All of the above are problem free.

    I also own 5 external (USB portable) Seagate drives, two 2TB Expansion drives (1 is USB 2.0 and the other 3.0) and three 3TB Backup Plus (USB 3.0).

    2 days ago I lost 1 of the 3TB Backup Plus drives. The computer was on but inactive and the drive was powered and connected to a usb 3.0 port. I had another same type drive connected at the same time but that one is ok. What happened is that I touched the casing of the drives and noticed that one was super hot while the other was cool to the touch. I turned on the monitor and saw that the hot drive was not accessible. Even after a cool down period the drive was not visible by Windows. Using a Seagate tool the drive showed up as "unknown" but then it also didn't show at all when I retried it. The base which contains the usb and power connectors easily pops off these drives so i switched them to see if the problem was that but it still failed to be seen. I tried the base from the drive that failed with a spare sata drive and the enclosure base worked fine with that drive. The problem is obviously the drive itself. I'm not in a rush but my next step will be to open the drive enclosure itself and try the failed 3TB drive internally or with a Nexstar usb 3.0 connector I bought to test internal drives on a usb port. I have a feeling the high heat fried the drive circuitry.

    These drives are poorly ventilated to begin with (no fan) but even so something caused the heat to build up like that. The only thing that could have caused activity when I wasn't using the pc would be a virus scan but I find it hard to think that would cause this problem. There must have been a component that stuck or shorted out yet the base seems to work fine with other drives at the moment in short tests. I have very low expectations that I can revive this drive.

    BTW) Before someone asks or comments: At various times I tend to leave the usb drives connected for long periods of time as needed, sometimes weeks at a time 24/7. While in use, all are left in an open space with plenty of air space around and above the drive. The heat was self induced and not due to external sources since both drives were roughly 2 feet apart on a tabletop.
    With that many drives (I counted 10), I would say it was just a matter of time before one failed. and there is little you could of done about it.

    The big question now is how long before the next one fails of the remaining nine drives?
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  3. Member PuzZLeR's Avatar
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    Oct 2006
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    Originally Posted by SameSelf View Post
    Originally Posted by smitbret View Post
    If your house burns down...
    OK, a thing or two needs to be said regarding the potential of losing your backups in the event your house burns down since this a repeating refrain (pun intended).

    There are three forms of damage that can occur in a fire: heat, water, and smoke/soot. If your backups are in the vicinity of where the fire starts then they are toast because they will be destroyed by all three: heat, water, and smoke/soot. If your backups are somewhere else then they run the risk of being destroyed by water and smoke/soot. However, you can mitigate this risk by storing your backups in airtight containers like a sealable plastic bag. In almost all cases, no matter what the backup type (hdd, optical media, tape), it will survive the fire just fine especially if kept in a small fireproof safe.

    So while keeping offsite copies of backups is best practice, there are some simple things that can be done as well.
    Great advice for backups. Yes, keeping them in a solid safe (and some security in place to hinder any movement that could knock it around) is great advice for even larger disasers, like even tsunamis or alien invasions.

    But keeping offsite copies of backups is even better practice for another reason. Theft is another form of data loss.
    I hate VHS. I always did.
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  4. Originally Posted by PuzZLeR View Post
    Great advice for backups. Yes, keeping them in a solid safe (and some security in place to hinder any movement that could knock it around) is great advice for even larger disasers, like even tsunamis or alien invasions.

    But keeping offsite copies of backups is even better practice for another reason. Theft is another form of data loss.
    I would never discourage anyone from keeping offsite copies of their data. But what people rarely do is seriously audit their onsite data storage practices. Many people are under the false assumption that they are doing a great job onsite, and sadly that is just not the case. Onsite storage is potentially more important because offsite storage rarely is implemented at the level that truly protects 100% of the data. When a hard drive fails, it seems that the data that was generated just yesterday is suddenly the most important.
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  5. Hi I got Seagate expansion plus their backup drive, Toshiba, WD new and old drives in all about twenty plus drives of various manufactures some I had problems with but it was mostly heat related. I like Toshiba the most.
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