Backing up files

[didikai]

You guys that have large collections of DVDs games etc. What system do you use to safegaurd the files. What I mean is, if you only have 1 copy of your files on hard drove, and the drive fails and you lose all the files, do you have a backup plan? I'm currently copying all my DVDs from disk to hard drive. Just have too many disks taking up too much room.

[Bjs]

Backups to mirrored drive setup ... in case one packs in

You have to define what is actually being backed up

Pc game cd/dvd's include protection scheme's of various degree's ... you can find out more at this link on the subject ... choose a mirror and go from there.

Consoles need to be modified to play backups

[jman98]

Your current method is really not unreasonable if you will remove the duplicate hard drives from your computer after they are updated and store them elsewhere. Hard drive sizes are pretty big now. I don't at this time recommend anything bigger than 2 TB unless you have good technical skills and are able to potentially deal with problems with larger drives. Maybe you could fit several of your current drives on one 2 TB drive. For speed I'd recommend either using SATA III or USB 3.0 connections. If you use one of those you might find the transfer rate to be fast enough that it's not too painful to just duplicate everything between drives.

Bjs' suggestion is quite reasonable about mirrored drives. However, do note the following.
1) The mirrored drives need to be the same size or the size of the smallest will be used and any bigger drives will have wasted space.
2) If you buy and install the mirrored drives at the same time and they're from the same manufacturer, it's rare but not impossible for both drives to fail at the same time, destroying the contents of both of them. Connecting them through different physical I/O channels on the motherboard can mitigate this somewhat.
3) This is also rare but I have seen a mirrored drive get severely corrupted to the point that it was useless and hardware mirroring made a perfect mirrored copy to the other drive, thus giving you 2 completely useless drives that had to be completely reinstalled.

Personally I have found it much safer although more time consuming to simply make backup copies to drives that I then remove and store. If it's not drawing power theoretically it should be safe.

[Bjs]

This is not a "mirrored array" ... just a set of disks which have enough capacity for requirements.

Raids do not need to have matched drives, there's about 5 types in general use ... popular type when creating a raid array setup is to use un-partitioned hd's and let the setup determine ... expect to default to the smallest hd in the set.

[TBoneit]

My backup plan is copy to hard drive and store the DVDs out of the way.

[didikai]

My backup plan is copy to hard drive and store the DVDs out of the way.

That's my problem, I have no room to store hundreds of disks

[TBoneit]

My backup plan is copy to hard drive and store the DVDs out of the way.

Going beyond that and play from a media player rather than the computer.

Plus with hard drive prices going up due to flooding in Thailand.

Western Digital says loss of 60% of production.

Lenovo is saying "while also increasing our product costs at a time of widespread shortages. And is also saying we currently expect shortages to last into the first calendar quarter of 2012."

400 discs can be stored in a space approx. 6" by 12" by 16" once you remove the cases and only store the bare discs.I'm guessing at the height of a 100pc spindle right now.

Or shrink the amount of discs by burning onto BluRay 25 or 50Gig discs. You can probably get 3 movies onto one BluRay in original quality.

[dragonkeeper]

Plus with hard drive prices going up .
Lenovo is saying "while also increasing our product costs at a time of widespread shortages. And is also saying we currently expect shortages to last into the first calendar quarter of 2012."

Hope the strategy works for them I for one will not be buying any Hard drives until the prices come back down. It's getting to the point where its cheaper to back up to DVD. The 1TB drives are now as expensive as the 2TB drives were, a short while ago.

I was looking in to buying 10 hard drives to build a freenas server, but was put off by the prices.

[TBoneit]

I don't think it is a strategy with Lenovo. More like they are admitting and forewarning wholesalers and dealers that there are disruptions coming.

The Price increases you have seen are a perfect example of "The law of supply and demand" When the supply goes down the price goes up until the increased price reduces demand to the point where supply is good at that price and equilibrium is reached.

Withe WD losing 60% of production if nothing else had happened prices would have risen. However other drive makers also had production from Thailand and my Understanding is that 50% of drive spindle motor production is lost.

It is going to be a bumpy ride for a while. The one good news is that I may be able sell some older computers when people see the prices on new ones have risen.

[TBoneit]

Probably cheaper to back up to BluRay. get 3 uncompressed DVDs on one disc and save storage space.

Off brand @$19.99, Vinpower Digital 25GB 4X BD-R White Inkjet Printable 25 Packs Spindle Disc

Verbatim 25GB 6X BD-R 10 Packs Disc for $20.99
Or Verbatim 25GB 6X BD-R 25 Packs Disc Model 97457$44.99


The Verbatim is what I use, I just wait til a sale.

[handyguy]

New HD's come with software that backs things up as you write them to your HD, & it's automatic. Try Seagate Freeagent.

OS backup is another thing, if you restore your original disks you have to do 3,457 Windoz updates ....

[dragonkeeper]

I don't think it is a strategy with Lenovo. More like they are admitting and forewarning wholesalers and dealers that there are disruptions coming.

Yeah I understand the whole thing of supply and demand, but in my case i was planing to buy 10 hard drives to set up my freeNas server. Once I had everything up and running to my satisfaction I was going to buy another 10 drives to create another freenas server as my offsite back-up. That's a sell of 20 drives lost i could see a 5-10 percent increase but i think the current increases are along the lines of 30 percent or more, potentially there will be further increases down the road.

When the eathquakes hit Japan computer system sells hit a record low. Now this didn't hurt the manufacures of RAM chips at all because there are many other devices apart from computers that use their product virtually every electronic device in existence use some sort of ram chip. Hard drives are different there are not as many avenues to sell their product, the computer indusrty is the major consumer of hard drives if computer sells falter so do hard drive sells.

[fritzi93]

Wow, I didn't know about the hard drive price increases until reading this thread. It must have been in the past three weeks, no earlier than that.

I just priced a Seagate 1 TB hard drive I ordered 3 weeks ago from Newegg for $54.99 and right now it's $139.99.

I got in under the wire, apparently.

[TBoneit]

Wow, I didn't know about the hard drive price increases until reading this thread. It must have been in the past three weeks, no earlier than that.

I just priced a Seagate 1 TB hard drive I ordered 3 weeks ago from Newegg for $54.99 and right now it's $139.99.

I got in under the wire, apparently.

Sales on hard drives have disappeared from what I've seen. You got lucky.

I don't think it is a strategy with Lenovo. More like they are admitting and forewarning wholesalers and dealers that there are disruptions coming.

Yeah I understand the whole thing of supply and demand, but in my case i was planing to buy 10 hard drives to set up my freeNas server. Once I had everything up and running to my satisfaction I was going to buy another 10 drives to create another freenas server as my offsite back-up. That's a sell of 20 drives lost i could see a 5-10 percent increase but i think the current increases are along the lines of 30 percent or more, potentially there will be further increases down the road.

When the earthquakes hit Japan computer system sells hit a record low. Now this didn't hurt the manufacures of RAM chips at all because there are many other devices apart from computers that use their product virtually every electronic device in existence use some sort of ram chip. Hard drives are different there are not as many avenues to sell their product, the computer industry is the major consumer of hard drives if computer sells falter so do hard drive sells.

a. Since the supply is now lower than the demand for the product I do not think they'll miss your 20 drives.
b. What you do not buy will be snapped up by others that have to have it now. Not to mention that sooner or later you will buy. Most likely when the supply is good and prices have dropped.

The ones that will have a loss of business are for example
Drive enclosure makers including NAS's.
DVR makers.
I use a DVD recorder that has a hard drive in it. If I wanted to add to it or replace it, prices will be going up.
Media players that include a hard drive
Computers of course, Home, Business and servers.
Computer repairs when it is the hard drive that is bad.
Surveillance systems
and more

[dragonkeeper]

a. Since the supply is now lower than the demand for the product I do not think they'll miss your 20 drives.

I think you missed my point here I decided not to buy based on price, I'm sure many others will do the same. This will trickle over to computer market as well during the holiday season people are trying to stretch there dollars to buy more and are already researching checking prices on big ticket gifts. Someone who priced a laptop several weeks ago is gonna be hard pressed to justify spending $100 more on the laptop at least I would be so I'm sure there are others.

The ones that will have a loss of business are for example
Computers of course, Home, Business and servers.
and more

Agreed, this is my point demand will drop sharply
I work in IT, at which is one of the largest consumer of laptop and PC, servers etc. I refuse to be gouged on price, I've already canceled several major projects that were due to begin this quarter. And changed several process, it no longer cheaper to replace a hard drive with a larger hard drive, than it is to defrag and clean up the current drive in a laptop or PC. I'll admit we were wasteful in the past, if some one ran out of space on thier hd we simply cloned their drive on to a larger drive, and put their old drive on a shelf where it sat until was destroyed. The amount of hard drives , PC, laptops servers, etc we will purchasing over the next several months has gone down by 90%.

I'm sure the remaining stock of hard drives will sell well. But the strategies I have put in place to save money during this trying time, will become status quo. Hard drive manufactures have increased their prices to avoid losses, but in the long term they will loose millions in sells to my company. We're only one of many but it only takes a few to affect the landscape of things to come. Once hard drive production returns to what it once was there is the distinct possibility that demand will not.

[handyguy]

Best Buy has a USB 3.0 2T external for $89, free shipping. Just have to shop around.

[TBoneit]

I'm sure that rising prices will affect Christmas buying on things with hard drives. Too bad for the economy.

I suspect that demand will go back up once prices drop.

Too much multimedia stuff eating up drive space.

It is good that in your location you can change your processes and cancel things. Others may not be so fortunate

If your old server needs to be replaced it needs it. If a hard drive dies you need to replace it or do without the equipment.

DVRs are becoming more and more a non luxury item and wanted. I see people on the satellite forums that have 5 or more DVRs and if one dies they'll want the same to replace it.

I know I would hate to do without and would cut other things if needed rather than go back to a Non-DVR for my TV watching, especially since that is the only I can watch the shows I do watch. They all seem to run at the same time and then the rest of the night is full of dreck.

[dragonkeeper]

The current prices of hard drives have put my plans to build a NAS on hold. For the time being i'm the cheap route, backing up to DVD and BD. I currently have 6 TB of storage with about 1.75 TB of space free. The only thing going on the hard drives now is TV record to the media center. I'm currently adding over a 100GB of data a month so i have about year to go before I'm forced to buy a hard drive baring failure of one of my current disk.
What are the rest of you doing for back ups now there is a shortage of hard drives and prices have doubled?

[fritzi93]

I suppose I'll continue backing up to BD25 and burning to disc, along with making BD9 backups for storage on my HTPC. I had been moving towards just doing BD25s, meaning more storage would be necessary, but hadn't got to the point of seriously planning for network attached storage.

Just as well to wait awhile though. My wife asked me why I needed to build a new computer; when I said the new one can encode AVC at more than 80 fps (fastest settings)...well, you can imagine it didn't make much of an impression.

[TBoneit]

The current prices of hard drives have put my plans to build a NAS on hold. For the time being i'm the cheap route, backing up to DVD and BD. I currently have 6 TB of storage with about 1.75 TB of space free. The only thing going on the hard drives now is TV record to the media center. I'm currently adding over a 100GB of data a month so i have about year to go before I'm forced to buy a hard drive baring failure of one of my current disk.
What are the rest of you doing for back ups now there is a shortage of hard drives and prices have doubled?

Some things are going to Verbatim HTL 25Gb BluRay discs as well as external drives for data I'd hate to have go away.

When I need to I'll pull out one the externals I stocked up ahead on when they were on sale. I tend to buy ahead since there is never a sale when you need one. I have my laptop and desktop boot SSDs backed up just in case....

Hopefully they won't go bad since the firmware update. Intel 320 series SSDs. This past weekend I backed up my brothers Intel SSD to a Smaller Samsung SSD, tested it and then did the firmware update. That was the last one left to do. All backup SSD drives were bought ahead when they were on sale. You never know. And no I'm not rich I'm just cautious.

Plus the external drive is easy to open and I could use the 3Tb SATA drive as a internal if need be. That is based on user reviews of that model. If hard drive stay high for a year I'll worry. Plus I've stopped backing up as much junk as I used to. In fact I'm shredding old DVDs & CDs that are not needed, saving space.

Cheers