Portable HD for Archive Purposes

[bob52]

Hi

I know there are so many Portabe USB Hard drives out there, I'm just looking for a usb powered HD to store family Movies and Photos on so that i can put the HD away in storage (for years) and keep it for Archive purposes and maybe add more movies and photos from time-to-time.

So to me storage space and speed and connectivity not that important just the Drive Realibility

I'm not sure but do certain cheap HD decay after a certain few years just like DVD Dye

Youre recommendations highly appreciated

I live in the UK

Bob

[jman98]

There aren't that many different hard drive manufacturers. My feeling is that they're all pretty much the same, yet every time this question gets asked we get posts like "Only buy brand X. Every single time I've used brand Y the disk failed within a year of use." followed by someone who will report the exact opposite experience.

I've got drives that still work that are in storage that date from about 10 years ago. So yes, what you propose can be done.

I do NOT recommend that you use non-powered enclosures. I only buy and use enclosures that have their own power supplies. This eliminates the problem of "Why won't my disk work?" when it's connected to some USB port that can't provide enough power. Note that this has nothing to do with whatever drive you buy, but it's good practice.

I don't currently recommend using drives above 2 TB in size. The larger drives sometimes have issues because basically their larger size required some patches to get Windows to recognize them and some PCs/devices will have problems if they lack those patches. I'm sure this will change in the future, but that's how it is now.

You might consider replacing such a drive every 5 or so years just to be on the safe side. And note that if you make it in NTFS format that you'll have some issues with some cheap devices like DVD players not be able to recognize the file system. But any Windows system from Win 2000 on up will understand the drive.

[sanlyn]

I'd recommended external drive enclosures, but with their own power adapters and built-in cooling fans. Here is a link to such a unit sold in the U.S., but I saw them in stores in the UK when I visited a couple years back: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173042 . More heavy-duty units are sold, but that would be overkill for your purposes.

In case you're wondering, is it worth it to pay extra for external power + cooling? The answer is a definite yes.

Meanwhile you can always find smaller, more portable USB drives and flash drives for those occasions when you just want to carry about a few samples of your collection. Carrying your entire USB archive about town and country in the form of big USB-powered portables is a great way to damage the drive and lose your collection permanently.

[jman98]

I have an enclosure very similar to what sanlyn recommends and I second his recommendation for this type of enclosure.

[smrpix]

If it's really going on a shelf, another option is a bare drive and a usb->sata adapter. If you're going to be accessing it frequently, the enclosure is certainly the way to go.

[AlanHK]

For "USB powered" you limit yourself to laptop size 2.5" drives. 3.5" need a separate power supply.

But power supplies are cheap and generic, so while USB powered drives are quick and simple to use, 3.5" size is cheaper for the same number of GB and probably more durable.

[Seeker47]

I think the advice offered by jman98 and sanlyn has a lot of merit. (And I also have a collection of enclosures-with-power+fan like this, although Rosewill has not been one of my favored brands . . . . ) That said, these things are simply too large for certain uses. I've recently purchased a few of these

http://www.frys-electronics-ads.com/ads/2013/02/22/60959/Western-Digital-1TB-My-Passpo...ble-Hard-Drive

(but in the 2 Tb size) when they were on sale. (The most recent one I purchased was $99.) What you can do with these that is much harder to do with the full-size enclosures is put them in a safe-deposit box, for off-site storage. These get shuttled in and out, as updates occur. Because ALL HDDs these days seem to have disturbing failure rates, compared to those from several years ago -- at least, if you give any credence to the user reviews at NewEgg and other such places -- I am trying to counter this with redundancy. The most important backups should be on more than one HDD, in more than one place. (I would even consider adding high-capacity flash drives and XL BR discs to the mix, if their cost-per-gig wasn't so out of line.)

At the same time, I have to wonder what happens if one of these small, self-powered USB HDDs fails ? Try to open up the case, and do what . . . ? However, it could well be that the HDD inside could only go for very expensive data-recovery service, just like a failed one inside your Rosewill or other brand self-assembled, full-size powered and cooled enclosure would have to. So, I keep coming back to that redundancy thing.

[bob52]

Many thanks for your input

I did have a awful expirence with a mains powered USB drive back in 2003. I had brought a 3.5" enclousure which had both Firewire and USB 2 transfer modes, Also i had brought a Segate 120GB HD to put in it. I was using the USB connection when all of a sudden i could'nt access the pictures or movies, the files were there but i got a error saying drive not ready, i tryed several PCs and got the same problem

In the end i had to use a Recovery Program which took 24hr to go through my HD it did recover nearly 80% of files, BUT they had all been re-named in numbers and the file association were gone so all those nicely named folders and files (80GB worth) were all over the place

It took me 3 months to go through each file to change it back to jpg or doc, avi Very annoying

But then i used the FireWire connection. never had a problem since then


I was worried now because the drive in nearly 10 years old Its problerly on it last legs, and needs replacing (need more storage space)

I was'nt sure if this problem still existed with Mains Powered USB Drives and if Bus Powered Drives were more reliable


So either


New 3.5" Enclosure (2003 enclosure is IDE), but it must have FireWire option as well i would rather use that connection for mains powered use. can you get the good 3.5" SATA Enclousre with FireWire Output

Any SATA 3.5" HD recommendations (OLD HD 120gb is IDE)

I only have USB 2 Ports on my PCs


or


A Bus Powered 2.5" USB one with both USB or FireWire (with HD already in it)

Bob

[smrpix]

Firewire is available, but it's fast disappearing on both drives and computers. I wouldn't bet the future on it.

Mains power is more reliable than bus power.

You might want to look into something like a WD My Book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Essential-External-Desktop-Drive/dp/B0047VOGOO/ref=sr_1_1...2857111&sr=8-1

With the provisos from jman's earlier post (#2), they've worked very well for me.

[hello_hello]

Buy a USB3 drive. It'll be a lot faster when you have a PC with USB3 ports and USB3 is backwards compatible with USB2.

As long as a hard drive case has adequate ventilation there's no need for a case with a fan. Convection cooling is plenty. There's probably PCs by the millions sold with a single hard drive and no case fan... just a fan in the power supply.

It might be changing now that USB3 is becoming more commonplace, but while the speed of USB2 was the limiting factor, most/many manufacturers of external drives use their "green" drives in their enclosures. They spin a little slower and run a lot cooler to begin with, so they definitely don't need external cooling if they're well enough ventilated.

Plus it doesn't sound like you're going to be using the drive for hours at a time, just transferring files to it and putting it back in storage. I've got quite a few "internal" drives sitting on my desk which I run by placing them in hard drive docks and they don't get particularly hot without a fan, although most of them are "green" drives.

Heat and hard drives is a bit of a myth anyway. Google released a study they carried out on their own drives a few years ago and concluded average operating temperature and failure rate have no correlation (until they ran exceptionally hot on average, over 55 degrees). Once the drives were over 5 years old, the failure rate for the hotter drives was marginally higher, but conversely the failure rate for drives running at cooler temperatures was actually marginally higher for the first few years of the drive's life. And Google studied drives which no doubt were running 24/7.

Hard drive longevity is just luck of the draw, but if a hard drive is going to fail it'll probably do so very quickly, otherwise it'll last for years even if it's used regularly (unless you drop it). Five years ago I bought a whole bunch of hard drives over a short period of time. Samsung drives, two models of WD and two models of Seagate. Two of the Seagate drives died within weeks (same model). The rest are still going strong running in PCs which are on a minimum of 12 hours per day.

The warmest drive I own is a Hitachi 2TB model which has no fan as it sits on my desk connected to a PC via eSATA. It's an older 5 platter drive so it runs hotter than average. I've never seen it get belew 40 degrees and it'll run at 50 degrees or more on a hot day. It's been running like that 24/7 for over two years (currently it's sitting on 45 degrees because I have the air conditioner on).

Solid state drives are the way of the future. No moving parts, so they don't suffer from the same failure problems. They're still smaller and more expensive than mechanical drives, but they are available. http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A3015429011
It depends on how much data you'll be storing. I keep everything on two mechanic drives, just to be safe.