Looking for reliable external storage + backup solution

[NleahciM]

Hi - I've been a laptop user for many years and I've struggled with one thing: storage.

Hard drives don't seem to like me - they typically last about a year around me. Maybe two if I'm lucky. I always need an external hard drive for my laptop as the internals just aren't big enough - but they just don't last.

So - this is what I'm looking for:

1TB+ storage accessible via USB
Backup solution for that
Maybe another backup solution for that

My first thought is to get some sort of an enclosure that mirrors the hard drives - so I'd have two 1TB hard drives in an enclosure and if one died I'd just put in a new one.

But my only concern about that is that if somehow the data on both got corrupted (ie Windows freaks out, lose power in the middle of writing to the hard drive, etc.) that then I'd be screwed again. So I wonder if I need some sort of additional system - maybe even a third hard drive that I backup everything to periodically.

Any suggestions for how to do this without totally going broke?

 

[drescherjm]

But my only concern about that is that if somehow the data on both got corrupted (ie Windows freaks out, lose power in the middle of writing to the hard drive, etc.) that then I'd be screwed again.

This is a very important concern. A raid (any raid level) is not a backup for many reasons. In addition to corruption that you mention there are quite a few others: virus, accidental or deliberate deletion, power surge, theft, natural disaster ...

I would consider getting a larger disk in your laptop if you can get away with less than 2TB. And then buy 2 externals and backup your laptop each week alternating externals or consider using a cloud backup service.

 

[NleahciM]

This is a very important concern. A raid (any raid level) is not a backup for many reasons. In addition to corruption that you mention there are quite a few others: virus, accidental or deliberate deletion, power surge, theft, natural disaster ...

I would consider getting a larger disk in your laptop if you can get away with less than 2TB. And then buy 2 externals and backup your laptop each week alternating externals or consider using a cloud backup service.

Ah - a virus is also a really good point.

I'm working on buying a new laptop right now but it'll be an ultralight with an SSD. Not the ideal place for large amounts of data!

I don't want to do cloud storage as I don't have an awesome Internet connection so it could be frustrating. Plus there is a lot of personal stuff that I want to backup and I don't like the idea of that stuff being sent through the Internets and residing on some server somewhere that could potentially get hacked... I do understand that cloud storage is a great way of doing backups - it just scares me

 

[uOpt]

USB sucks, too. If you want reliability it's not really a long-term option.

You could go E-SATA but to be honest I'd just slam together a ZFS backed computer on Ethernet. Then you have snapshots and you will be able to recover from corruption.