Most stable / solid external hard drive? internal fans help ;)

[MoreDents]

External hard drives last much longer if there's an internal fan but companies do not include a fan because it's too noisy! What gives?!

I'm looking for a SOLID & STABLE hard drive (about 500GB) for backing up data. I'm a digital artist and my files are my life

Any recommendations? Would the only way to have a fan in my external hard drive is to build my own?

Thanks

 

[xxan0xx]

Have you thought about backing up to Amazon S3 ??

Completely Silent for one and if you are an artist it would give you a perfect base to create a dynamic collection of your artwork using Wordpress. Aside from that it's dirt cheap, scalable storage.

 

[DonDon]

External hard drives last much longer if there's an internal fan but companies do not include a fan because it's too noisy! What gives?!

I'm looking for a SOLID & STABLE hard drive (about 500GB) for backing up data. I'm a digital artist and my files are my life

Any recommendations? Would the only way to have a fan in my external hard drive is to build my own?

Thanks

If this data is important to you, then you should have a minimum of 2 backup drives, and alternate which one you use to do the current backup to. That way you are NOT overwriting your last good backup with your current backup.

The most common time to find problems with a hard drive is when you go to do a backup. That is normally the only time when you read all of your data. If you are in the middle of backing up a file and hit a read error, then you just trashed your last good copy of the file if you only have 1 backup drive.

A single drive in an aluminum enclosure is plenty cool. Besides, if it is a backup drive, you only want to have it connected and running while you are doing the backup. Otherwise, it should be disconnected and stored in a safe place, at least a little removed from the original data. I would think that if this data is important to you you could cough up $50 bux for a fire safe to store your backups in in case of a fire or other catastrophe.

Hard drives these days are pretty much a commodity item. Any info you get on these forums would be based on too small a dataset for real statistical integrity. If you stick with one of the name brand drive manufacturers, you will be fine. I personally like Seagate, but I also own WD drives.

My own personal backup strategy for my important data, photos, music, and documents, involves a Raid 5 NAS, a RAID1 backup NAS. I also backup the RAID 1 NAS to 2 external USB drives. Whenever I download new photos, I also make a quick backup of the NAS to the scratch drive on my main rig. So at any time, I can have as many as 6 copies of my most important data. While I admit that I am a little more anal than most about this, it is only because I am in the electronics repair industry, and have seen more than my share of failed backups in the past.

Don

 

[MoreDents]

xxan0xx
Amazon's service sounds nice but I have GB's of data and uploading it through the internet sounds slow

DonDon
Electronics repair. Sounds interesting!

I'll just stick with Seagate or WD.

Ideally, I want a Lacie just because of their awesome designs but I don't know how solid and stable they are. (they don't have the reputation of Seagate and WD)