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External Drive Help

Hi All,

I had a surprise yesterday when my external drive - a Western Digital 1TB My Passport suddenly refused to recognise certain of my music folders (high-res and DSD downloads). I also received an error message - cyclic redundance check. Fortunately after running tools and check disk, the drive started working again and I re-imported the missing music files in JRiver.

This external drive is connected to my Baetis Server and plays music (mainly CDs ripped to FLAC using DB Poweramp) through the JRiver software. However, I am also starting to download more music over the web and this issue got me thinking as to how I might improve my back up system as these downloads have no physical media back up like a CD.

Currently as per Baetis` recommendations, I rip music to a separate external drive on my laptop using DB Poweramp or I download directly from websites like HD Tracks - in each case this music is transferred to My Passport External Drive. In addition, every time I download new music I manually copy across these files to a Seagate 4TB back-up hard drive.

Do you think I could be doing anything better in terms of handling files? I suspect it becomes a matter of how much redundancy I am prepared to pay for but interested to hear from people with more experience. It would also be great to be able to configure the Seagate back-up drive to copy certain files automatically from the My Passport drive but not sure this is possible.

Thanks in advance

James
vicks7
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
I agree with Michael's comments re Western Digital, and about the inevitability of drive failure. I would put it that backup strategies should be based on the assumption that any drive can fail at any time.

Regarding online backups, though, a point to keep in mind is that if and when it ever becomes necessary to download all of the online data, the time required may be very unreasonable. For example, downloading 2 terabytes of data on a 100 mbps internet connection, and assuming that the server at the other end can supply data at that rate (a big "if"), and assuming that the internet and ISP servers in between also do not limit that rate (another big "if"), would require around 56 hours of non-stop downloading. A 15 mbps connection would increase that to around 373 hours!

Regards,
-- Al
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kr4
3,677 posts
 
I do not know if you can take the warning against WD drives generally. I use WD Red 4T drives and they are rated well, 2nd only to the Hitachi drives in their category (SMB/SOHO/consumer). So far, none have failed me but, of course, nothing lasts forever.

I still use the Baetis and I am having it upgraded to XR3.
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
P.S. to my previous post: To be sure it's clear, when I said that "I agree with Michael's comments re Western Digital," I was agreeing with Michael/Sufentanil's statement that he "disagrees with the blanket statement that WD are unreliable."

I've used many WD drives over the years, with no failures at all in the last dozen or so years. Some of those drives have close to 60,000 hours on them.

Also, re the comment about speed, based on measurements I've performed on the WD drives I've purchased, all of which are either 7,200 or 10,000 rpm, those drives (at least) are certainly not slouches!

Regards,
-- Al
chadlesko
94 posts
 
Recently I got into the digital arena of music, being mostly a vinyl listener.

For storage I have a Netgear ReadyNAS 102 connected to a switch at my stereo. This resides in the basement at the opposite end of the house from my backup. Backup is connected via USB to my router (the 102 is wired from the same router). It isn't an option to have backup via WiFi because there are too many users in the family. The router is on the first floor of may house at the opposite end. Therefore my NAS and it's backup are as far apart as possible and connected to the same LAN.

The only fear that remains is a whole house fire. I think of that as rather slim possibility, but possible. For somewhat foolproof backup I am considering a second ReadyNAS 102 to reside at an offsite location (work). Some of the latest NAS units have easy to setup software to encrypt data and talk to one another over the internet.

This is not an ad for Netgear...I just like the same brand equipment since the software tends to speak with one voice. However, I made one crucial error...only important to my setup, which is that the latest ReadyNAS software doesn't work with Minimserver software that I would like to employ. I've learned to work around it but not what I intended to do (personal problem...not related to this topic).

My biggest point is to keep it simple and determine what you think is realistic. I like a twin disk NAS with 1 backup in a remote location.
rlwainwright
1,904 posts
 
Al made a VERY good point about "cloud" backup - it is abysmally slow for large data transfers. This is not an issue if you simply need to restore a few files or a small folder. But once you start looking at multi-GB restores, cloud backups are, IMHO, just about worthless...

-RW-
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