We have experienced a high failure rate on SSD installed in touch panel PC's.
They are fast but I'm not sure the reliability is there yet.
They are fast but I'm not sure the reliability is there yet.
Hi,
SSD's are just coming around. Most manufacturers warranty them for 3 years. To be honest a lot of hard drives which should be a solid technology get bad reviews for dying too so I'm not sure they are that much better. Probably just not made that well as they should be.
If you need lots of storage (since your asking for an external drive), you likely won't be looking at a SSD anyway.
Backup is the name of the game. I use imaging software to backup all my systems partitions and I synchronize these images to a pair of external hard drives that one is always kept off site at the bank. If your data is important, back it up! RAID 1 is great to protect from a drive failure, but if a nasty virus or trojan comes along and deletes your data and you aren't able to undelete it, you can still lose data on a fault tolerant raid.
Good luck,
Alan
SSD's are just coming around. Most manufacturers warranty them for 3 years. To be honest a lot of hard drives which should be a solid technology get bad reviews for dying too so I'm not sure they are that much better. Probably just not made that well as they should be.
If you need lots of storage (since your asking for an external drive), you likely won't be looking at a SSD anyway.
Backup is the name of the game. I use imaging software to backup all my systems partitions and I synchronize these images to a pair of external hard drives that one is always kept off site at the bank. If your data is important, back it up! RAID 1 is great to protect from a drive failure, but if a nasty virus or trojan comes along and deletes your data and you aren't able to undelete it, you can still lose data on a fault tolerant raid.
Good luck,
Alan
DVD-Rs have a very brief shelf life
If you're choosing to go away from RAID or network storage and are set on external hard drives...
I have several 500GB WD MyPassport drives that I use constantly for several different purposes (1 boot drive, 1 tool drive, 1 PS3 media storage, and 2 others for random personal uses (mp3s, images, documents)) and all of them have treated me right. A couple of them are about 2 years old. My newest one is even smaller than the older generation models, which were small enough already.
They're small and easily transportable, don't require much formatting or technical know-how (except the boot drive), and have no need for their own external power source. I've got one blank one that I think I'm going to take the most important stuff from each drive and back up to those, in case of any failures, but so far all are good to go.
I have several 500GB WD MyPassport drives that I use constantly for several different purposes (1 boot drive, 1 tool drive, 1 PS3 media storage, and 2 others for random personal uses (mp3s, images, documents)) and all of them have treated me right. A couple of them are about 2 years old. My newest one is even smaller than the older generation models, which were small enough already.
They're small and easily transportable, don't require much formatting or technical know-how (except the boot drive), and have no need for their own external power source. I've got one blank one that I think I'm going to take the most important stuff from each drive and back up to those, in case of any failures, but so far all are good to go.
My vote is raid 5 @ home with off-site back-up of the most important data. I typically run a 4 disk array in raid 5 on a basic server set-up. I use Western Digital hard-drives, but I am in full agreement with everyone about the personal opinion part. Server is connected to my wifi I have my printer set up as a network printer from the server too. I can access any and all data and also print remotely. Very convenient.
If you need to protect data, go with a NAS. If you really want to protect it, go with a NAS and one additional copy that you keep off-site. Even better than that get 2 off-site units and rotate between them. The off-site aspect protects your data against a single point of failure like your NAS enclosure, house fire, etc.
Decide for yourself how valuable and irreplaceable the data is, because hard drives and storage solutions are at an all time low in terms of $$ per GB of storage.
All hard drives will eventually fail, they are a mechanical item with moving pieces, they all will fail. No one manufacturer is any more dominant than others in terms of service life, and they all have some lemons that fail sooner than you would expect.
Determine what your data is worth to you, and how much would you be willing to spend to not have to re-create it. Then buy enough protection to make that happen.
Personally I keep my data in a Buffalo NAS with 4x 1TB drives in RAID5. I get about 3TB of usable space, and can lose any 1 drive without losing data. I can share this data to any computer on my home network, and stream media to an Xbox. Computers themselves are just OS and programs that can all be re-installed. If something needs to be portable, I have options from thumbdrives, DVD-R, and portable hard drives depending on the size, but those are all short term solutions, not long term storage.
Decide for yourself how valuable and irreplaceable the data is, because hard drives and storage solutions are at an all time low in terms of $$ per GB of storage.
All hard drives will eventually fail, they are a mechanical item with moving pieces, they all will fail. No one manufacturer is any more dominant than others in terms of service life, and they all have some lemons that fail sooner than you would expect.
Determine what your data is worth to you, and how much would you be willing to spend to not have to re-create it. Then buy enough protection to make that happen.
Personally I keep my data in a Buffalo NAS with 4x 1TB drives in RAID5. I get about 3TB of usable space, and can lose any 1 drive without losing data. I can share this data to any computer on my home network, and stream media to an Xbox. Computers themselves are just OS and programs that can all be re-installed. If something needs to be portable, I have options from thumbdrives, DVD-R, and portable hard drives depending on the size, but those are all short term solutions, not long term storage.
As stated before, all HDD's will eventually fail. There is no need to jump to server-class drives, especially if you are looking for USB attached and they won't be powered/spinning all of the time. From a $/MB perspective, 2 of any SATA drives will be relatively cheap, so any enclosure that supports some form of RAID will be an effective solution.
IF you are keeping copies on your local HDD and only using this for backup you could get by with a single HDD; you still meet the 2 drive minimum. If you are looking for off-pc storage for all master data then you need a 2-drive platform for optimum reliability.
Key consideration; very few of us can claim to be backup ninja's, so if you can find a NAS to pair with an automated differential backup app you'll be sleeping more peacefully. I have all of my Macs backing up to a Time Capsule hourly with Time Machine simply because it wouldn't get done otherwise. As stated before, this meets the 2-drive minimum with the additional security of having the Time Capsule safely locked away.
IF you are keeping copies on your local HDD and only using this for backup you could get by with a single HDD; you still meet the 2 drive minimum. If you are looking for off-pc storage for all master data then you need a 2-drive platform for optimum reliability.
Key consideration; very few of us can claim to be backup ninja's, so if you can find a NAS to pair with an automated differential backup app you'll be sleeping more peacefully. I have all of my Macs backing up to a Time Capsule hourly with Time Machine simply because it wouldn't get done otherwise. As stated before, this meets the 2-drive minimum with the additional security of having the Time Capsule safely locked away.
I'm sure he could do a lot more with $30,000 than set up 3ea SANs and fiber links to his offsite colocation.
D'oh, you're right, I got work stuff mixed up with home stuff. Darn acronyms. For personal items, a small 2-4 drive NAS is plenty, and more than most people need.
