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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Very juicy HDD capacities....
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9483 |
You can now buy 20TB HDD's in the Western Digital Red series. An amazing amount of storage in ONE drive..... They sell for about one-grand each in those capacities. For the purposes of UNPOWERED BACKUP, what are the members thoughts on using such high-capacity drives? I have everything backed up in multiple drives of other capacities, so I am NOT wanting to rely on this ONE drive to save me, I am just looking at using something like this to compile ALL of my media into one drive. AGAIN - this would effectively be a 2nd-level backup of what I already have backed up on other off-line HDD's. It just allows me to keep EVERYTHING on ONE drive, if you see what I am getting at - and if it happened to fail, I have other backups on other drives etc, that I can recover from. These HDD sizes you can get now, are somewhat frightening(to me) with their capacity vs what you COULD lose, if this was the only drive you had, and it failed.....  This is NOT the case for me, more thinking of long-term archive then anything else. A well kept HDD, always seems to be accessible - even 20 years later etc. That has been my experience, anyway. I can still access 20GB Seagate drives from the 90's.... Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| matherp Guru  Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 10064 |
I've just built a TrueNAS server for my backup. I've used 6 8TB SAS drives in RAID 6 to give 32TB usable AND immunity against any 2 drives failing. I bought the drives second hand and paid an average of about USD80 each. 12Gbs SAS controllers are available cheap and because TrueNAS does the raid work with the CPU are not a critical to the operation. I'm using an old PC as the chassis with 32GB RAM and a I5-9400 processor. This is working wonderfully and with the raid 6 redundancy I'm much more confident than I would be with a single drive even if new. And my total price is way less than your single drive |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7499 |
Far better to be selective in what you keep and just delete the rubbish you don't need than buy bigger and bigger drives. ;) Spinning rust HDD is probably the most secure backup you can get. SSD is probably some of the worst. The problem with spinning rust is that as capacity increases tolerances in all areas become tighter. At some point that means that reliability starts to fall. Personally I'd prefer a RAID array of three 3TB drives to a single 10TB drive for exactly this reason, even if there was no redundancy. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2398 |
to what extent is the future readability of your data dependent upon the TrueNAS software remaining available on future hardware, future versions of said software being compatible with the version used to initially write your data, and a working and compatible SAS controller being available in the future? not wishing to be negative, but past experience is that the only way to safely store data long-term is multiple copies widely distributed that are updated to current storage mediums every few years. cheers, rob :-) |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 10064 |
Runs a version of Linux so unless that disappears.... |
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| ville56 Senior Member  Joined: 08/06/2022 Location: AustriaPosts: 217 |
After over 40 years as an IT professional I'm convinced that there are no frightening disk sizes, there are only frightening operations concepts. We always had the problem of backing up the data we had and a waterproof operations plan had to be established. You define the probability of a data loss and you define the cost (money and reputation) you have with the loss and the cost for backup. There is a big playing field and for the home user the situation has not changed much in the last 10+ years. Big magnetic disks can be backed up on similar disks or tapes, optical units are out. It's up to you to define the number of generations, using snapshots, the physical place to store backups, .... it's all a tradeoff between probability of data loss and cost/effort. And a RAID is not a backup, Ransomware can encrypt it as well. A good concept is always your friend.... Gerald 73 de OE1HGA, Gerald |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3309 |
Don't know if that's the only way, but it is my way. PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2394 |
I've had a Kingston 250GB ssd working then next time not appear, (rpi 400 twister os). I never had a hdd fail, the 2TB hdd I bought in Maplin store still works, it's full of films and startrek spinoff series. |
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Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3269 |
A few gotchas that have tripped me up in the past: - With huge backups it takes forever to copy or rearrange the data. I had a backup system (20GB) fail and it took many days of downtime to copy the data to a fresh set of drives. - With a NAS I'm not sure that a drive failure is the most important thing to worry about. My NAS has been running for over 10 years with no drive failures but, at one point, the NAS power supply died trashing the whole backup with no recovery options. - With instant backup you can have instantly corrupted backups. I once had a drive controller go crazy and scribble rubbish over a drive which was then instantly copied to the backup making it useless. Geoff Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7499 |
Oh yes - your backup drive (and you need more than one in rotation) needs to be unplugged from the computer after a backup. It's also handy to test the backup by recovering it onto a different (effectively sacrificial) PC. Backups do get mangled. The trouble is you can spend so much time keeping a good backup system going that you haven't enough time to do anything else. :) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 527 |
The problem with all of these solutions is that they all "might" deteriorate over time. The only sensible answer is of course mylar tape (like paper tape - but plastic). You'll only need (scribbles out quick calculation) 54,000 Km to store 20 Terabytes. |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7499 |
Oh, is that all? I'll get an order in to RS.... Drat, their punch tape machine is out of stock. They didn't do a USB3 one anyway. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 527 |
I'm laughing at your comment.... but there is also that little itch in the back of my brain thinking - we SHOULD build a USB compatible punch tape reader/writer for a laugh! I'm sure I'm not the only one.  Edited 2025-03-09 06:14 by PeteCotton |
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phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2415 |
There is another option. A few decades ago (Win95 era) I found some punched paper tape from a few decades before that I had made on a DEC PDP8e. No memory of what was on them so wrote a OCR program (in YABasic) to read scanned images of the tapes. As you can only scan a bit at a time the program de-skewed the images, read the data, found the short overlap at each end and stitched them together. Doing all the scanning was tedious. One limitation of any on-site backup is it relies on the site continuing to exist. The tapes computers and backup drives disappeared on Black Saturday. Edited 2025-03-09 06:57 by phil99 |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3309 |
Once upon a time I was able to read punched tape. I was a proofreader for a very early automated printing shop (printing things such as the barbed wire hobbyist magazine and technical training documents for the navy). It was easier to make corrections if you could read the tape. Corrections were made with a machine which had both a reader and a puncher. You would run the tape up to where the correction needed to be made, with a copy being made all the while, type the correction, and then continue the copying. You could also splice in a correction. Most of it was narrative, though--I'm sure I couldn't have read a program--and I didn't even have any idea what a computer program was. PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7499 |
EBCDIC is the ideal language for revealing the hole truth... ;) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2946 |
Hi All, I am NOT saying my setup is foolproof but I will throw my 2c into the ring. This is my setup. My PC has a 1TB NVME drive, 2TB internal HDD and 5TB USB3 drive. I have 2 x NAS boxes sitting on a shelf, one with 6 drives the other 4 drives (all 3TB drives) in RAID 5 so one drive failing is recoverable. Firstly, I do regular IMAGE backups of the NVME drive on a monthly(ish) basis, just checked my last backup was 15-Jan-2025 so it is overdue. This way I always have a drop in replacement system drive that will boot (tested several times that it does indeed work). I use Paragon Hard disk manager 17. On top of that I copy any important data that I dont wish to lose onto the internal 2TB, USB 5TB and both NAS boxes. Not infallible as if the house burns down I have to rely on what Onedrive decided to backup to the cloud and what Norton360 decided to save, however, in that eventuality my data would be the least of my problems. I am now in my later half of my 60s so my data isnt life critical like it used to be. I have had many HDD fail in my time, most were Seagate so I only use WD HDD drives now. I have also had one 250GB SSD die suddenly with no warning, caused a lot of angst. I suffered a 2TB drive failure (software corruption as the drive was recoverable after I reformatted and tested it) about 3 or 4 years ago and learned my lesson. Regards, Mick (the Big One) PS. I have twice had a drive fail in my RAID boxes (both the same NAS unit and the same drive position) and a RAID re-build takes a long time (From memory 3 days to rebuild). The NAS is still usable but horrendously slow during a re-build. . Edited 2025-03-09 12:10 by bigmik Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9483 |
Crikey - that was more replies then I thought I would get!   I like the idea of a tape-backup, but last time I looked, tape-drives were INCREDIBLY expensive. Perhaps they have come down in price a little, but tape is still a magnetic medium - I would have thought that magnetic HDD's would be more robust then tape would be long-term. That might simply be false-logic.... The problem with my ever-growing NAS size, is that 99.9% of it is all video and TV shows, movies and other stuff like that, so downsizing on it is not REALLY an option, cos I have somewhat random desires for what I want to watch on the projector on any given evening.  Pruning some stuff off the server, would be the stuff I would want to watch next - I can see it happening. And also, I guess, being mostly a mediaplayer NAS, it just keeps growing relentlessly.  Perhaps I should be looking at some kind of RAID setup these daze though..... Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1395 |
Over the years just about every desktop comptuer I've had has a failed HD and the latest one was my current PC which is only 3 years old  Before that one the desktop i got from Radio Rentals had the HD fail which plainly failed to allow win7 to install so went with linux for close to a decade before that HS failed. Also my old laptop HD failed and got the same treatment with win7 so that has linux on too.Now back in the Dick Smith days I bought an external HD USB2 too so when I do remember my data goes on that and touch wood it is still going. Now when I finally got to use win 10 it's in it's final throws and looking at win 11 at the work computers does make one wonder is it even worth it. |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7499 |
I decided to try to keep things in perspective: I'm not a business so I have no income that depends on my data. I have some family photos that couldn't be replaced, but I'm not a terribly sentimental sort. My MP3/FLAC collection could probably, over time, be rebuilt. I have CDs and records anyway. And Spotify. As my wife has no interest in my musical tastes she won't want that collection! I don't bother with movies, we still have quite a few DVDs that I don't watch. So, photos and music really. It's nice to keep my PCB designs but they are hardly critical. Anything else is probably pretty transitory at my age anyway. :) It really is surprising at how much stuff I used to keep to rebuild my system in case of calamity. However, almost all stuff that passes through (or stays in!) the downloads directory just sits there, getting more and more out of date. No point in keeping it unless it's something that's cost a fair amount of money. One of my pet annoyances is that Windows doesn't remove all traces of installed software that I've tested and deleted. There is almost always a directory or two lurking and taking up space. I don't want it - that's why I removed it - is it that difficult? Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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