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Remote harddrive question

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peterk123

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For you tech savvy guys, I need your help. I have all of my photos in google photos and much of my documents in google drive. I would like to remove all of it completely and control the storage. Would an external drive that I can just hook up to my laptop be the way to go, or would you recommend something else? Thx Pete
 
Sure, there are some downsides with the USB style drives. Or go more along the lines of building your own infrastructure that will also protect the data. There are some threads around here somewhere. This is one:

www.northeastshooters.com

Home NAS server

I looking to set up a personal NAS server. I want to be able to back up photos from IOS, access documents from IOS and PC. I also want it to run PLEX and probably download/seed .tor At least 2 bays so it can back itself up. I’d like to control it from an IOS app but can also do it from a...
www.northeastshooters.com www.northeastshooters.com
 
vicorjh said:
Sure, there are some downsides with the USB style drives. Or go more along the lines of building your own infrastructure that will also protect the data. There are some threads around here somewhere. This is one:

www.northeastshooters.com

Home NAS server

I looking to set up a personal NAS server. I want to be able to back up photos from IOS, access documents from IOS and PC. I also want it to run PLEX and probably download/seed .tor At least 2 bays so it can back itself up. I’d like to control it from an IOS app but can also do it from a...
www.northeastshooters.com www.northeastshooters.com
Click to expand...
I tried to read through that. You guys lost me after the first sentence :)
 
peterk123 said:
Is there a way to set it up so you have two of them and a file is automatically saved to both?
Click to expand...

What is your intent?

If you are mostly worried about redundancy, go with a NAS set-up and set-up a RAID. Like RAID 1 or 10. Folk can help you with that.

If you are looking to duplicate/sync files so that you can transport a copy, then you'd probably have some software to install depending on your OS.
 
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peterk123 said:
Is there a way to set it up so you have two of them and a file is automatically saved to both?
Click to expand...
Yes, lots of home NAS devices allow for RAID setup. But keep in mind, that duplicates viruses too if you ever got one. If you will be making lots of changes to the data frequently, then yes a RAID setup can be good. But consider having a backup hard drive that you clone into less frequently in the event of something bad happening that’s more than just a corrupt hard drive sector.
 
Greg said:
I am going to do the same thing and decided on a portable SSD.

Any downsides to this ?
Click to expand...

Mostly redundancy. I've lost lots of data through the years from drives failing. Even more of a problem with SSD since there is a little warning if it's about to go. And, they always seem to go exactly at the wrong time. I've had drives go after 12 months. But, I also have drives (spinning rust) that are going on 10 years without failure.

You'd need to ensure that you're backing it up on a regular basis. My opinion.

Nowadays, I usually use the USB style drives mainly for transport/transfers when off-network and then use a RAID system to archive just about everything.
 
So maybe I am over thinking this. Buy two external drives (no SSD) and just back up to both of them. Call it a day.

I just really want to get away from google as much as possible. Time for me to download everything and delete everything I have in the cloud. Good bye.
 
Greg said:
I thought they were the most reliable, no moving parts.. I don't have really any important data, it's just pictures that I want to back up.

I was looking at a Samsung 1TB, I think it was $150
Click to expand...

True, though they have a 'write' durability associated at the individual bit level. Complicated algorithms map failed blocks of data with some internal redundancy but at some point, you'll pass the threshold and things tend to break dramatically. Especially, if there are lots of writes going on. They've been greatly improving over the years especially when using the good ones but it is still a limitation. Samsung has good drives and a reputation.

If you're not using them in an intense manner, then you probably won't run into much of a problem.
 
Greg said:
I thought they were the most reliable, no moving parts.. I don't have really any important data, it's just pictures that I want to back up.

I was looking at a Samsung 1TB, I think it was $150
Click to expand...

They are less prone to damage since they dont have any moving parts. That said all major HDD manufactures sell high reliability drives for important data.
 
Greg said:
I thought they were the most reliable, no moving parts.. I don't have really any important data, it's just pictures that I want to back up.

I was looking at a Samsung 1TB, I think it was $150
Click to expand...
They’re the most robust in terms of physical G load from drops and stuff. But with a normal hard drive you might get some bad sectors popping up to show it is on its way out. The SSD can fail completely without notice. They also have finite writes, but I think that has improved.
 
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vicorjh said:
True, though they have a 'write' durability associated at the individual bit level. Complicated algorithms map failed blocks of data with some internal redundancy but at some point, you'll pass the threshold and things tend to break dramatically. Especially, if there are lots of writes going on. They've been greatly improving over the years especially when using the good ones but it is still a limitation. Samsung has good drives and a reputation.

If you're not using them in an intense manner, then you probably won't run into much of a problem.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response.. I will be only putting pics and some vids on the drive and never writing over them.. 1TB is a LOT of pics lol
 
PappyM3 said:
Yes, lots of home NAS devices allow for RAID setup. But keep in mind, that duplicates viruses too if you ever got one. If you will be making lots of changes to the data frequently, then yes a RAID setup can be good. But consider having a backup hard drive that you clone into less frequently in the event of something bad happening that’s more than just a corrupt hard drive sector.
Click to expand...
An internet company I worked for had the entire buisness wiped out by a Hard drive/RAID error. They went to the tape backups.. only to find the tape backup wasn't working.
Basically, one hard drive became corrupted, and the RAID controller copied the corrupted files over to the other. Then something else happened and it deleted everything on both drives.
Once you do you backups, verify them from time to time!
Business lasted about two weeks after that. All the customers websites, except for the ones I and another guy worked on disappeared. The two of us (out of five) had local backups of everything.
I contacted all the customers I worked on and sent them their stuff.
Shitty thing is for a full week the company lied to all the customers about it.
About 60 people lost their jobs. Sad.
One guy I worked for later, created a simple DOS batch file that he would run at the end of every day. It would create a folder on two separate servers for that days work and save all the files.
He would go through it every few months and do archiving/deleting as needed.
 
peterk123 said:
For you tech savvy guys, I need your help. I have all of my photos in google photos and much of my documents in google drive. I would like to remove all of it completely and control the storage. Would an external drive that I can just hook up to my laptop be the way to go, or would you recommend something else? Thx Pete
Click to expand...
View: https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Elements-Portable-External/dp/B06W55K9N6
have more than 1 copy on more than 1 device, as nothing lasts forever.

do not remove all items from google drive - you need to keep there photos of your stuff, valuables - as if devices lost in the fire or other event you will at least have those pictures on the google drive to present to home insurance.
of course, never keep your tax returns there, nor anything with any kind of a sensitive data, it is quite obvious.
 
Samsung T5's here too. One for home, one for work.
I like em, they work well.
Not a tech geek though, but I was told SSD is the way to go.
 
PaulR said:
Samsung T5's here too. One for home, one for work.
I like em, they work well.
Not a tech geek though, but I was told SSD is the way to go.
Click to expand...
they are more reliable than traditional drives, but, they do die too, sometimes. but, usually, do not die completely, so, like i stated - 4 copies across 2 devices will have a very good chance of a long term survival.
 
whatluck said:
if you have a spare PC and some drives laying around you could always go with freeNAS.
Click to expand...
i stopped doing raid5 setups after i suffered loss - twice, on such setups. at home you do not have that much of an extremely important data. movies, .mp3 files - it is all pretty much recoverable now, or can be re-downloaded. photos - can be backed up in the cloud somewhere. there is little reason anymore of building expensive NAS systems at home with 5 drives in it.
 
paulatkin73 said:
i stopped doing raid5 setups after i suffered loss - twice, on such setups. at home you do not have that much of an extremely important data. movies, .mp3 files - it is all pretty much recoverable now, or can be re-downloaded. photos - can be backed up in the cloud somewhere. there is little reason anymore of building expensive NAS systems at home with 5 drives in it.
Click to expand...

raid1 on a left over desktop PC is cheap and easy and offers more protection than a single external hard drive. not everyone has the same needs and the same kind of data. some people don't want their personal shit on the cloud. some people want the extra bandwidth a local copy provides. some people just have spare parts laying around and can do it for $50. For me, I have like 2 PB of pr0n and it's easier to index if it's on a fiber backplane to my Cray XMP.
 
whatluck said:
raid1 on a left over desktop PC is cheap and easy and offers more protection than a single external hard drive. not everyone has the same needs and the same kind of data. some people don't want their personal shit on the cloud. some people want the extra bandwidth a local copy provides. some people just have spare parts laying around and can do it for $50. For me, I have like 2 PB of pr0n and it's easier to index if it's on a fiber backplane to my Cray XMP.
Click to expand...
i run a linux - centos server where all the required data is copied to, plus all the extras - asterisk, plex, openhab runs. but, i am not a typical scenario. raid1 is expensive for most, plus, also, i had all the data losses happen due to the controller failures - not the media. and after that it was not recoverable.
 
paulatkin73 said:
i run a linux - centos server where all the required data is copied to, plus all the extras - asterisk, plex, openhab runs. but, i am not a typical scenario. raid1 is expensive for most, plus, also, i had all the data losses happen due to the controller failures - not the media. and after that it was not recoverable.
Click to expand...

ZFS, not MDADM using ASUS boards, never had a problem with drive portability, but then again I tested extensively before I moved to prod. if you want a real controller you can get a used perc-710 card for the cost of a box of 9mm, you'll never have a hard time getting one of those or changing firmware. drives are cheap too. calling raid-1 expensive on a gun forum is a little silly.
 
I spent the last 30 years of my career in data storage/data protection and this is what I use: I have a Western Digital My Cloud EX2 Network Attached Storage (NAS) set up as RAID 1 (two copies of every thing) on my home network. Data that doesn’t need to be shared just sits on my PC’s/Laptop’s local disk. Data I want to share gets put on the NAS. All the PCs and Laptops backup to the NAS. The NAS is then backed up to the Cloud. I use Norton’s cloud backup service, but any of the cloud backups that encrypt your data before sending over the network will do. You always want to get a backup copy of you data offsite in case of theft, fire or other natural disaster.

You can get way more complicated, but I like to keep things as simple as possible while meeting my requirements of backing up my local systems, being able to share data between local systems and making sure I have an offsite backup of all of my data.
 

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