Looking for a pair of external drives for backup

ex351d

Member
I have a 2 hard drive computer. A small solid state drive to run the operating system (windows 10) and 2 terabyte traditional hard drive where I store my audio files and projects. I also use this PC for editing pictures and videos and I store the files on the same drive. The hard drive is getting full. I would like to have a hard drive where I could save all my files and a second one for redundancy backup. I would like at least 2-4 terabyte of disk space on each drive. I do not mind if it is SS or traditional as long as it is reliable. What should I get that is reliable and not crazy expensive?
 
I have loads of the WD book style external drives, and two of these live on my audio machine semi-permanently, same with the video one. They seem pretty decent and reliable, but I tend to not go higher than 1Tb simply because the price changes makes two 1Tb drives more useful. I see no real need for SSD - in fact the number of SSDs I have had fail is actually higher than conventional mechanical drives. I just makes sure that I back things up properly. The downside is that now I have so many, finding the right ones is very important and even when I do find them, opening old projects rarely works 100% because there will always be some old sampler, or audio file saved in the wrong place - not withy the project files and that is a pain, but totally my fault.
 
which model of WD do you recommend? I do not mind getting 2 drives at 1TB each instead of 1 drive of 2TB. But here it seems that a 1TB is €65 and a 2TB is €99.
 
I got a pair of the "purple surveillance" drives because they actually perform fine. I have mine mirrored in a RAID enclosure so I'm getting a backup "for free" - sort of, anyway. At least I don't have any kind of manual procedure I have to do to keep them in sync.

No drive is safe if you leave it connected permanently and don't have surge protection + UPS, at least IMO. A simple power glitch/ripple at the wrong time, and maybe you don't even know it, and you've got a corrupt file, which you'll only discover when you need it later.

WD Purple 3TB Surveillance Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch WD30PURZ - Newegg.com

(I realize you're not in the US, but assuming they might be available wherever.)
 
I'm not going to have these 2 drives permanently connected. I'll connect them once a month or so and backup my work. At least if I loose, it is a smaller amount of work. Also, my PC is off the internet, and I do not connect any pendrives to it, just burn a CD each time I want to export a file. The machine is unplugged each time it is not in use to reduce any risk of surge/lightning strike damaging the equipment. Here, we are forced to have a voltage protection installed with the electrical installation along with other conventional protection devices.
 
In home physical Hard drives are so yesterdays news :rolleyes::laughings:

I do use one but I also have my redundancy in the cloud for $99 a year I have 2 TB of google cloud storage ( back up and sync) that keeps all files I choose backed up as often as I want without me having to do anything but initially set it up to do so ez pz.. knowing what I know about google and their servers...aside from the apocalypse my data is in the best hands $99 a year can buy....
 
I've been seeing the WD Black My Passport drives go on sale lately. Right now on Amazon, the 2TB is $69. And the 4TB model is $95. I think that's a really good price for 2TB or 4TB of external storage. Heck, I might even pick up one or two myself at those prices.
 
I'm the opposite. The cloud is simply no good for me for any kind of archiving, so all my stuff is on local drives - the cloud is for clients and colleagues and to a degree sharing from my various computers. On my MacBook, the backup drive is permanently connected, but also serves as somewhere to stick stuff for transfer. Audio and video on the cloud just takes far too long for gig after gig. The only thing I don't currently do is mirror my C drives - perhaps I should? Not really sure? Any files that would kill my income are backed up on sometimes two drives. My sample libraries are on two drives.

Re: the power supply system - that sounds a terribly awkward system to operate. Is your power system terrible.
 
Site went down and lost my post... Ugh

Redo:

External USB3 1 to 2TB your best bet for backup. I have 4 of them. Samsung P3 portable 1TB drives. They don't spin when disconnected. Internal drives always running even if not used. I have never found a way to shut them down without disconnecting. Surprised that is not an option in Windows....

Screw the cloud thing. I tried that. Too expensive and who knows if it will work...Not to mention having your recording PC on the internet slowing down your computer. Not a viable means of backup if you are serious about recording others and have multiple projects.

I had two internal drives fail at same time in RAID1. Lost a 28 song project that had to re-record for free because of the loss. $69 or so for an external that is disconnected and does not spin for backup or even as a project drive makes more sense to me.

I have a SSD for programs, an internal recording drive as well as an internal backup drive. Always, always, did I say always? Backup to an external drive if you wish to save yourself from the ultimate nightmare in digital recording - loosing files...
 
My backup setup is to use a NAS box with 4 drives, the drives are mirrored so that every file is on 2 drives in the NAS. Great way to back up.

I do have a portable USB drive for backing up projects off site (in case the studio burns down :eek: ) that travels around in a case under the seat of my car.

Alan.
 
I have a home studio and am only doing my own recordings but what I am working on now is important to me. I have a 1T HD that came with the machine Dell XPS, and I installed another 1T drive in the machine. My OS, Programs and plugins are all on the main C drive. All audio files and the Reaper files are created and stored on the 2nd 1 T drive in the machine, Periodically I back up the entire 2nd drive in the machine which has all of the music and Reaper files on it to an external 1 T hard drive. Theory being if either drives fail in my machine I SHOULD be able reload my programs and audio files and be good to go. Problem with all back up systems and processes is you really don't get a chance to test them until you have a problem. If you did anything wrong in your set up or process you will be screwed by the time you find out. Who is going to sabotage their system just to see if they can restore it. I guess the time to do that is when you have a whole new machine with nothing important on it. Even with all files saved and restored or reloaded issues can still arise if all of the programs, plugins and files are not the same version and in the same location. Sure you have the original files which is better than nothing but I spend a lot of time on edits and mixing. So even though it is time consuming any final track with a lot of edits and time put into it or more important would take a lot of time to recreate I render to 2 stem tracks one with FX one without. That way if I had to recreate a song from stems a lot of my prior work would not be lost. I also try to get a 2 track mix of the entire song to a point that if I lost everything except my last final mix I could live with it. That way no matter what all will not be lost.
 
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