Jump to content

Flashdrives vs External Harddrives

SWing'R

By SWing'R
in Dumpster

 Share

Recommended Posts

SWing'R Grand Master

SWing'R

Posted
Posted

Which one do you think will last longer without failure?

The flashdrive with no mechanical parts? Or an external drive that still uses mechanical parts?

Reason I ask is the last time I lost an internal harddrive I added a 500g external to my setup and connected it to a switch to be shared by both our pc's.

I was under misconception that my data was safe on an external but I'm having issues with that drive now and am scrambling to get data off of it before its lost.

I was wondering if storing important data on a large flashdrive would be the safest way, since there is no mechanical parts.

Has anyone ever had a flashdrive fail? Assuming you know it wasn't physically destroyed.

I'm gonna get back in the habit of periodically backing up to cd/dvd again,

something I used to do but stopped after adding the 500g external.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jporter12 Grand Master

jporter12

Posted
Posted

Anything that you don't want to lose, pics, docs, etc... should be on AT LEAST 2 devices. My pictures are all on my laptop where I work with them, most of them are copied on to my desktop. All the computers in the house are automatically backed up daily to the Windows Home Server. That makes 3 copies, along with most of the photos also being in the shared folder of the home server. Some are even copied over to the wife's laptop! The biggest issue with this is keeping th eorganization all the same across everywhere.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
SWing'R Grand Master

SWing'R

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Anything that you don't want to lose, pics, docs, etc... should be on AT LEAST 2 devices.

I know, I got lulled into a false sense of security running the external drive, cause usually when you lose data its because windows takes a shit on you and simply makes the data inaccessable, figured that wasn't a problem keeping my data on an external, never really dawned on my I might have failure issues with the external, my bad :(

But anyway, back to the question/topic, whats your thoughts on the longevity of data on flashdrives?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jarvismb Veteran

jarvismb

Posted
Posted

flash drives absolutely fail. I use a ton between work and home and I've had to take apart and repair two by hand just to get the data off of them. Traditional platter hard drives fail too, but as jporter said, if you really have a concern with the absolute safety of your data, you need redundant backup.

And SSHDs are the new tits. The internals aren't as flimsy as flash drives and they still have no moving parts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jporter12 Grand Master

jporter12

Posted
Posted
flash drives absolutely fail. I use a ton between work and home and I've had to take apart and repair two by hand just to get the data off of them. Traditional platter hard drives fail too, but as jporter said, if you really have a concern with the absolute safety of your data, you need redundant backup.

And SSHDs are the new tits. The internals aren't as flimsy as flash drives and they still have no moving parts.

And like new silicon tit's SSD's are expensive.

It's not a bad idea to have a copy of stuff archived off-site as well. DVD's in a safe deposit box, a safe at a family member's home, etc...

What's the thought on these subscription based online services such as carbonite that I see advertized?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jblosser Grand Master

jblosser

Posted
Posted

I've had one flash drive fail.

I've had one external drive not fail, but was unreadable and no amount of effort got anything back - had to format and it's been fine since.

That's just my personal stuff - at work I have drives fail every now and then, but they're always in a RAID array. RAID ain't perfect - I've lost two drives at the same time in 5 or 6 arrays; sometimes you can force one drive back online, replace the other failed drive, rebuild the array, replace the other drive, rebuild - but usually you're dead.

For home archiving I would suggest: keep it all on the local drive, attach two external drives, mirror them so they're duplicates of each other. Data is in 3 places. For stuff you absolutely don't wanna lose (midget AZN pr0n, bike manual PDFs, etc.), burn it to glass (DVD).

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Sapphy Mentor

Sapphy

Posted
Posted

Buy a NAS, set it to RAID 1 and sleep a little better at night.

In the end, it is all human made, so it will all fail sooner or later. Tradition HD still is the best solution. Flash drives have a measurable shelf life. They can only be written too so many times. Good backups are so important. Personally I have my files server at home (Raid 1) and I have a NAS at a friends house I back up to again set to RAID 1.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
ReconRat Grand Master

ReconRat

Posted
Posted
Buy a NAS, set it to RAID 1 and sleep a little better at night.

In the end, it is all human made, so it will all fail sooner or later. Tradition HD still is the best solution. Flash drives have a measurable shelf life. They can only be written too so many times. Good backups are so important. Personally I have my files server at home (Raid 1) and I have a NAS at a friends house I back up to again set to RAID 1.

^^ what she said

Really important stuff can always be emailed to yourself. That preserves a copy on some one's mail server somewhere, where you can always retrieve it later. That wouldn't be yahoo mail services, who like to cancel your account for lack of activity, and delete all your stuff. Try gmail.

Around my shop, interest is building on setting up Microsoft home server to automatically back up all the computers in the house. Combined with a raid, it's all good till the house burns down.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jporter12 Grand Master

jporter12

Posted
Posted
^^ what she said

Really important stuff can always be emailed to yourself. That preserves a copy on some one's mail server somewhere, where you can always retrieve it later. That wouldn't be yahoo mail services, who like to cancel your account for lack of activity, and delete all your stuff. Try gmail.

Around my shop, interest is building on setting up Microsoft home server to automatically back up all the computers in the house. Combined with a raid, it's all good till the house burns down.

Do the home server Tom. It's Windows Server 2003 based, and once you get the initial backup done, it's all seemless. Leave the computers on, or have the backup setup to wake them and they get backed up every night. It will also let you know if one of the computers has a security issue, although it is sometimes too quick to annouce it.

With home server, you can also run a web server, media server, all sorts of cool stuff. The only thing I have left to do with mine is email server. There are some free solutins out there that will rrun on it, but none seem to be very simple to setup, and I haven't taken the time to try them out. I have a server 2003 box running nothing but email, and it sees very little activity for that, even.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
SWing'R Grand Master

SWing'R

Posted
  • Author
Posted
everything will fail eventually, like what some ppl said, redundant backups is the best method.

Agreed. And that is my problem, I stopped making cd/dvd backups when I moved everything to the external. My bad :o

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Cheech Grand Master

Cheech

Posted
Posted (edited)
Tape is best for longevity. DVDs will deteriorate. I backup everything to multiple external drives as well as DVD.

However, setting up a home tape backup is a little pricey (unless you can find a company getting rid of their old tape drives in favor of a larger solution). You should really...

Buy a NAS, set it to RAID 1 and sleep a little better at night.

SSD's are nice, but pretty expensive. Flash drives have a finite number of writing cycles until the sectors are burned out. Using them for critical data is not recommended.

Edited by Cheech
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Sapphy Mentor

Sapphy

Posted
Posted

Some NAS solutions

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0329164

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0334253

A coworker has this one. He loves it. You would need to put your own drives in it. (They must match)

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0245672

Link to comment
Share on other sites
r1crusher Grand Master

r1crusher

Posted
Posted

Go here and do your home work: SmallNetBuilder

You're best bet is to get a NAS and set it up for a mirrored RAID. Keep your stuff locally and schedule backups to the NAS. Problem solved. You will get what you pay for so remember that. They come loaded or BYOD.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
SWing'R Grand Master

SWing'R

Posted
  • Author
Posted

For now I'm gonna stick with an external drive and doing some periodic dvd backups.

I just got back from MicroCenter, couldn't pass up this deal,

got a Hitachi 1TB External HD for $79 on sale!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Cheech Grand Master

Cheech

Posted
Posted
For now I'm gonna stick with an external drive and doing some periodic dvd backups.

I just got back from MicroCenter' date=' couldn't pass up this deal,

got a Hitachi 1TB External HD for $79 on sale![/quote']

Buy two and a BYOD NAs and you got yourself redundancy!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
SWing'R Grand Master

SWing'R

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Buy two and a BYOD NAs and you got yourself redundancy!

I can't afford all that right now, just happy to have a working external again,

I'll work on some redundancy tactics later.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...