I need a new External HD. What type / brand has high compatibility with ATI
The reason I ask is, my Personal Media Drive from HP is roughly 5 years old, and has been begun to act funny. I'd open Windows Explorer, and the "thermometer" that would indicate free space remaining, (over a TB) wouldn't show; or the drive wouldn't mount. i.e. become visible in Windows Explorer.
There's a whole thread about NAS devices, (on the first page of ATI 2017 forum,) not working or playing nicely with with Acronis True Image, the My Cloud, by WD is a NAS device, but I don't want to go down that road, if I'm going to beset with problems down the road.
I need two drives, One to replace my HP PMD; and a back up drive. Right?
What would be great, is if you could tell me what drives you have, and what your backup arrangement is; and what do you think I should do? My 2TB external, that I'm only using 300 GB's over five years, is ON more than it's not. I'd estimate about 5 hours a day. So, I need a drive that's up to that. I just never know when I'm going to need the stuff on the drive, so I keep it on all the time, (while I'm on the computer.)
How do you guys handle that particular situation?
Thnx for the info...
I was looking at Amazon for HDD's and a lot of them are portable. I was watching a YT Video from Cory / Cary Holzman saying that portable drives really aren't meant to be left plugged in all day.
What type of Hitatchi Hard drive was it? What is your backup strategy? How long do you leave your drives on for?
Thanks.
A year or so ago I was looking for a replacement for my external HDD in a Welland enclosure, it needed both power and data cables, the salesman directed me to a Toshiba USB 3.0 200gb drive with only a USB connection, I demurred thinking that would not be enough power, how wrong I was, they work perfectly, just as fast as my old powered external HDD.
If a USB 3 HDD is attached to a USB 3 or 3.1 port it will have enough power to support an external HDD that does not have its own power.
Ian
You're correct, most consumer drives are not meant to be run 24-7 unless rated for it (like WD Black drives or Enterprise drives). However, a lot of the external USB drives have power saving features built into the firmware and will spin down when they are idle so that they don't run 24/7.
In my setup, my main PC is desktop so my primary local backups go to another internal WD black drive. I've varied my backup schemes over the years, but right now, I use Acronis and do a weekly full starting on Monday with 6 daily incrementals (1 week). I retain 4 backup versions and let it clean up automatically. I do a second backup with an offset full starting on Thursday and do 2 differentials (SAT and TUES) to my local NAS. That way I have a little bit of variation and frequency. I also use another backup product and reverse the days/order with that one with similar backup schemes for additional redundany (just in case) and I also do a daily Acronis cloud backup of must my user profile data. I also take a full offline backup with the recovery media before any major sytem changes (and to keep offline in case my system and/or online backups are ever compromised with malware or ransomware).
On my ASUS T200, there is a built in drive location in the keyboard so I'v recently added a small SSD for local backup with it, but have pretty much relied on NAS backups and the occassional offline backup for that one since it's usually on the move.
There's no wrong or right way - just as long as you're comfortable with the frequency, retention and variation of yoiur backups. Mine is overkill, but I have peace of mind and have never lost data (knock on wood) as a result.
Definitely yes, I have a Toshiba and a Western Digital and they both work perfectly without their own power supply. I use tham all the time for TI imaging.
What are the model numbers of your drives? (so I can investigate...)
Thx.
xxx
I can see no model # but they are advertised as 'Toshiba 2TB Canvio USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive'
Thanks for the information...
Continuing along the lines of needing a new External Hard Drive...I still haven't bought one...
At worst - in the aggregate, the grand total for C, D (HP Recovery Media), and M (My HP External Hard Drive,) 613GB; or roughly 300GB a piece for C and M. What that # is today, I don't know, and even if I did, it'd be irrelevant; because, I don't know what files are going on my SSD with certainty.
My question is, how large of a backup drive do I need? Also, I'm leaning towards differential backups. Because, (correct me if I'm wrong,) if you have backups, (signified by the zero's,) and one goes bad, 0 0 0 0 0 - you only loose the info contained in that differential b/u, vs. everything that follows, had you done an incremental backup.
Also differential b/u's are larger in size, than incrementals; so all of this begs the question: what would be the right size?
Thanks in advance,
xxx
That is correct. Diff's are completely unrelated to each other. Each diff is, however dependent upon the original full for that version chain. So, if diff 3 was corrupted, as long as the full is in good shape, you can use any of the other diffs to recover from
The downside to diffs is they are larger than inrementals though as they backup all changes since the full. I feel that they are safer than incrementals though.
Ultimately, there's no real specification on how much space you need - the more, the better and prices for spinning drives are relatively cheap these days so a 3 or 4tb drive should be reasonable, but I would shoot for a minimum of 2TB. This gives you some room to grow, or maintain more backup history and you can change that up as your data grows and available space on the drive shrinks. For me, I also like to do different types of backups
Full OS Backup 1 ... 1 full starting on 1st Monday of the month + 6 incrementals (daily) = 1 week. Retain 4 version chains (about 1 month)
Full OS backup 2 .... 1 full starting on 2nd Wednesday of the month + 4 diffs (weekly) each Friday. Retain 2 version chains (about 2 months)
A backup like that gives you lots of varied recovery points and different types of recovery options - all spread out at different intervals. And, if you do one backup to one drive and the other backup to another drive, you not only have variation and redundancy, but a little extra safety in case one of those drives fails or something happens to it.
In your case, if you had 2 drives, you could backup Source Drive A with incrementals to Destination backup 1 and diffs to Destination backup 2. Then backup Source Drive B with diffs to Destination 1 and incrementals to Destination backup 2.
Do what you're comfortable with though. Just don't skimp on space for a few bucks more if you can help it.
Multi x,
Given what you say in the above post a 4TB drive should be sufficient for your needs. I say this based on the following assumptions. Your main drive is 300GB of data with a C and D partition of which the D partition is a recovery partition probably of small size. Your M drive is the external drive where you store your media another 300GB.
For your main drive of 300GB data, if that data grows by 15% per week you would be looking at an additional 15GB which is highly unlikely I would think although possible for some users. So if you setup a weekly differential backup at the end of a months time your data on the main drive would be 360GB. You can expect to achieve a 20 to 30 percent savings in space with a Normal compression setting in the TI app. Since we went overboard in how much your data will grow lets assume you get a 30% space savings in a full backup. 360GB less 30% = 108GB of savings making your total full backup size 252GB.
Your media on the external drive might grow in a similar manner. The difference here would be that media files are already compressed and you might not realize any space savings from the TI app compression so lets say that you get 0 here. Your data grows by the same 60GB per month so in a 12 month period you would amass an additional 720GB of media data added to the 300GB starting size would give you 1.2TB total. Adding this and a same figure for your main data drive over a 1 year period you would have 2.4TB total. If that turms out to be the case you still have a bit of room to grow until you can get another drive or find another solution for our storage needs.
As for your media you should not need to backup that data other than an occasional run, say a full followed by a monthly differential.
I think my estimates here are far above what you will actually see but you need to be the judge of that. You should have some idea of how much data you create over a given period of time so it should not be that diffficult to make a decision on your need here.
One thing to keep in mind is that a backup task needs to have at least twice the total estimated size of the backup in order to function correctly. This is so because when a backup cycle completes, say a weekly backup that contains 4 versions, on the fifth backup will create a new full backup prior to deleting the previous full version. So dependent on how often you backup, how much you backup each time you backup, and your version cycle time will determine how much space you need.
4TB drives can be had for a shade under $200 for an average consumer grade drive and about $300 for an Enterprise class drive which will carry a five year warranty and a 24/7 duty cycle.
Hopefully all this will help in your decision making.
Thanks for the replies guys. I just wanted to point out, that the 300GB per drive, roughly a hair over 600GB took over 5 years to accumulate. I was wondering if you accounted for that.
And just so I've understand, you need double the space, because you have the one pre-existing, in the case of a full backup, and you are going to add another full back up, hence, you'll need twice the space. And that condition will exist for like (I presume 4 backups) that I would maintain at one time. Then recycle. Then recycle. That's a loot of room.
Right?
Quick Question: Say I have a data file. At this point, it's the original. I make mods to the file, it didn't work out as expected. Can I restore that original data file? (just that one file?)
And do these drives - the ones I'm going to purchase - have to be the same size as my current drives, I'm currently working off of, for the cloning process to work?
Thanks,
Multi X
I did not account for your 5 years to accumulate 600GB of data. I was trying to illustrate how you might arrive at a likely number. Let's look at it this way, you have 600GB of data that has taken 5 years to get. If you simply do the math 600 divide by 5, you get 120GB so in 1 year your data grew by 120GB.
A backup works like this, you want to protect all your data right! You also want to protect your PC system (C drive) too. So in the case of the C drive you would perform a full disk based backup, that's all data on disk. Right now that backup is a total of 300GB right? So you make this full disk backup which ends up being around 250GB in total size. You set a schedule for this backup to be a differential with that differential being taken once per week. The next backup made by the application after the full is made will be a backup of only the difference between what the data was when the full was created and what the data is now. This will be a much smaller number. Given your example above the math says about 3GB per differential backup. So this differential repeats 3 times before the backup as scheduled repeats itself. So the next backup after the 3rd differential is when double the disk space is required. The application will create a new full backup based on the previous full, the 3 differentials, and any difference there is now. After this new full backup is created the previously created backujps are deleted and the cycle starts over again.
It is possible to restore a data file by itself and not have to restore the full backup file yes. You can use Windows Explorer to open a backup file and navigate to such a file and copy it from the backup file itself.
These new drives do not have to be the same size as you have now. Do not confuse Clone with backup, they are two very different things. I suggest you take a good look at the documentation of the product so that you can gain a better understanding of the whole process of how a backup and clone work. If you do not understand something you can post back here.
There is a 3TB Toshiba Canvio external USB 3.0 drive on Amazon right now for $80. For the price vs storage capacity and ease of use as an external, it's a steal. It won't be the fastest drive (it's 5400RPM inside, but that is pretty standard for small form factor, pre-enclosed usb external hard drives that don't have their own power supply), but you'll still get better speeds with the USB 3.0 and a lot of storage with it. FYI, this would be for Backups only - not for a clone. Cloning to an external drive really does nothign for you as you can clone to it, but can't boot from it.
There's really no way for anyone to determine our strage needs and/or growth. Who knows, maybe you get into ripping Blu-Rays in the future and need to expand quickly. Or, if you're like me and like to have more frequent full backups, those will fill up your drive faster if you retain them longer.
600Gb compressed ... let's guess 450Gb total for a full backup to be on the safe side.
1 full a month and diffs every other day may take you upwards of another hundred Gb a month depending on data and/or OS changes (PST's or iTunes backups can increaes backup sizes a a lot if they're done frequently). Alos, when Microsft releases a Win 10 upgrade, you'll be backing up that new OS drive in its complete (to include the old version which is windows.old) in every diff until the next full so that could become very big if you don't manually intervene after such a Windows upgrade. If the price is right, always better to get a little more storage when possible. At a minimum, you want about 3-4x the current size of your existing hard drive for a backup drive if you want some backup history.
I'm keen on "portable" external hard drives, such as Western Digital's Passport series. They don't require external power and their portabiliity and small size makes it more likely that you'll take one off-site for safe storage. You could get two: rotate them weekly or monthly, keep one at a friend's house or in a safety deposit box. I've used various Western Digital Passport drives for years and am happy with them.
If you have some data that doesn't change often, or is particularly large such as video files, you may not want to include them in the ATI images. There are other ways to backup such items, as an adjunct to ATI imaging.
I do both True Image disk/system backups and file-based backups. Both types of backups are made to two external USB HD, which I use in rotation. Where my data are concerned, I like the security of belt and suspenders.
For such file-backup tasks, I like Microsoft's Robocopy, which is free with Windows. You must write a command line to make it do what you want, but it's easy and powerful. It's multi-threaded, so even with large file sets it runs quickly and will copy over only the files that are new or changed, if that's what you desire.
I backup my music collection (over 25,000 large lossless files, about 520 GB) to two external HDs using Robocopy with a command line I wrote. I also use ATI to image my entire system, excluding the music files, for disaster recovery.
All the above is good advice. If your finaces runb to it I would get 2 x 3TB (or 4 TB drives).
If you are storing off-site, encryption is essential (you can set up Acronis to encrypt the *.tib files). I do backup to Acronis Cloud, and 3.5" USB drives. I do individual file backups to my NAS (as well as another computer) and a 2.5" USB drive with hardware encryption.
You need to watch out for Windows 10 updates; once you are suree the system is stable you can delete the windows.old directory (you do this by Disck cleanup, and going into advanced options). It is also a good idead to do backup of your system (C:) drive before installing new build of Windows 10 - I have had such installatiuons go pear shaped several times.
Hope this helps in making your decison.
Ian
As it turns out-
I'll be doing minor upgrades to this computer rather than building my own. Then when Win7 reaches its End of Life (EOL) in 2020, I'll build my own.
Anyway, I wondered what you thought of this choice for back up drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822235133&cm_re=western_digital_external_hard_drive-_-22-235-133-_-Product
For the internal, (which is also 5 years old,) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16822236530
And for the secondary external, non backup - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0AJ1002984&cm_re=western_digital_my_book_1tb_external_hard_drive-_-22-136-747-_-Product
plus a 32 gig flash drive.
What do you think of the ratios? (plus anything else you'd care to add...)
Thanks in advance,
xxx
For the internal I would go with a Western Digital Blue for less out of pocket than the one you linked to. If that's your budget then upgrade to a WD Black drive.
I'm using a Western Digital My Passport external drive for one of the laptops that I back up with ATI 2017 and it's a solid drive.
WD blanck drives are desinged for 24/7 use, whereas the Blue drives are consumer drives designed for every.day use. For most users the only advantage of the Black is the exztended warranty. Some of the new Black drives include a small SSD. Black drives are not suitable for RAID.
I havde some older WD Black drives as well as the now discontinued WD Green.
Cannot help when it comes to 2.5" USB drives - yars since I purchased one. Form time to time I have purchased a 3.5" USB HDD - one advantage is that they are easiefr to find.
WD blanck drives are desinged for 24/7 use, whereas the Blue drives are consumer drives designed for every.day use.
Yep. I have a Western Digital drive that has been running 24/7 for over eight years, in a Vantec external enclosure to increase the storage capacity of my PVR.
Edit: Actually, I just checked and the WD drive is part of the Blue series. I've got my money's worth out of it over eight years.
My only thought, is why not go with an SSD for the main OS drive? You're losing so much performance by having that 1TB drive as your main OS drive. Any SATA 3 SSD - even a low end will blow the socks off that 1TB internal drive. You don't have to store much on your OS drive and a 250GB or 500GB SSD is very reasonable. Put all music, photos, videos, on your larger spinners, and keep your OS drive on an SSD paired down - that's my recommendation. Once you go to an SSD, you'll never put an OS on a spinning drive again.
If it were me, I'd go with
internal: Samsung EVO 850 500GB - $139 on Amazon right now. The 250 is $79
2nd internal: 1TB WD Black - $68 on Amazon right now. The 2TB is $110.
3rd external backup: yours is fine - I don't like the micro USB 3.0 ports, but it's hard to find them without them these days. It won't be super fast with a 5400 spinner though. Does it have to be completely portable? If not, you could consider a desktop internal drive and a nice USB 3.0 dock/clone station for about $35. Not only can you do physical clones with the dock, but it doubles as a dual external USB dock and can be used with 1 or 2 drives and fits 2.5" and 3.5" drives. The downside is that it requires external power so is not as portable, but it is very convenient for all of the other features.
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WD Blacks are supported in consumer RAID: http://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=996
If you are going with more than a RAID 0 or RAID 1, you typically want to use NAS or Entperprise RAID drives, but have not had issues (well, no more than any other type of drive) when using Blues or Blacks.
I personally spend the extra money on the WD blacks not just for the extra warranty, but since they are rated at 24\7 for 5 years... a WD blue is rated at 3 years of only 5x8 use. They can be noisy though with clicky sounds as they are seeking on the drive. I have a 2TB and 3TB and neither is overly noisy
If you're going with a WD drive, be advised that the blues drop from 7200RPM down to 5400RPM, where the blacks remain at 7200RPM in the larger sizes beyond 2TB. For any of the small form factor drives (such as the pre-made externals, they're probably going to be 5400RPM anyway).
Ultimately though, you have to consider cost vs performance vs portability vs reliability. Even the most reliable drives have bad ones though and it's really just luck of the draw.
You should definitly consider an SSD for OS with a HDD for data.
Yes, I was thinking of Raid 5 - I have 2 WD Blank in Raid 0 for years. They definitely do not cope with Raid 5 running of the main board disk controller - best described as 'hardware assisted unlike up-market add-in cards.
I have a WD Black drive in my Synology NAS without issue. When it come to NAS, which drives will be OK is best determined by the NAS manufacturers list of supported drives - my supports various WD Green an Blue HDDs.
Ian
I want to thank you guys for all your help. I really appreciate it.
On paper, I'd agree with you. Hands down. Practically speaking, this is a 5 year old computer with SATA 2 ports and if that wasn't bad enough, USB 2.0 ports. And the computer isn't getting any younger. To add insult to injury, in 3 short years, the Windows community will see Windows 7 come to the end of it's life. Then I'll have to switch over to what ever the future operating system will be. So, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me to spend more money than necessary, given the EOL for Win 7 in 2020, which will be here before you know it.
So, what did I buy?
WD 1TB Black Internal Hard drive Which afer formatting, boils down to 931 TB.
WD 4TB Passport. Hard Drive (to be used as the Back Up Drive. ) Which afer formatting, boils down to 3.7xx TB.
I also bought Plugable HD Docking station, It only has room for one drive, but I've bought a USB hub (albeit 2.0) from Plugable - available through Amazon, before, and all the ports are still working great, so I went with them again.
What would you guys think of WD My Book 2 TB for the External?
One question: Isn't the speed of the drive (a drive that's plugged into a USB 2.0 port,) determined by the speed of the port? or am I missing something here....
Thanks in advance,
xxx
You could speed up USB speeds with a PCIe USB 3/3.1 add in card. They can be found on eBay and Amazon. They are inexpensive - well under $20US. You could spend a bit more you can get a USB 3/SATA 3 card (two SATA ports; usually two external USB ports; soemtimes with an internal USB 3 connector). These are much more expensive, around US$40. It may be cheaper to get separate cards: I recently got 3 SATA 3 cards for AU$30 on eBay. Things will be slowed down if you motherbaord does not support PCIe 2.0; for a como card you need PCIe 4 slot rather than PCIe 1.
I know nothing of WD My Book, so cannot help.
Ian
What would you guys think of WD My Book 2 TB for the External?
I don't have any, as I prefer the portability and convenience of the Passport series which require no external power source. One of my clients has a My Book, though, and it has served him well for many years, doing the automated True Image and file-based backups that I set up for him.
Can a Passport take usage of approx. 6 hours a day. I'm not necessarily accessing the EHD for that period of time, but when I turn of the computer, at that time, I turn off the power to the EHD.
that's my only concern...
Thanks in advance,
xxx
My recollection is that the Passport series are USB powered and have no external power supply. If it is not being accessed it will power down its HDD, so it stops spinning.
Ian
That would probably work, don't you think? (That would be a working conditinon it could handle...) .I just don't want to buy the wrong drive for it's intended purpose...
Should be fine.
Thanks I appreciate all the help.