Venix:

Yeah I can not say I am that adamant about the data I backup 95% of what is in my drives I can download again it will just be a bit annoying but that's it .... My creations fit in 200gb and they are already live so really all I do is keep em on my 980 and a hard drive in my PC + a flash drive .... Not exactly "safe" but safe enough for how much I value that data 😛

Honestly... if you're going to have a backup in the same building, a flash drive is a good option. Unlike a NAS or a HDD, a flash drive isn't going to get damaged in a flood, and you can easily put it in your pocket if you need to get out with it quickly.

wavetrex:

200 GB, so cute ;-) ... Everyone has different needs in storage capacity. HDDs will continue to be around for a long time...

Venix (and myself for that matter) weren't saying that our use-cases are anything to follow, or even common - I know many people who have music collections that take up more space than all of my personal content combined. When you account for things like RAW or uncompressed formats, it is rather effortless to consume vast amounts of disk space in a weekend. For me personally though, I don't care about having 4 raw photos seconds apart from each other, especially photos that were composed well enough to not need editing (or at least don't need the full dynamic range). I'd rather narrow down to just the best photo of the 4 and keep it as a JPEG, and then save myself whatever that would be, 200MB? Of course, this is wildly different than someone who is taking photos professionally - you'll want the customer to have as many options as possible.

geogan:

But it went from basically years of saying 96% health to just one day making clicking noise and no more... no way to read off it. Check your SMART people! I find Acronis Drive Monitor a handy utility for this. I now just keep separate full disk backups (on similar 10TB drives) for most important information. Don't use and never have used any online RAID setup.

Yeah, when it comes to HDDs, once a problem is observed that wasn't due to a fluke (like a power outage or an inopportune hard reset), you basically have to have a replacement drive ready to go. If you're trying to minimize disk expenses where you can't afford both RAID and a backup, it really comes down to what's more important: recovery time or preservation. If you care about keeping your data accessible as long as possible, you should prioritize some of the stuff wavetrex pointed out earlier; just simply RAID by itself isn't going to be good enough. Otherwise, you will want a physically separate copy of the data backed up regularly, preferably off-site. For most people, a backup is the better option. Obviously best-case scenario is you do a RAID setup with an off-site backup, but that's not realistic for most people.

schmidtbag:

Yeah, when it comes to HDDs, once a problem is observed that wasn't due to a fluke (like a power outage or an inopportune hard reset), you basically have to have a replacement drive ready to go. If you're trying to minimize disk expenses where you can't afford both RAID and a backup, it really comes down to what's more important: recovery time or preservation. If you care about keeping your data accessible as long as possible, you should prioritize some of the stuff wavetrex pointed out earlier; just simply RAID by itself isn't going to be good enough. Otherwise, you will want a physically separate copy of the data backed up regularly, preferably off-site. For most people, a backup is the better option. Obviously best-case scenario is you do a RAID setup with an off-site backup, but that's not realistic for most people.

yes... my lesson learned is if the S.M.A.R.T. data for a SATA drive says anything less than 100% even just 96% then move data off drive immediately and replace.

geogan:

yes... my lesson learned is if the S.M.A.R.T. data for a SATA drive says anything less than 100% even just 96% then move data off drive immediately and replace.

absolutely no drive on the planet is at 100% health.

I lost a WD green before but other than that I end up replacing and going bigger before they die or even start acting funny for that matter.

wavetrex:

Thanks for teaching the shoe maker how to make shoes !

Line 'em up bartender .... LMAO

Astyanax:

absolutely no drive on the planet is at 100% health.

Acronis will say 100% - no idea what it uses to calculate this... but one time I had a single 6TB drive drop to 96% here... One of the SMART statuses was not OK but a WARNING... it stayed at that level for years... and then one day just refused to read - now clicks and grinds... so most likely a head crash. To be honest most of these SMART parameters make no sense to me... eg Read Error Rate is 83, but threshold is 44, so that looks to me to be over the threshold... so why is it still OK? Also my old HAF932 case was able to keep these 10TB drives at about 25C temperature maximum each... whereas this new very expensive HAF 700 EVO case only manages to keep them at 39-41C from its drive cage, which I think is pathetic. That's only 5C from the temperature warning of 46C for drives.

Threshholds are "lower than."

Astyanax:

Threshholds are "lower than."

Just looked it up... didn't know they were "percentage health" numbers (more or less) with 0 Threshold being non-critical.