Stupid question...... are larger drives reliable?(4TB, 5TB, 6TB)

[PP Mguire]

I like how people make it seem like RAID, redundancy, or a backup is 100% necessary. If you run your drives in a good environment with a UPS the likelihood of losing data is rather slim.

 

[carnageX]

I like how people make it seem like RAID, redundancy, or a backup is 100% necessary. If you run your drives in a good environment with a UPS the likelihood of losing data is rather slim.

I see it as insurance against manufacturer defects of the drive failing.

Even if it's under warranty, the data may not be recoverable.

Necessary? Not really - but kind of a good idea to at least think about with single large drives like that.

 

[PP Mguire]

Most of the drives that have failed on me failed rather quickly and showed signs early on. The 1.5TB Seagate being the exception.

6TB drives are too expensive to make redundant on a consumer level.

Edit: Let's be real here guys. If you have a 6TB drive what's going to be on it that isn't actually replaceable? Eh...eh? If you can afford something like that, something like a separate 1TB for actual stuff that needs backing up can be had for pennies on the dollar. I have GBs of photos and video from over the years that I have on 2 separate drives, but something that fills a 6TB? Bruh, that ****'s going to be movies, TV, or games...and we all know how you acquired it. When my ex killed my 3TB I wasn't mad, I just replaced it and had 3TB of free space

If you have a drive like that for business needs it'd be in your best interest to actually buy 2 of the drive to have a proper backup located elsewhere. Just my 2c.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

I was *plenty* mad when my sister wiped my 2TB hdd. Sure I can get most of the stuff that was on there back, but do I really want to download 2TB again? And rename/reorganise hundreds of files/folders?
So I did something crazy, bought a 2nd 2TB hdd and did a robocopy mirror on a schedule. Considering how many hours went into populating and organising that drive, a one-off cost of $100 is nothing.

 

[Lexluethar]

Gonna get nit picky here, but Raid 5 does not improve write performance, just read. It actually slows down write performance. You take a write hit because the parity block that has to be written.

Yes, i was just THAT guy.

As for what the OP was asking, anything consumer grade that you purchase from a reputable manufacturer will work just fine. As others have said, make sure you have a backup in place.

 

[setishock]

I read back over the OP's lead in post. You know it might be worth looking in to a NAS box for this sort of setup. If he would get an 6 or 8 bay model he could make each pair a raid pair and still have massive room for storage. This would also have the advantage of being assessable from any computer on his network, not just one. With a cloud setup he could also access the NAS box from any where that has internet. He could start out with a couple of drives in the box and populate it as needed.

I have a WD My Cloud Mirror 4TB NAS box. In my case I ran out of room when I was calculating how much I was going to put on it. So I set mine up as a JBOD. I have over 400,000 (Yes 400K) files on it. It's heart is Linux so I have a lot of faith in it. But not blind faith. Plugged in to it's USB port is a 3TB MyBook drive doing incremental backups.

OP if you go this route do your homework first. Shop carefully. Check reliability of models against each other. Again shop carefully. There's a lot of junk out there waiting on an unsuspecting buyer to get screwed on.

 

[1etherer]

Most of the drives that have failed on me failed rather quickly and showed signs early on. The 1.5TB Seagate being the exception.

6TB drives are too expensive to make redundant on a consumer level.

Edit: Let's be real here guys. If you have a 6TB drive what's going to be on it that isn't actually replaceable? Eh...eh? If you can afford something like that, something like a separate 1TB for actual stuff that needs backing up can be had for pennies on the dollar. I have GBs of photos and video from over the years that I have on 2 separate drives, but something that fills a 6TB? Bruh, that ****'s going to be movies, TV, or games...and we all know how you acquired it. When my ex killed my 3TB I wasn't mad, I just replaced it and had 3TB of free space

If you have a drive like that for business needs it'd be in your best interest to actually buy 2 of the drive to have a proper backup located elsewhere. Just my 2c.

Someone who gathers confidential data may have have 6TBs

Like others have said, yes you can DL movies etc, but will take LONG and alot of the time its photos aswell and random docs that are not replaceable...

Id rather be safe than sorry

 

[PP Mguire]

I was *plenty* mad when my sister wiped my 2TB hdd. Sure I can get most of the stuff that was on there back, but do I really want to download 2TB again? And rename/reorganise hundreds of files/folders?
So I did something crazy, bought a 2nd 2TB hdd and did a robocopy mirror on a schedule. Considering how many hours went into populating and organising that drive, a one-off cost of $100 is nothing.

That's only 100 bucks, and 2TB are cheaper than that now. I'm talking large storage where 4TB is still almost 200 bucks. My 6TB drive has countless hours of mods, patches, ISOs, ect and it's almost completely full. It's all replaceable though. Will it be a bitch to do so? Sure, but the last time I actually used almost any of it was well....quite a while ago. That's what I'm saying, the people with this large storage like this want to treat replaceable objects like they aren't which IMO is stupid. Would I love a legit backup of all my stuff? Sure, but it's not feasible. Not at 289 a pop for a 6TB drive. It's not like I'm broke or cheap either, it's just not worth it.

Family photos, pictures and vids of my dad who is dead, my grandpa on my mom's side that is dead, pics and vids of my uncle who is dead, pics and vids of my band with my dad and uncle, pics from high school band, it's all stuff that can't be replaced. That is worth 50 bucks to have a cold backup of but even with how much I've collected over the past decade (including HUGE high resolution scans of old photographs) it doesn't exceed a 1TB drive. I have these on 2 1TB drives, one which is shut off when not being used and have an online copy of most material.

The point was and still is, most people who make a big deal about large storage make a big deal over replaceable objects. If it's that important keep it small and keep it backed up in the true form of the phrase. If it's business material like edited video, pictures, music, whatever then maybe sort business funds for a large backup solution.

Gonna get nit picky here, but Raid 5 does not improve write performance, just read. It actually slows down write performance. You take a write hit because the parity block that has to be written.

Yes, i was just THAT guy.

As for what the OP was asking, anything consumer grade that you purchase from a reputable manufacturer will work just fine. As others have said, make sure you have a backup in place.

I was going to say the same thing, but since RAID isn't a backup solution I dropped it.

Someone who gathers confidential data may have have 6TBs

Like others have said, yes you can DL movies etc, but will take LONG and alot of the time its photos aswell and random docs that are not replaceable...

Id rather be safe than sorry

Somebody who collects confidential data probably does it as a "job" and therefore can probably afford the money to protect that content on a secondary true backup solution. Already been over the valuables.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Hmm.... To be fairly honest, while my needs are specialized somewhat, I don't think I really need or want 6TB disks unless it really is for cold storage purposes. I mean, I have 12TB worth of media now, and 4TB worth in computer backups (other computers in the house backup nightly)... Media isn't backed up, but two 6TB disks could back it all up... Redownloading 12TB on any internet connection is going to suck big time.

 

[Lexluethar]

There is nothing wrong IMO with getting larger drives, but as others have pointed out the larger the drive the more data you have to lose. Obviously that can be mitigated by backup software but I would imagine once you get to 6+ TB of data the full backups on those targets will take over a day to complete (fulls on my 2TB of data take about 12 hours).

This thread got way off topic but just about everyone agreed - you are safe just as long as you are purchasing a quality hard drive that has a history of success (avoid brand new drives that don't have a proven track record).

As for space, i look at it as more of a cost analysis - if you purchase 6+ TB disks i'm sure it's not cheap, once you add in another for backup and another for something like RAID 1 (or RAID 5 so you need 3 drives now plus the 1 backup target) your cost is going to get higher and higher. At some point a larger RAID array (said RAID 6 or RAID 10) with more drives in place will actually give you more space with smaller drives. This will require either a dedicate RAID card (some new MB have built in ones - i just haven't had much luck with those) or a RAID box like DROBO. Yes you spend another 100 or so on a dedicated card for RAID but now you can purchase 6, 2 TB drives and save money on the drives and have build in redundancy with RAID (still backup).