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How To Store Internal Hard Drives?
mike writes "I have been ripping all my movies and TV shows for easy viewing through a media PC. Because I would rather not rip everything again I'm looking for a simple backup solution. I'm considering a hard drive dock and several internal hard drives to use as 'disks' to back things up every once in a while but I don't know what the best way to store internal drives would be in the meantime. Could they sit together in any empty box and be OK, or would a number of externals be worth the slightly higher cost with fewer worries about storing them in the meantime?"
A fireproof/waterproof safe is good for that and a number of other items as well. Just make sure to also keep some moisture control in there as well (silica gel etc.). I would also keep them in an esd bag.
Any clean, dry, vibration-free storage is good for removed internal drives.
Yeah, they come in a nice box with antistatic bag and desiccant... what's wrong with that? Certainly the manufacturer likes this setup.
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You should store them in the plastic containers they came in: http://www.ixbt.com/storage/scsi2005/roundup/fujitsu-pack.jpg These plastic boxes are anti-static and the bumps provide a modicum of shock absorbance. You might also want to add a (fresh) silica pack to prevent moisture from building up.
Buy a cheap used box from a local shop.
You can get P4 class boxes for around $100.
Stuff it full of drives, set up software raid and keep everything there.
In addition to providing a nice place to store backups, you can also use it for primary storage. I assume since you're ripping video that this is an HT-PC.
I prefer not to have a bunch of loud HDD's in my HT-PC. Put that crap in a closet.
If so, it might be smart to install/store them in inexpensive, standard USB disk enclosure caddies. That way, when you do need to go back to your archive, you can pop 'em into your USB port and they're ready to go straight away! And if you go for one of those book-style enclosures, it makes for a neat way to store them too.
At work, we would routinely have to deal with 5-10 hard drives a day and probably would order 40-60 a month. We stored them in anti-static bags in a bankers box. While that's not the exact brand we used (we bought them in 100 packs), its similar. During the few years we used those bags, we did not lose a single drive to storage loss. There were drives that were DOA or died during processing, or were dropped, but we never pulled a drive that was working the previous time only to discover that it was dead when we pulled it.
As for hookup, you have a couple of options. If you are going to do casual use, you can get an esata dock. It doesn't have a fan, but for all but the most intense use, it should be sufficient for transfering files and weekly backups. If you're looking for more, go with sata sleds (again not the brand I used, but similar), you can screw your hard drives into those and if your sata controller supports it, hot swap the drives. You can also buy extra sleds so that you can swap out your drives without having to handle the internal drive.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Professionals keep (at least) one off-site backup. You could rent a private locker in a bank or some other organization or make an online backup deal. I do use (two) USB disks for backups. They are pretty portable, fairly robust, plug in nearly every computer, have decent speed and good capacity.
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And use one of these to plug them in when needed.
Any solution that has the drives unpowered is preferable - no point in spinning a drive 24/7 when it's used for backup 5 minutes a week.
Whatever route you choose, keep in mind that hard drives as a whole have terribly high failure rate (about 1 in 8 fail in my experience). Also, regardless of your chosen media, be sure to research the lifespan of your storage. If you are looking for long term (more than a couple years) and dependability you are going to be spending more than you would on a cheap raid box.
As much as I HATE to say it, magnetic tape is the ONLY storage media that has not failed me yet.
Newegg has Hard Drive Protectors http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817990010
I've just stored drives in anti-static bags for some of my test systems when I upgrade drives and want to keep the old drives for messing around with. Haven't run into any problems.
Dual Opteron < $600
I just recently addressed this problem myself. My solution, although a little pricey compared to just stuffing an old box with hard drives, was to get one of these guys and put 5 1 TB drives into it. I have it running in a software RAID5, backing up everything from my server (media, subversion repository, etc) via a nightly cron job rsyncing between the server disks and the enclosure. So far it's been working like a charm.
That's some collection you have there...
Anyway, in a situation like yours, I'd have opted for a proper 4+ drive NAS like the ones offered by Qnap, Synology, etc.
Cooling is not an issue with those cases, since they're designed with cool drives in mind from the beginning. The air flow is optimized and driven by a large-diameter slow-spinning fan in the back.
As for cool drives, I found the Western Digital RE2 GP series to be really good. They spin slower than other drives, but they also stay a lot cooler and thus consume only a fraction of the power other drives do. In addition, they're designed for 24/7 operation, so you probably won't have them die on you after a few months of usage.
The only big advantage of the externals is that the connectors are a bit more robust, so if you're going to plug/unplug them a LOT, you're a bit better off.
But for maximum longevity you should take 'vibration free' seriously. That is, you shouldn't lay a drive on a hard table, because when you set it there there's a surprisingly large impact. Set it on a layer of bubblewrap or foam, instead.
If you have humidity issues, I believe you can collect desiccant packets from other things and bake them on low heat to 'refresh' them (bake out the existing humidity) Ideally do this baking with good ventilation.
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I have contacts at the European Southern Observatory where the security copy of their archive is on disconnected hard-drives. Based on in-house tests, they reckon that the drives last very well provided that they are spun up at least once per year. If they are left unpowered for longer than that they tend to die.
RAID is used as redundancy against hardware failure, not as a backup solution. If one of your drives fails in a RAID 1, sweet, you've not lost your data. However, overwriting all your data with crap will leave then you with two drives of crap. Where's your data now?
TFA isn't asking about hardware failure in a way that RAID would be the correct answer.
Drobo.
Http://www.drobo.com.
I have 2 of them and one has saved my butt.
After losing 7 hard drives behind a cheap surge protector after a lightning strike, I now have serial APS surge protectors and a 4.5 TB Drobo.
Format it for 8 TB and you can swap drives in and out as you need to move up in storage capacity.
It's pretty brainless to use. You just plug it in and let it do its job. Get the fast SATA drives.
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My solution to this is to store my stuff on bare sata-2 drives (1 - 1.5TB @ $0.10USD / GB). I have a couple of eSata enclosures which offer tool-less installation - just a thumb-latch, and slide the drive in/out (about $50USD). So, I keep the bare drives organized on a shelf, and can plug one in as desired in about 30 seconds. Cheaper than tape, and just about as cheap as single-layer DVD-R discs, plus each 1TB drive will hold about 250 SL or 125 DL DVD's worth of data. Since the cost / GB is about the same for the newer 1.5TB discs as for 1TB discs of the same speed, I am getting the bigger drives these days. Each drive is about the size of a small paperback book.
If you want to back up one of these, with the eSata connection to the computer you can back up a TB from disc to disc in about 4 hours. That's a collection of a couple hundred feature-length movies.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
If you'd just like to store your data off the PC, and you need "unlimited" storage, get a sata hot-swap mobile rack, a bunch of drives and presto!
Specifically, this is what I use.
Get one of these - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994057 and install it. Its' hot swap, and tray-less, so it treats the sata drives like cartridges. It's about $25.
Find out if your motherboard supports sata hot swap - if not, you'll need one of sate card that can do hotplug, try this - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132003. It works and it's about $25 as well.
Then determine your storage needs- 1TB drives can be had for as low as $75, but that's for relatively cheap drives. The better ones are about $100. 1.5TB drives are available for $130. The 2 TB still command a premium price at $280.
I'd recommend the 1.5's.
Buy a few of them, just like you would buy tape cartridges. Geek tip- if you buy several(4-5) drives at once from Newegg, they ship them in a styrofoam shipping thing, that has slots for 3.5" drives and works wonderfully as shelf container. You keep the anti-static bags the drives are shipped in, and put them on the drives before stowing them in the styrofoam form.
There, you now have the equivalent of a tape drive and cartridges, for all of $50 for the "drive" and cartridges at the price point you want. Unlike cheap tape, you get sata speeds, no vendor lock-in, and your data on a medium that is universal.
All that being said, you have do your backups as if the drives were tape cartridges- that implies a cartridge (drive) rotation system, data stored redundantly on multiple cartridges, regular backups and verification, etc. It won't do you much good if you don't follow the proper backup steps. Here's a guide to doing it properly- http://www.structuredsolutions.net/whitepapers/Tape%20Backup%20Procedure.htm
It is a nice piece of kit, however. It's up to you to use it properly.
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I use internal drives like this as backups for my server at work. After I run the backup, I put the drives back into the antistatic bag and store them in a safe deposit box in the vault at my bank. I have a piece of foam in the box so the drives don't sit directly on the metal box. The box costs ~$100 a year, and is a dry, safe, secure, off-premise storage location.
Actually "wedges" was coined in the book Mother of Storms by John Barnes to refer to people's extracted memories.
Some people never learn...no matter how many times something happens to them.
I think the "wedge" refers to the slice of the brain contained on it and not the hard drive itself.
As with other things, the nomenclature shifts such that the device is referred to by its content or function. For all intents and purposes, if the drive only contains the wedge, the drive becomes the wedge made manifest.
Compare how you tell someone to "put in the movie" without regard to the medium on which it is stored (VHS tape, DVD) or the player (VCR, PS3). The storage material is immaterial; only the material stored upon it matters in casual parlance.
There's also how we hold on to some obsolete terms such as "dialing a phone" even when it is done on a keypad instead of a spinning rotary dial (even in science fiction, you have the DHD (Dial Home Device) which only ever spun rotary style on the animated Stargate Infinity). And though "don't touch that remote" has largely supplanted "don't touch that dial" for TVs, we still talk about "rewinding" video even when there is no spool of tape to be rewound, and probably will for a very long time to come.
The terms were coined in reference to the mechanism, but they stick around because it was never about the mechanism, only the effect.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Any clean, dry, vibration-free storage is good for removed internal drives.
Yeah, they come in a nice box with antistatic bag and desiccant... what's wrong with that? Certainly the manufacturer likes this setup.
Yeah, that should be good enough. The three things that are going to kill a drive are:
1) Physical damage. Keep them in a box in a safe place where they won't be dropped or crushed.
2) Static electricity. Especially with exposed components, and the possibility of hundreds of volts of static between two points in a room, keep it in a anti-static bag.
3) Humidity. No brainer, just keep a dessicant in there for long periods of storage.
As others have stated, simply running the drives occasionally will prevent the internals from having issues. As far as environmental issues, though, these should be the only three things you need to watch for in storage.
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found some reclose-able anti-static bag http://www.uline.com/BL_57/No-Print-Static-Shielding-Bags-Reclosable
I've been dealing with this for clients for several years now - most of whom deal with AV and photography. Stuff that absolutely must remain intact at any cost.
For a while we used RAID - and RAID 1 and similar redundant options do work well enough. And we debated Blu-Ray. But the final solution seems to be solid state drives. They look to be stable enough once written to actually qualify as suitable for archival purposes. This comes as all hard drives seem to be suffering from poor quality lately. I just know that some of the companies are flat out lying to us in their white sheets based upon how many data failures I have witnessed in the last couple of years.
They aren't exactly inexpensive, but they do work better for this than a hard drive.
Another point to consider. Internal hard drive connectors (ATA, SCSI and SATA) were not designed for frequent connection and disconnection. And as such can cause problems. Also the circuitry on the bottom of the drive is quite fragile, vulnerable to scratches, moisture and static.
Even really rely cheap USB/SATA shells ($10 or less) would work well for the scenario described.
Or you can just grab some of these bags if the budget is really tight.
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