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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?"
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.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
Why don't you try a box and use magnets as packing peanuts? Be sure to leave them in a hot, humid place, like a shower, and never every spin them up
Dry, cool, and individually placed in anti-static bags, just be sure to spin them up every so often.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
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 actually had the same problem. I've got my entire 1,000+ Movie DVD and 400+ Television collection ripped to hard drive for use as streaming media to a media PC. I've been working on it for about 4 years now.
I ended up buying and setting up a bare-bones computers with RAID capabilities. Get a big tower with plenty of cooling. I originally used your same method. I purchased hard drives and external hard drive enclosures. This was cheaper than building pre-made drives. I especially like Vantec enclosures. However, I had a couple of drives go bad over the years. After some experimentation, I found that underpowered drives tend to loose data.
Now, I use the aforementioned RAID 1 solution. Originally I used 400gb drives but now I'm up to purchasing 1-TB drives. I've only had 1 drive go bad in the last 3 years and it was easily replaced with no loss of data. You could probably use Raid 5 just as easily, but my first setup didn't support it so I defaulted to Raid 1. The extra controller cars also used to be cheaper for RAID 1 but the costs have since equalized.
For the moment, I would advise against the 2TB drives. Many have serious slowdown problems and the cost/storage ratio is to high. 1.5tb drives are looking better and better.
Just remember good cooling! This may be the most important factor. Hot hard drives last a MUCH shorter time. I REALLY like Thermatake icage bays. They change 3-5.25" bays into 3-3.5" hard drive bays and have a really nice 120x120 fan on them to keep the drives cool.
If you buy a hard drive a month you can get some enormous storage capacity really quickly without breaking the bank. I'm up to 8TB right now. (16TB of drives).
The OP already has the online storage covered. This is regarding using HDD's for offline (not spinning) storage. Even if they're not being accessed and are physically separate from the primary storage, you still are subject to wear (spinning platters) and things like power surges.
Putting the dries back into their orignal enclosures, or perhaps an "OEM Pack" piece of foam (with anti-static bags) may be the best option. Better, consider putting the whole mess into a media-rated fire-safe.
1Tb external 'books' are enclosed, store and look like books, can be labeled like books, and can be unplugged and plugged in like they're removable media. And they're not that expensive.
Best regards.
The pirate bay backup(tm) offers a free and easy 4 step method to backup most movies/tv shows. .torrent of all your movies
1) create
2) upload to TPBB(tm) trackers
3) seed
4) In case of catastrophic harddrive failure/house being nuked from oribt, re-download all your movies
Advantages of TPBB over conventional backup methods
*Off-site - the backups are held of site in multiple unsecured locations
*Distributed - these locations are distributed across multiple contents
*Unlimited storage - You can even backup more content than your hard drive has space for
*Content Filtering - TPBB will filter out boring content, ensuring just worthwhile movies are kept
**Please consult your lawyer before using TPBB as we are not responsible for any legal disputes in your jurisdiction.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
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.
I have two home-built servers: one is an always-on, live NAS; the other is a backup server that I power on only to do backups (or restores if it comes to that). First rule I go by: always use the slower 5400 RPM drives, such as the Western Digital "Green" or the Samsung EcoGreen. For both media streaming and backup purposes, these hard drives are still plenty fast. The biggest benefit, though, is that they use less energy (particularly important if your system is always on), and don't get as hot, making cooling much easier (which usually also translates to quieter).
My live server is currently 4 x 1TB drives in RAID-5, using Linux software RAID. (I know RAID is no substitute for backup, but I still consider it "quasi" backup. But I also have real backup.) This system is fairly un-interesting: it's your typical DIY NAS.
The backup server is housed in the Norco RPC-4020. For $300, you get 24 SATA hot-swap bays. That price is hard to beat. I haven't filled this case up with drives yet, and I have plenty of physical space going forward. The hardware is just some unused spare components I had lying around. Extra SATA ports are provided by the Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (which works fine in "regular" 32-bit PCI slots).
This, IMO, is a pretty simple set up. I just power up the backup server whenever I need it, and turn it off when I'm done. I don't care about performance, since backups are always run as a batch job (typically over night).
Before I bought that Norco case, I was just using individual drives with a Thermaltake BlacX SATA-to-USB hard drive docking station. This is cheaper, just slightly less convenient. I did order 50 "zip lock"-style anti-static bags for $13. I ordered them from staticbags.com ("GRC Enterprises" was listed on my invoice). After I copied data to the drive and put it in an anti-static bag, I just added it to the stack of drives I had on my bookshelf. The Norco case definitely looks better! :)
All in all, I consider my system fairly robust. It's only semi-secure against my stupidity, and since its all housed in the apartment, does not safeguard against fire. But since the media rips are just copies of DVDs I actually own, my insurance policy becomes the ultimate backup.
Don't forget to migrate to a new (set of) drives every 5 years or so. Drives get bigger and in my experience you can collapse 4-5 into 1 after that period. This assumes you end up with lots of drives. This also refreshes your copies of the data. Sidebar - watch out for your O/S silently converting long file names to 8.3 filenames if your filepathnames are too long (esp. if you lengthen the filepathname somehow).
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.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
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.
The Internet has no garbage collection
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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