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[bouncingleaf]

Dear LJ,

I'm thinking of buying an external drive for backups for my home pc. Reviews online don't even suggest clear leaders, let alone a winner.

Also thinking of upgrading the mobo and CPU.

Any opinions or recommendations?

Comments

[_nicolai_]

To ensure clarity, I think it worth noting that your blog post talks about a NAS (Network Attached Storage), whereaas comments above and below this comment refer to directly-connected USB-connected drives.
While I still say that USB drives are much of a muchness, NAS are not much of a muchness and features and reliability can vary widely.
Which one Leaf wants isn't entirely clear, and which is suitable depends on requirements (eg several computers to back up vs cheapness and simplicity).

[_nicolai_]

I think external USB drives are much of a muchness. I have had a Toshiba 1TB unit for a while, bought mainly because it was the cheapest that looks reasonable and I find it fine (has an on-off switch which I find useful).
The differences appear fairly trivial, along the lines of "does it have an on/off switch on the drive" and "can you stand it on the short side of the box, or only the long side" etc.

[also_huey]

This is what I did. The box for the enclosure says "5.25 External Enclosure" and "Model NO CD-509-U2" and "Made in China" but otherwise no indication of where it came from. I think I paid $20 for it. It's been used for recovering the data off of a computer that's blown up, backing machines up, moving files around, and I think it currently has one of the spare 80G drives in it, containing a fairly old backup of the fileserver, which I probably ought to run again, ...so thanks for mentioning it.

[_nicolai_]

Many of the USB drives I've bought do spin down when idle, including the aforementioned Toshiba (the detail is, that there's a (saved) option you can set on (S)ATA drives to spin down when idle, or not to spin down, and many drives in USB enclosures seem to come with idle-spin-down enabled while drives not specifically sold in USB enclosures do not).
I wouldn't consider wear and tear on the drive to be a big problem. For example the Seagate Barracuda LP drive, aimed at USB enclosures, is rated for 50000 start/stop cycles if used in a desktop sort of environment. With a typical idle timeout of 5 minutes, you'd have to use it particularly perversely to use that up quickly.

[mpacket]

Have you considered on-line back-up? There are quite a few that are reasonably priced and work pretty elegantly. It has some downside for sure (some of my friends worry the company will evaporate) but plenty of upside.

[perspicuity]

i'm a fan of LACIE products, well built, and solid; they work on mac and pc. some of them even have nifty "one button backup". the fancy models come with multiple interfaces (usb, fw400/800, e?sata, and possibly more).

a 1 TB or larger drive shouldn't be too costly now. you can definitely save some $$$, and buy a mere 750 GB drive, and use that for backups; actually, buy 2 (or more) and either rotate them, or wait for one to fill, then swap in a new one, and put the "full one" somewhere very safe (like a fireproof safe). i also store the drives in ziplock bags just to be extra paranoid.

if your datasets are also small enough, consider buring a DVD or three now and again for additional peace of mind.

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