Mass storage devices.

I am getting sick of sinking money into DVDs and it is time to get more storage capacity.

The problem is that as far as I can tell, *EVERY* major hard drive manufacturer in the world is owned and operated by Western Digital. Thus there is no competition whatsoever.

WD owns Seagate, Hitachi, and I think they also own the hard drive division of Samsung too.

So what are my options? Give in to the mass storage bullies that have a monopoly and mass produce drives that have a higher than 50% fail rate within a year or buy a defective by design Blu-Ray burner that has a absolutely laughable 2MB buffer and will reliably make coasters every burn?

Blu-Ray is appealing. It has 7x the capacity of DVDs, but this also means the buffer is a seventh the amount needed to keep up due to the burn rate and the undeniable fact that the burners are designed to make coasters.

Right now it would be cheapest to get a working 3TB HD if you could believe it would even work. And that is doubtful since they have zero competition. Even if it did work you cannot rely upon the drives since they still have a greater than 50% fail rate in a year.

Online storage is a potential, but that means I would have to pay for access to my data and that places many restrictions on availability. If my Internet connection died for a day or two I would have no data to play with besides what is on my PC already. Also I do not want my data in anyone's hands but my own.

Anyone know a better option? (Or even what is the cheapest reliable option?)

Thank you in advance.

 

Personally, I just made myself a RAID-1 from external HDDs. Yes, it does cost quite a lot on the start, but you are kind of safe unless you get really unlucky (since both HDDs would have to die at the same time).

 

That is similar to what I do now. I use two identical drives and manually copy the data between them. It is actually safer than a RAID since most RAIDs require you to replace any drive even if it is just a mirror drive before you can use the drive as normal.

But the problem is cost and reliability. What I would not give for a few massive 3TB drives that actually work...

 

Honestly, I've recently moved my entire business backup to cloud-based solutions. The competition between apple, google, dropbox, and other more established players is just making it too tempting to ignore. Plus, it cuts down on my power, theft insurance - I was totally converted to it.

Biggest problem, of course, is if my internet goes down and I need to restore a backup. That hasn't happened yet, but I'm sure it will someday. But I think online storage really deserves a good hard look.

 

I looked at a few, but to be frank, I backup everything I purchase and I think they would eventually get to snooping through my files and see DVD images and presume I illegally downloaded the content. Each of them says they do not snoop, but I have a perfect example of how I can foresee this sort of thing breaking and royally 'Effing me over:

I have a purchase physical copy of "Saint's Row 2" for the PC. I do not use Steam. But I must have Steam installed to install and play the game. After trying all manner of other things to try to trick it into installing without Steam I gave up and downloaded a "Scene Release" of the game by a well known release group. I can effortlessly install and play that copy. And despite their claims to the contrary, I do not violate any laws to do so since I never was presented with a copy of the terms of service for the game license before purchase and the game box does not say it requires Steam in any way. And they will not offer me a refund even if I ask for one because I refuse the terms of service. (The terms also say they are not responsible for this BS and all manner of nonsense I cannot and will not willingly agree to.)

Since I have no other choice to play the game, I use the cracked release. It is archived on my system. If I decide to place the archive on their cloud storage system, they can and absolutely will delete this and probably end my service without offering me my files back even if I had another way to back them up at that point.

Copyright holders should be protected from theft. But when they steal my money and fail to deliver, I have every right to bypass their standard system and acquire the same exact content by the best means available to me. The way the current cloud based solutions work for this is that they check the MD5 or SHA-1 hash of the file before uploading it to see if they already have it. Once they confirm someone else has it, they abort sending that file since it is redundant. Therefore if any single person files a DMCA takedown notice about a file matching that hash, they delete the one and only file for all those users.

Every content type would be effected the same way. My DVD images of movies and Sci-Fi television series I have purchased would be gone instantly if I relied upon their honesty. My MP3 rips of my music CDs would be the same as many others at the same bitrate.

Sadly this all means that the cloud will invariably betray me and ruin my currently perfect archive forever. They cannot afford to negotiate and discuss why I have or may not have a legal right to store my backups. They have only one reasonable choice. And it is unreasonable to me.

 

Well, technically speaking it's possible to get over that by simply packing every file into an archive with password, which you'll then pack into another archive with a different password. Even if all of your files have the same two passwords for that, it's a little bit too difficult for them to bother taking a look most of the time, and since doing that changes the checksums, the file is unlikely to be there already.

But whatever, personally I prefer not to use online storage if I don't have to send data or make it available for others.

 

The thought of differentiating my files via archives had occurred to me. But the problem is that it *LOOKS* suspicious. Especially if they are archived in password protected formats. I rather doubt they would feel good about storing a terabyte or more every year from me of Truecrypt volumes either. It looks very bad. In fact, is almost guarantees you would get served a court order to turn over your password or passwords for each and every file because of this sort of thing.

And once they find my example "Saint's Row 2" from Razor 1911, they would arrest me. Not that I have done anything illegal there, but in America we must prove we have a legal right to have it and I really doubt the courts would agree and set a precedent as ugly as that would imply. Likewise I would have to prove I owned a copy of each and every other item they find. They would likely try to pretend I am a bootlegger or somesuch nonsense to demand the courts authorize them to dig through and confiscate every last item I own as well as those of my family.

If I misplaced one single CD/DVD that I backup they can justify all of their BS and throw me in prison for the rest of my life.

Call me paranoid if you like. I only wish that were accurate. (Because if I am paranoid that would mean they are not in fact out to get me.)

 

Back to the subject, a 3TB 5400 RPM hard drive is currently about ~$200 USD. But I would have to get two of them to be certain I had my data reliably.

A Blu-Ray burner costs about ~$100 or so. 50 25GB BD-ROMs would cost anywhere between ~$30 and ~$70 USD depending on sales and reliability of the media. If all were perfect burns, they would equal 1.25 TB of data. But that is assuming each were filled to 100% capacity. More likely this would make BD-ROMs more expensive than hard drives. And since I do not require portability of my data there is no reason to resort to this.

The average online cloud based storage costs ~$20 USD per month for individuals. But I expect they will eventually ramp that up to closer to ~$50 USD per month due to the amount of data I would be storing. Even at $20 USD per month that is $240 per year. I could buy a 3TB hard drive and enjoy local undisturbed storage that would take me two or three years to fill. Perhaps more if I do not download boatloads of junk.

Sadly this pretty much means I need to save up $400 to buy two 3TB drives.

Anyone have a better idea or any additional thoughts?

 

If you are that concerned about snooping, I would say that your best option in terms of online backups is SpiderOak, since they use client-side encryption (they don't have the encryption key required to access your files, only you do). There's a short summary of their encryption model on Wikipedia, if you want to do some research.

 

I have 1 of these: http://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-RX-D...MW92/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338778036&sr=8-1 external docks. My desktop computer has an eSATA port which allows me to access the drive as fast as if it was inside my computer. I just bought a relatively cheap hard drive for it and viola, a hard drive I can use for anything. I could even boot from it. The only limitation with the dock I have which might not be the exact same model I show above can only access up to a 2TB hard drive. By the way, I also have a USB 2.0 external seagate hard drive with 500GB of space and it has taken years for my to come close to filling it. All in all, I find this an economical solution and if needed, the dock can handle USB 2.0 as it's interface.

 

I too have a dock like that. Mine is the Thermaltake BlacX that that was based upon however. I also use eSATA for it and I have two identical 1TB drives. One in my PC and one in the external dock.

SpiderOak is sadly expensive. Very much so in fact. $10 per 100GB per month. That would be $100 per month for the same 1TB of data storage that a $100 hard drive would cost. They literally make 12x the expense in drives or more. In addition I would need no password for a local drive. And my data would actually remain in my hands at all times.

I checked Newegg for current prices and best options on the BD-ROM front and found these results:
SONY Black 12X BWU-500S 8MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner $114 with shipping.
Memorex 25GB 4X BD-R 30 Pack Model 98499 $31 with shipping.

The burner is good and well rated. It has an 8MB cache that is much better than the pathetic 2MB that almost all drives come with. It should be 128MB if they wanted this to actually stop failed burns, but they do not care enough to make drives that are reliable. I guess the few dollars it may cost are just too much for them to handle. Pffft.

The discs are cheap and well rated too. 30 x 25GB = 750GB. That is not terrible for $31. A hard drive is still cheaper if you can rely upon them actually working, but the last time I bought hard drives I had to RMA a DOA drive six times paying $15 every damned time to ship it back before I finally gave up on them ever sending one that worked.

 

Likewise I am sure I could get rid of some old junk I will never touch again and probably manage another year before I have to make some hard choices. But deleting data is a terrible thing to have to do. I probably have 5TB of junk archived by now. Half of it is worthless. I just want to avoid bothering to clean through it all.

I did the math and those BD-ROMs wind up costing 24.1 cents per GB. And this 3TB hard drive winds up costing 5.8 cents per GB.
Western Digital Caviar Green WDBAAY0030HNC-NRSN 3TB $174 with shipping. Even buying two of them to always have a backup this is less than half the cost of burning BDs.

 

I'd just like to note that I've never had a failed harddrive in my entire life, I don't believe in the 50% fail rate within a year claim. My current computer has the harddrive I bought when I built it 4 years ago, the harddrive from my previous computer I built 6 years ago, and the harddrive from the computer I had before that which I built 8 years ago...

I think I have my first PC harddrive somewhere still in working condition, I don't use it because it's only 2.6GB.

 

I too find it hard to believe. I have had drives die suddenly without any apparent reason. But only a few out of dozens. The biggest chance of a failed drive is what happens in shipping. Even buying a drive at a local store gives no guarantee they will work. And the last time I bought any the policy was as follows:

You buy a new HD. It is dead on arrival. You file for RMA with the manufacturer and ship it back at your own expense and they eventually bother to acknowledge they have your dead drive and they ship you another dead drive. Repeat for all eternity. I gave up after six DOAs in a row. They were still laughing that I was fool enough to think RMA means anything to them. Hell, that is not even the most insulting part. Send them a new retail drive and they send you a dead refurbished drive as the replacement.

The biggest problem is that they have no reason to care. There is zero competition whatsoever. All the manufacturers are owned by Western Digital. So they all have similar drives for similar prices and they have no reason to try to please you. You have no-where else to turn.

I still have some old AT 10MB hard drives somewhere in my garage. It is a 5 and 1/4 inch drive. It was rated at the then blazing speed of several kilobits per second I think. They were made to last back then.

 

I've had about 80% of my HDD fail on me, since I started building my own PCs in 1996 or so. I use them until they fail - so that's about 20% which I abandoned for some other odd reason. I don't think I've ever had one last more than 3 years.

Then again, I'm a software developer and probably put tremendous stress on my machines compared to many users.

 

Discussing failure of hard drives, the way you use them has lots to do with how long they last. Just like a light bulb using a filament or a arc tube, switching them on and off more often makes them fail more quickly. I disable any and all power saving modes for hard drives. I suggest you do too. There is little or no reason at all to let your hard drives go to sleep or whatever stupidity they are defaulting to in most systems. The power consumption is not much at all. Let them stay on forever and they will last many times as long.

It may sound contradictory, but it is perfectly true. Leave them on and they will last longer by far.

 

Ah yes, I have a habit of keeping my computer on 24/7, guess that could be part of why mine last so well. (turning the power on/off a lot also affects motherboard and CPU survival).

 

Yah, I keep mine running and I've never had a HDD go - I have one from 03 thats outlasted 3 motherboards and a cpu

 

I have two hard drives from WD-- one is 1 tb and "portable" (much smaller), and the other is 1tb and not portable (about the size of the portable one squared). They've worked alright but yes, the power saving thing on the portable was a pain until I turned it off (especially since I used said hard drive for music and it would switch off after 2-3 minutes, basically creating an annoying 5 second stutter when changing songs).

Neither one has failed and I've had them about two years...most of the problems have been with the laptop I had before this one, which would occasionally crash and mess things up (although I only ever lost data one, and then it was just a few files). I have heard some horror stories about hard drive failure before. It might be because I don't use these harddrives that often-- my music is now on my ipod and I listen from there most of the time instead of on the computer, etc.

One thing you should read for in reviews is if what you're buying comes with any annoying proprietary software that "helps" you backup things or adds "security"...my girlfriend has a WD harddrive that came with a password thing you can't get rid of, and it has gotten buggy a couple of times. It's not even really software, it's like, built into the hardware and if you just reformat it apparently breaks everything