# Archival Storge, and the failure rate of external hard drives?



## BenPhoto (Apr 14, 2012)

Hi Folks,

I am in need of an external hard drive and as I've been doing my research I'm finding that there is a very high percentage of hard drive failures. I've heard that Lacie's are the absolute worst for equipment and customer support and this seems to be statically valid if you look at the % of people that have had problems on review forums ALL over the internet. But the same is also true for most brands. Carnegie Mellon did a study to find that failure rates have been grossly under-reported by all manufacturers.

What do pro photographers do/use... that have to archive there work?

I have to archive thousands of photos and really burning to cd'rs would be mindlessly time consuming. However I have Kodak gold cd'r's from 10 years ago that work fine.

Any advice? I would lie to get an external drive but it seems like that is a serious gamble for losing data.

Thanks for responses


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## Overread (Apr 14, 2012)

There are two kinds of harddrive in the world.

Those that have failed and those that are yet to. 


They are unreliable, but also offer you the most affordable and speedy way to create a backup system. If you want added protection the best way is to use a raid system over multiple drives and then also have two backup systems (either two backup raids or two separate backup harddrives - in addition to your original storage of the photos). 
Those that can also keep a 3rd offsite backup drive to help avoid theft or fire damage from wiping out all the data in one go. 

Personally I think CD/DVD burning will end up costing you just as much in parts and time; esp as youll have to sit there and monitor each and every disk as its burnt - check it works and move onto the next - harddrive backup you can setup and leave running during the night if its taking that long.


There is also the option of cloud and offsite storage companies where you transfer you data over the web for storage. This can be as simple as a paid account at flickr holding fullsize versions of your JPEGs through to dedicated storage companies storing your RAWS and edited versions.


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## Rgollar (Apr 14, 2012)

Im not a pro but I can tell you how I back up my stuff. I own a readynas pro that has six 2 terabyte hard drives in it. The six hard drives are set up for raid 5 configuration so If any one of my hard drives goes bad, I do not lose anything. All I have to do is swap the bad one out. With this configuration It gives me 12 terabyte of storage but only 9 terabyte is useable storage as this allows for hot swapping hot drives if it goes bad. Or If I want to upgrade to bigger hard drives I just swap out 1 at a time. A must have for me as I never want to lose any data.


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## cgipson1 (Apr 14, 2012)

BenPhoto said:


> Hi Folks,
> 
> I am in need of an external hard drive and as I've been doing my research I'm finding that there is a very high percentage of hard drive failures. I've heard that Lacie's are the absolute worst for equipment and customer support and this seems to be statically valid if you look at the % of people that have had problems on review forums ALL over the internet. But the same is also true for most brands. Carnegie Mellon did a study to find that failure rates have been grossly under-reported by all manufacturers.
> 
> ...



I am in IT... and know that drives fail. But... if you buy a good quality drive (s) and put them in a good quality external chassis (preferably with a cooling option), they are a lot less likely to fail than the already made (usually as cheap as possible) external drives marketed as backup solutions.

I highly recommend the Western Digital Black Label Drives (enterprise quality) based on years of experience with them. Of course.. redundancy is highly recommended also! Build two, use them alternately in whatever timeframe you choose! Or even better, back up to both (use one strictly as a backup write only drive.. and use the other as a backup / working drive. The chances of losing both at the same time is very, very small!

I have had excellent experiences with these....   http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173042      and these    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136792. I have built over a hundred of these.. for various enterprise users, field offices, etc.. as well as a half dozen or so for my own use! Have not had a failure yet...


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## BenPhoto (Apr 14, 2012)

Thanks for the informed responses. That newegg product looks good.....I am familiar with Raids but really was hoping for a less expensive solution. Why is the Apple store selling Lacie external drives if they are clearly notorious for problems and zero support? That stymies me.

As I said I have kodak gold cd-r's that are ten years old and work fine (and cheaper ones from back then that do not).........*.does anyone know how long a DVD-R might last*....are there better versions of that media available like archival gold versions etc????


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## cgipson1 (Apr 14, 2012)

BenPhoto said:


> Thanks for the informed responses. That newegg product looks good.....I am familiar with Raids* but really was hoping for a less expensive solution.* Why is the Apple store selling Lacie external drives if they are clearly notorious for problems and zero support? That stymies me.
> 
> As I said I have kodak gold cd-r's that are ten years old and work fine (and cheaper ones from back then that do not).........*.does anyone know how long a DVD-R might last*....are there better versions of that media available like archival gold versions etc????



Unfortunately, you get what you pay for! Quality and reliability are expensive.  

Archival quality optical media has a estimated minimum lifespan of 100 to 200 years, depending on type of media. But no one knows actually.. hypothetically, it could last forever in a stable environment.

Optical media longevity


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## The_Traveler (Apr 14, 2012)

I'm aware of the issues with failures but also having some experience with statistics, I cheat the gods by backing up everything to two separate 1 tb size disks.
It is done once daily routinely and automatically on a schedule and also after uploading any images from a shoot.
The chances of all three disks going bad at the same time is miniscule.
When the house is empty, one of the disks goes into a fireproof, waterproof safe sunk in a basement cement floor.
When we go away, my neighbor holds one drive for me.
If the disaster is so great as to obliterate all of this, well I'll have much bigger problems in my life than my amateur pictures being lost.


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## IByte (Apr 14, 2012)

When buy some drives you may want to into some recovery software, just in case.


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## Garbz (Apr 15, 2012)

The problem is often the people who expect the wrong things from equipment. I have seen these external harddisks carted around in laptop bags and being handled as carefully as laptops (hint there's a reason laptops don't use desktop harddisks and it's not just size). I've seen desktop harddrive enclosures running under mountains of paperwork wondering why they haven't caught fire, and I've seen people who consider having a RAID1 external harddisk permanently attached to the computer is a "backup". 

Harddisk are actually quite reliable and only a very small percentage fail over a 5 year period. Here's some tips if you want to run a backup:

- Use an external harddisk. They are far more reliable than CDs where a single scratch can render them permanently unreadable, or worse still "bitrot" can mean the coatings start flaking while in storage. No CDs really have met the claim of 100 year archival life. Same goes for DVDs, but if you do go that route the ones with the best hardware error correction and the best choice for archival is DVD-RAM. 
- Treat your harddisk with care. It's not a laptop harddisk. Dropping it may end it.
- Backup and then turn off the harddisk and store it OFFSITE. A flood, fire or theft could render anything onsite as not so good for backups, so take your drive to work or store it at your parents or something. 
- Make sure you backup regularly. Harddisks in storage for long periods can seize.


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