I’ve been meaning to get an external backup for a few years but I’ve been kicking the can down the road in hopes of finding some kind of amazing deal on a huge drive but even the 4TB drives I set as my baseline seem to be getting more expensive.
I’m afraid that with all the AI fuckery going on the prices and availability of everything is gonna go the way of RAM and I’m thinking I should just bite the bullet now
I just bit the bullet on a 20TB drive, hoping that’ll last me until I can afford to build a NAS. It should work out unless computer hardware just becomes permanently unaffordable in the next 3-4 years.
Damn. Me too.
Depending on what you’re doing with them, used enterprise SAS drives are a good buy. I built a NAS a few years ago around 4 6TB SAS drives I bought used off ebay. I had to buy a SAS card, but I was still only out like $450 for the entire machine including power supply, case, card, and motherboard. I went with a fanless industrial board which limited me a little bit but I still have 24TB of deep storage running Unraid for cheaper than an off-the-shelf solution.
edit: actually it’s six 6TB drives, two of them are parity drives. One of the parity drives is new, for extra redundancy.
Currently I’m just looking for an external backup for the shit I want to keep since I currently have nothing backed up. I have multiple drives on my PC and some of the most critical files I’ve duplicated on a few of them in case one of them croaks but I’d like the peace of mind of having all of my accumulated files backed up properly. Yes, I know you should have like 3 backups but just 1 would be an improvement for me currently
If you’ve got the space in your desktop case, an SAS card and used enterprise drive is a solid bet but probably not the cheapest if you’re only adding a single drive
Used drives are prone to failure, at minimum I would use 3 of them in raid5 to avoid data loss
If it’s just a storage drive I wouldn’t even spin it up except to store or retrieve data, but you’re certainly correct that they’re riskier. You can test drives, of course, but there’s a risk.
Skip the SAS so you don’t need a separate card, use SATA enterprise drives and it’s smooth sailing.
We are in a :cool-zone: wrt computer components. I suggest an external enclosure (I have two of these for example) so you can upgrade your storage later. Looking at 4-5tb drives, I see better deals with an enclosure and internal HDD combo than an external of the same size. Also consider refurbished drives for an even better deal.
EDIT: I mentioned a bunch of Newegg shopping links, but I would also browse your local Craigslist. All kinds of stuff pops up there.
70 dollars for a (refurbished) 4 tb hard drive?!? Get the fuck out of here
The cheapest internal 4 tb drive I can find locally is 129 euros, which equals about 150 dollars so it’s literally twice as expensive. Fuck, I’d buy two if they were that cheap over hereEdit: I did check out my local craiglist equivalent and indeed, I can find all kinds of hard drives there, internal and external, for much, much cheaper. I’ve bought used components from there before but as a massive pessimist I’ve always assumed a used hard drive or SSD would just immediately blow up on me 2 minutes after buying it and moving my shit onto it
Check out eBay. There’s going to be a run on this shit so get them while you can. Used HGST enterprise 10TB helium gas drives are really good and can be had for reasonable prices (as of last year). They’re kind of a hidden gem, so they sell out, but the prices stay relatively lower than current consumer models with warranty and nice packaging.
Damn, I could get an 8tb helium gas drive delivered to my door for less than 80 euros
Do it! Enterprise drives are typically changed out at about half their life cycle (5-8 years) and they’re under constant extreme conditions. So home use is like putting them out to pasture for their retirement years. I’m on a year of several of them without a hitch. Just keep in mind, they tend to be louder than consumer drives.
But when you get them, run a full SMART test. If there’s any errors that weren’t advertised, send it back. Also, don’t buy ones that have errors or bad sectors. Make sure you’re getting the SATA versions, not SAS. SATA are the most common consumer grade that can also do enterprise work, plenty fast enough for any home user. If you needed SAS you’d probably already be working in IT and you’ll need a bigger budget.
If you don’t have a system to fit a proper 3.5" HDD, don’t forget to get an enclosure for it!
I should say too, if all you want is mass storage for backups, Toshiba makes a consumer 8tb drive for ~$70 USD. But it is slow and does a data compression thing that further slows it down. Fine for backups and archive, but skip it if you’re going to play any media from it.
The 8TB one turned out to be one of those SAS drives, so it’s a no go for me. However, those same brand new 4TB drives that are about 130-160 euros here go for about 80-85 euros on Ebay 🤔
Gonna dig deeper
