Choosing External Hard Drive Enclosure For Raid 5 - Help

Bob,

Current tech drives ? Like which ones ?

I know that RAIDs are not 100% backups and never will be. There can be multiple drive failures which doesn't protect data, there can be a theft, etc... so no, I am not intending to make a RAID a backup. On the other hand, it is very likely that all multiple drives will fail at once, but it can happen.

With your 4TB hard drive, of course it will run on less power than to power up 4 x 1TB hard drives in RAID 5. I was thinking that maybe I should only invest in a one bay hard drive enclosure, pop a 4TB hard drive, and make weekly backups on the cloud ? The only problem with the cloud is I don't trust the CLOUD ! Every person can access my data and I don't think its that secure as getting my data into a storage device.

Bob,

The Seagate drive that you proposed seems legit, but the only problem that I have with Seagate's is their high hard drive failure rate. I personally don't trust Seagate.

I know you didn't mention any Cloud, I did. I was just thinking about the cloud as a backup storage.

"

Who wrote this was storage? And isn't the real problem that this is a single device? With your last copy?" Are you talking about the Cloud ? That the cloud is not storage ? And that storage is a single device ?

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In parting my son syncs what he can't lose across a few of these."</div> You are talking here about your son syncing his data across Seagate drives ?

Your choice here. All the failures I see are from drops and almost exclusively external drives.

I think you are thinking of http://www.techspot.com/news/55399-backblaze-data-shows-hitachi-and-seagate-as-most-and-least-reliable-hard-drives-respectively.html

Since no drive is 100% and RAID (any model) does not substitute for backups, you have choices to make. I can't make them for you but don't mind discussing the traps folk fall into.
Bob

Bob,

"I think you are thinking of http://www.techspot.com/news/55399-backblaze-data-shows-hitachi-and-seagate-as-most-and-least-reliable-hard-drives-respectively.html"
Yes, that is correct. This is the article that I had read and also other articles on Seagate vs WD. But you are correct, every hard drive has a failure rate and fails once so this is where the backups come in handy. If I may ask, what do you use for your backups ?

Then sync the 3 units. I have a NAS on the router which is a simple 2.5 inch USB powered 500GB drive. It's very low power most of the time at under 1 Watt.

Finally I have a trio of 32GB memory sticks and cards that have what I can't lose (this make 7 copies so far!) and then a dropbox of a few items I want to have handy and don't care if anyone sees them.

On top of that are DVDs that get made every few months.

The moderators get together to say it in unison "We only lose what we don't backup."

My thoughts on RAID is because I've seen companies try it in lieu of backups and well, let's say the disaster scene wasn't pretty.
Bob

Thank you Bob !

I will take your advice, I will only get one hard drive, a Seagate this time, the one you proposed I will give it a try. Get an external enclosure and put it in, and save things to it, plus make a regular backup on another drive And another copy on a 64GB USB Flash Drive Thank you so much. Very nice talking to you and for helping me out. Really appreciate it.