External hard-drive for back up

[Hookmaster]

What are the better performing/dependable brands that everyone has been using? Is there one that works better on Mac or on a PC?

[Jim Almquist]

I have a 320Gb Seagate that has been working great for the past 3 years. I also have a BLAC X SATA docking station that will accept 2.5 and 3.5 SATA hard drives that will connect up to to the computer with USB or eSATA. Great way to just use bigger HDs for storage. It will handle up to 2TB hard drives.

I have had good luck with WD (Western Digital)drives in all sizes.

[upnorth]

I would seriously take a look at NAS devices. You can put them on the network and several devices can access them without moving them from one device to another. And the price has come down pretty well. I have an older one that is kinda slow, but all the PCs/laptops can get to it easily. If I want to have access to the same file from any device there it is easy as pie. Uses basic windows type file sharing.

[delcecchi]

I have a couple of Seagate externals that connect by USB3. Added card for usb3 to computer. They work fine, although there is some strangeness with microsoft backup and 3TB disks.

[jentz]

Western digital is what I have (My Book) had for 6?7 years,I dont let it run on start up.I access it 2X a month at least. Its has been reliable.I read of it before purchase.Like anything there were bad reviews.It however had the least of them bad reviews,so I tried it.I wouldn't hesitate to get another when needed.

[BobT]

I have a 1TB Seagate and a 750MB Western Digital and both have been working fine for over two years.

[LMITOUT]

I would seriously take a look at NAS devices. You can put them on the network and several devices can access them without moving them from one device to another. .

+1

About a month ago I picked up a WD network drive and it is much better than dealing with the slow USB connection. And as upnorth mentioned, I can access the files from anywhere with even my smartphone or tablet using the manufacturer provided app. I really had no idea they were that affordable until I was shopping for another external drive and then stumbled upon this Western Digital "My Book Live" 2TB drive.

[Scott K]

If you need to save a bunch of existing data onto it, make sure you get one with a USB port, or it would take you a lot of time save the info onto the new drive. I have about 1.5 TB of existing data. I about threw it away, I bet I had 50 hours saving it all.

[LMITOUT]

Don't you mean an Ethernet port?

[delcecchi]

I think USB3 is faster than ethernet. And much faster than wireless.

[LMITOUT]

USB 3.0 is a different story. However, you're still limited by the hard drive's transfer rate, but without question it is better than USB 2.0 if your PC is capable of using its full potential.

[aanderud]

I think USB3 is faster than ethernet. And much faster than wireless.

My USB 3.0 drive can do sustained transfers at roughly 65 megabytes per second (about 500 Megabits). Definitely faster than 100 Mbps Ethernet (which most folks have at home).

In theory, a gigabit Ethernet connection could be faster. However, most folks don't have that at home. What's worse with the gigabit thing is that most computers just don't usually have the horsepower to push files at >500 Mbps over their Ethernet connections. Ethernet seems to have a much higher system impact it seems than USB or SATA storage. To mitigate this type of thing, you need to have jumbo frames enabled, and not just on the host machines but also any switches between them. You can also sometimes tweak the TCP settings in the registry (some things like TCP window scaling aren't enabled by default in Windows).

I guess the short of it is that USB 3.0 will outperform most home networks. However, there's something to be said about the convenience of the network attached storage, even if it's not the fastest. My wife and I can access our files on our NAS from any laptop or tablet in the house, and via VPN can actually get to them from anywhere worldwide. This is not the case with USB hard drives.

All that being said, I actually utilize a combination of things at home -- the NAS being the primary storage, and USB 3.0 external drive being a backup.

[upnorth]

I think USB3 is faster than ethernet. And much faster than wireless.

Some of the stuff coming out in wireless is amazingly fast. 801.11ac is insanely fast.

With dual antenna setups 1.69 gbs are not out of reach. There are configurations that surpass that too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ac

[Scott K]

I was referring to having both. The USB3 port for installing existing data, and the ethernet port to access it, and install updated data.

My home internet at the time was 15mb down, ans 2mb up. So installing/uploading 1.5tb took forever, and the thing would stop on its own. I couldnt do file sizes larger then 5gb at a time, so I had to break them up into individual files, then piece them back in. This was from the instructions of the tech assistant at WD. Another thing to keep in mind, buy it, and use it right away, as your free tech assistance is only good from 30 days from date of purchase. My mistake, I left it sit around for a few weeks before I started to upload all of my data. Then it was taking forever, and wouldnt load the larger files, so when I got to calling them for help, I only had 3 days left for free. Of course, they didnt tell me this, so when their first instruction were to erase everything I had on it, then do an update, I took a few day to do that. Then when I had the same issue, I called back, and they told me it would cost me $39.95 for help, since it has been longer then 30 days.

Eventually I called them, and they had me divide the files into portions less then 5gb, then transfer them. But it was a huge pita, and I wouldnt do it again. In fact, I am not sure I would buy another WD product for the lack of help from their CS. But now all is good. Except I have found I have to restart it about 1 time every other week, because it doesnt let me access it. Of course, this will only happen when I am away, and have to have the information now, but no one is home to restart it for me.

[delcecchi]

If you can run wires you can use 10G ethernet or InfiniBand to connect as well.

But a 3TB drive with USB3 is only a hundred bucks. If I were doing the NAS thing I would go for high reliability, some form of RAID.

[LMITOUT]

The NAS drive I got (2TB) was just a tad over $100. My PC doesn't have USB 3.0 so getting a drive with that wasn't an option for me.

Regardless, the ability to have it on the network and accessible from anywhere at anytime is what I like.

[delcecchi]

I added a USB3 card to my PC. Looks like you can now get a 4 port USB3 to PCI-Express card for a desktop for 20 bucks. If you are talking about a laptop, that's different.

I am actually tempted to get a NAS drive in addition to what I have, just on general principles.

[Whoaru99]

The speeds depend on which version of interfaces you're talking about. For file transfer, generally the more common ones stack up as -

100Mbps ethernet LAN

USB 2.0 (480 Mbps)

1000Mbps (gigabit) ethernet LAN

USB 3.0 (5000Mbps)

These are the gross/theoretical speeds and will have have losses, but I believe from a practical matter the net speeds still stack up in this order. Although the USB 3.0 interface looks like it will kick serious a$$, limitation of the disk read/write speed will still cap transfer well below 5000Mbps, but it will be faster for sure than say USB 2.0, but in this situation perhaps not blazing faster than gigabit ethernet.

Another consideration, if using it for remote access, is that any interface in your hous3 will almost certainly be faster than your internet upload speed can providethe information outside your LAN. Sure, some of you may be exceptions, but for the majority of people this will be true. For example, internet upload from my house is limited to 4Mbps.

[upnorth]

ISCSI is a pretty standard SAN connection vehicle in the business world. For the most part it works well with very minimal delays and wait times.

And until recently mostly seen Gig ports on switches. The new high end switch gear will handle 10 Gig, but not seeing a whole lot of that used except in the instances of major data centers or Network backbone across fiber for linking data closets back to a data center core.

[Scott K]

You guys are talking over my head, all I know is that, when I transferred the data onto mine via wireless with a modem capable of 100mb, in house, so it wasnt needed to go through the internet, from a laptop to the hard drive, it transferred at about 5mbs, sometimes slower. It was very frustrating.

[Whoaru99]

FWIW, I do my disk image backups via a USB 2.0 HDD and get an average of ~25MB/s (~200Mbps).

[jmd1]

I use a macbook pro (vintage 2008) and use a Lacie rugged external HD with the fire wire 800 to connect. No issues, actually my HD on mac quit and was able to do a current back up with no issues. I also have a Seagate 1 tb that i got a cost co for a song. I use it on my mac desktop. no issues with the seagate but i like the mobility of the lacie.

[upnorth]

Wireless data transfer rates can vary with signal strength and most the time with wireless you won't attain the same speed that you can with wireless because of how wireless works. There are all sorts of issues, broadcasts, interference, collisions, rebroadcast etc. Hard to explain it in few short sentences. Add to that home units most the time won't work near as well as commercial units.

And if you pulling it down from the internet it could be your connection and it could be their site. Just cuz you can connect to the internet at 100 mb and hence them, if 100 others are trying the same thing no way they are going to be able to keep up. Look at what Obamacare's web site has going on.

Trying to service multiple users can be a tough situation as far as server and income and outgoing bandwidth are concerned.

[Whoaru99]

You guys are talking over my head, all I know is that, when I transferred the data onto mine via wireless with a modem capable of 100mb, in house, so it wasnt needed to go through the internet, from a laptop to the hard drive, it transferred at about 5mbs, sometimes slower. It was very frustrating.

The units of measure can be frustrating too. Some things are rated in megabits per second for speed but sometimes transfer rates may be shown in megabytes per second.

So, if your router is 100Mbps (megabits per second) that would be equivalent of 12.5MB/s (megabytes per second). For good measure, figure you'll actually get roughly half of that, so about 50Mbps or 6MB/s. So, yes, for large backup/file transfer, that may seem fairly slow...around 12 hours to back up say 250GB of data.

[delcecchi]

The wireless router might be older, 802.11G which can deliver about 22Mbits per second (54 max) or if only a couple years old it most likely is 802.11N which can deliver up to 600 Mb/sec, but I think the cheaper ones are only up to 200 Mb/sec.

If it is a wired connection that is most likely 100 Mbits/second max. But you don't actually get that due to various overheads.