External Hard Drives

[Rob C]

Hi -

I've reached a point where my C-drive is full and will do no more work for me until I offer it some form of relief!

I already have an Iomega external HD which tells me that it has a capacity of 931 GBs. I have put most of the images living within the computer's C-drive onto this external drive, over time, without doing much to affect its remaining capacity, but I'm reluctant to dump/eliminate the stuff on the C-drive without getting a second backup drive.

Can anyone recommend brands that have proven reliability? The Iomega came to me via a relative, and wasn't a personal purchase made by me on known quality standards. Any suggestions for 'safe' external hard drives?

Thanks -

Rob C

[Christopher Sanderson]

I have two 1TB of these puppies and you can't get much safer - not really very portable tho...

NewerTech Guardian Maximus Pro

[David Sutton]

Hi Rob. I think any brand can fail any time without warning. Every Seagate internal drive I've had has failed when the weather warmed up. All my external drives are Western Digital and get more than their their fair share of abuse and I've never had problems with them.
Well, that's my 2 cents worth as they say.
Cheers, David

[Steve Weldon]

Can anyone recommend brands that have proven reliability? The Iomega came to me via a relative, and wasn't a personal purchase made by me on known quality standards. Any suggestions for 'safe' external hard drives?

So many possibilities.  Since.. you're talking about offloading.. I take that to mean archiving to clear up room for current stuff?  I'd consider something like a SATA/USB3.0 docking bay which accepts 2.5 and 3.5 inch bare drives.   That way you could check industry failure rate stats and choose the drives you use by failure rate and price, ensuring the best possible choice.  And the drives could be stored safely in a drawer, case, etc.

Docking stations are cheap, $30 or so.  If it breaks you just replace it.  Traditional external drives usually fail because their power supply or interface fails.  Finding replacement parts years down the line isn't always possible, while a drive remains a drive..

If speed isn't an issue and you want a small size.. consider Western Digital's My Passport Essential SE 1tb for $94 currently on Amazon.  No power supplies to fail, with USB3 they're fairly fast (works on USB2 as well), and if the interface card inside fails you'll be stuck removing the drive and putting it in a generic case (about $10).. or a docking station.

In contrast.. a 3.5 inch Western Digital Green 1tb drive which you can use in a docking station is only $54..

There are ruggedized drives, small drives, designer drives, multi-bay drives, RAID arrays, and of course NAS drives..  In fact, you might want to give a NAS (network drive) a good look because they're incredibly handy.  Not only can anyone on your network back up and store data to one.. but most have FTP capability so you can access/dump files while on the road.

So many choices.. we live in great times..

[feppe]

Steve has good advice. I use a standard 3.5" with a USB dock for offline backup, and a second one at office (and an internal HDD and Crashplan+ online backup). Brands don't matter, although I've heard enough anecdotal horror stories with Lacie drives that I'm not touching those. Get cheap drives and add redundancy in media (HDDs, online services, does anyone use tape ors DVD anymore?) and location (offline/offsite/online).

[Craig Lamson]

So many possibilities.  Since.. you're talking about offloading.. I take that to mean archiving to clear up room for current stuff?  I'd consider something like a SATA/USB3.0 docking bay which accepts 2.5 and 3.5 inch bare drives.   That way you could check industry failure rate stats and choose the drives you use by failure rate and price, ensuring the best possible choice.  And the drives could be stored safely in a drawer, case, etc.

Docking stations are cheap, $30 or so.  If it breaks you just replace it.  Traditional external drives usually fail because their power supply or interface fails.  Finding replacement parts years down the line isn't always possible, while a drive remains a drive..

If speed isn't an issue and you want a small size.. consider Western Digital's My Passport Essential SE 1tb for $94 currently on Amazon.  No power supplies to fail, with USB3 they're fairly fast (works on USB2 as well), and if the interface card inside fails you'll be stuck removing the drive and putting it in a generic case (about $10).. or a docking station.

In contrast.. a 3.5 inch Western Digital Green 1tb drive which you can use in a docking station is only $54..

There are ruggedized drives, small drives, designer drives, multi-bay drives, RAID arrays, and of course NAS drives..  In fact, you might want to give a NAS (network drive) a good look because they're incredibly handy.  Not only can anyone on your network back up and store data to one.. but most have FTP capability so you can access/dump files while on the road.

So many choices.. we live in great times..

Don't know if the smaller passport wd's do it bu the larger MyBook drives create "drive" that contains the backup software on your computer.  It shows up as an actual drive...and its hard as heck to get rid of. Lots of articles about this if you google. I used to use the Mybook drives but they are now off my list.  Too bad, I've had good luck with them.

+1 on the docking stations...I have the Thermaltake and its a nice piece.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I agree about the docking stations. They're cheap and easy to replace when they go bad.

My suggestion is to buy two docking stations (Thermaltake is good, and so are many others), and then buy two internal drives by different manufacturers.

I have a flock of external drives (mostly in docks), including Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Hitachi, and Maxtor (and probably a couple of others). None of these brands have failed significantly more than others in my experience, but if a particular drive has a design defect, then a similar one by a different maker is not likely to have the same design defect.

Eric

[Steve Weldon]

Don't know if the smaller passport wd's do it bu the larger MyBook drives create "drive" that contains the backup software on your computer.  It shows up as an actual drive...and its hard as heck to get rid of. Lots of articles about this if you google. I used to use the Mybook drives but they are now off my list.  Too bad, I've had good luck with them.

+1 on the docking stations...I have the Thermaltake and its a nice piece.

Yes, the small WD Passport Essential SE contains backup and encryption software which is pretty cool.  I don't use the backup software myself, but I tested it when I wrote this short review.  It's involves one of my only complaints with the drive.  The drive installs and operates as an external drive flawlessly just by connecting it.  But to install the special driver/utility software, you need to navigate to a folder WD puts on the drive and install a second driver there.  The documentation didn't say where to get the second driver or that it was on the drive.. so I spent a few minutes on their site tracking it down.  Once installed it automatically keeps track of the entire drive or just designated folders and backs up automatically.  A nice feature if you need it.

What issues did you have with the Mybook?  Personally I think all powered external drives are in the same boat.. they require external power supplies and SATA/USB/FW interface cards and how well they operate depends on the firmware, and how long they operate depends on the quality of components.. power supplies especially need to be well made but are often made cheaply to lower costs.  You get batches of good ones made by one supplier with one set of firmware, and the next one you get by another supplier with another version of firmware.. All of them use industry standard 3.5 inch drives which have average failure rates and usually aren't a problem.   I've learned to hate this type (external powered) of drive for this reason, and I don't like the eventual collection of big cases and power bricks.  Though I think multi-bay higher end drives like the Drobo are in another class entirely.

[Thomas Krüger]

A docking station for plain hard drives workes fine: http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/node/1277

[Rob C]

Thanks for the generous replies!

I'd never even heard of a docking station beyond the space kind... sometimes not knowing these things are around can be beneficial: you are not aware of how endless the chain of expense really is. Why do boats come to mind?

But, now that innocence has fled and I know where babies come from, it's time to actually get something to do the job.

Thanks again, folks, some valuable resource we have in LuLa!

Rob C

[francois]

…Brands don't matter, although I've heard enough anecdotal horror stories with Lacie drives that I'm not touching those.…

I've personally seen so many defective Lacie drives that I would not use one even if it was free.

Lately, even the customer service has been beyond appalling. A customer of mine had his Lacie drive sent in for repair. After more than two months he finally received a replacement drive. The exterior was duty and scratched, the drive itself was also defective.

So the message is clear, stay away from Lacie!

[Craig Lamson]

What issues did you have with the Mybook?  Personally I think all powered external drives are in the same boat.. they require external power supplies and SATA/USB/FW interface cards and how well they operate depends on the firmware, and how long they operate depends on the quality of components.. power supplies especially need to be well made but are often made cheaply to lower costs.  You get batches of good ones made by one supplier with one set of firmware, and the next one you get by another supplier with another version of firmware.. All of them use industry standard 3.5 inch drives which have average failure rates and usually aren't a problem.   I've learned to hate this type (external powered) of drive for this reason, and I don't like the eventual collection of big cases and power bricks.  Though I think multi-bay higher end drives like the Drobo are in another class entirely.

My only issue is the install of the "smartdrive" by the mybook. It shows up as an additional "drive", a virtual cd, on my system and you can't make it go away as long as the MyBook is attached to your system.  Even if you format the MyBook the smartdrive remains.  You simply can't get the storage space it takes up on the drive back without a hardware hack.

I've got a bunch of these drives, older versions, with backups and backups of backups.  I agree that the enclosures and power bricks are a mess when you have a bunch.

The dock greatly reduces the problem and the extra cost and is a great solution.

But I'm considering a NAS now that we are cross platform here.  Considering Freenas on an unused workstation box or perhaps a commercial solution.  I need to do more research.

[Steve Weldon]

My only issue is the install of the "smartdrive" by the mybook. It shows up as an additional "drive", a virtual cd, on my system and you can't make it go away as long as the MyBook is attached to your system.  Even if you format the MyBook the smartdrive remains.  You simply can't get the storage space it takes up on the drive back without a hardware hack.

I've got a bunch of these drives, older versions, with backups and backups of backups.  I agree that the enclosures and power bricks are a mess when you have a bunch.

The dock greatly reduces the problem and the extra cost and is a great solution.

But I'm considering a NAS now that we are cross platform here.  Considering Freenas on an unused workstation box or perhaps a commercial solution.  I need to do more research.

Interesting.. Did it allow you to do a low level format?  Many have forgot how to do this since Fdisk went the way of the Dodo.. or so people think.  It's still there and there are some Fdisk utilities available too.  Let me know if you can't find one..

NAS's are incredibly useful.  You forget they're there.  I have two 4tb NAS's which also provide FTP function sitting in my office next to my router/modem/switch.. and  (at least with Windows)  once you map the network drive and name it.. it appears in Windows Explorer like any other drive in your system and is handled the same way re: file transfers.  Starting with Vista it even remembers the passwords, starting with Win7 it remembers individual passwords if you have more than one NAS.

Mine weren't expensive.. they started out as 500gb (2x250gb) way back when.. but I bought them because the power supplies were huge bricks and by my estimate were providing 5x more power than the unit needed.. and they were small with their own internal fan.  Since I've upgraded the drives several times.  You can RAID them, but I just JOB them since everything on them is redundant anyway.  The only thing that sucks it the 20mbps transfer speed even with a giganetwork..

WD had a 4tb model with 50mbps+ speeds which seemed a bargain..

When my current NAS's need to be replaced I'll shell out for a Drobo NAS.. and use them more for permanent storage.

I use Norton Ghost 15 for all my PC's and laptops.. and they're all set up to back up to the NAS's automatically.  You never have to think about it.. it just gets done.

[PierreVandevenne]

FDISK was never really a tool to low-level format drives. Just a partitioning tool. But that's true that people who partitioned drives were often aware of the differences between standard format and "low-level format" (which, since IDE/ATA drives came up with embedded servo information, isn't a "low level format" anyway, just zero - or special character - rewrites)

On today's Windows systems, you can find DISKPART. DISKPART can actually do an awful number of useful things, although I wouldn' recommend its use to a normal user.

DISKPART> ?

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7600

ACTIVE      - Mark the selected partition as active.
ADD         - Add a mirror to a simple volume.
ASSIGN      - Assign a drive letter or mount point to the selected volume.
ATTRIBUTES  - Manipulate volume or disk attributes.
ATTACH      - Attaches a virtual disk file.
AUTOMOUNT   - Enable and disable automatic mounting of basic volumes.
BREAK       - Break a mirror set.
CLEAN       - Clear the configuration information, or all information, off the
              disk.
COMPACT     - Attempts to reduce the physical size of the file.
CONVERT     - Convert between different disk formats.
CREATE      - Create a volume, partition or virtual disk.
DELETE      - Delete an object.
DETAIL      - Provide details about an object.
DETACH      - Detaches a virtual disk file.
EXIT        - Exit DiskPart.
EXTEND      - Extend a volume.
EXPAND      - Expands the maximum size available on a virtual disk.
FILESYSTEMS - Display current and supported file systems on the volume.
FORMAT      - Format the volume or partition.
GPT         - Assign attributes to the selected GPT partition.
HELP        - Display a list of commands.
IMPORT      - Import a disk group.
INACTIVE    - Mark the selected partition as inactive.
LIST        - Display a list of objects.
MERGE       - Merges a child disk with its parents.
ONLINE      - Online an object that is currently marked as offline.
OFFLINE     - Offline an object that is currently marked as online.
RECOVER     - Refreshes the state of all disks in the selected pack.
              Attempts recovery on disks in the invalid pack, and
              resynchronizes mirrored volumes and RAID5 volumes
              that have stale plex or parity data.
REM         - Does nothing. This is used to comment scripts.
REMOVE      - Remove a drive letter or mount point assignment.
REPAIR      - Repair a RAID-5 volume with a failed member.
RESCAN      - Rescan the computer looking for disks and volumes.
RETAIN      - Place a retained partition under a simple volume.
SAN         - Display or set the SAN policy for the currently booted OS.
SELECT      - Shift the focus to an object.
SETID       - Change the partition type.
SHRINK      - Reduce the size of the selected volume.
UNIQUEID    - Displays or sets the GUID partition table (GPT) identifier or
              master boot record (MBR) signature of a disk.

DISKPART>

[Steve Weldon]

FDISK was never really a tool to low-level format drives.

Good information.  Thanks!

I don't use it much, but I found that when certain disk enclosures, NAS enclosures, etc.. won't recognize anything but a brand new unactivated drive.. that Fdisk allows you to reset a used disk to a 'new' state that they'll then recognize.

I'm sure this would get rid of Craig's unwanted driver.. but I'm not sure his enclosure interface would then recognize the drive.  I suspect it would.. but perhaps it won't..

[John.Murray]

For Windows, diskmgmt.msc puts a warm fuzzy gui on diskpart.

On the WD MyBooks, that nasty virtual CD-ROM driver (WD calls it "smartware") is in the firmware, the best you can do is hide the CD, - so much for WD MyBooks.....

http://wdc.com/wdproducts/wdsmartwareupdate/

[PierreVandevenne]

diskmgmt.msc - yes, to some extent. But it can't do everything - for example, some types of "exotic" partitioning scheme will be resistant in the GUI and will surrender to Diskpart. I have seen many cases of people stuck with EFI partitions they couldn't delete with the GUI but cleaned with Diskpart itself. The same is valid for some diagnostic/hidden partitions.

There are a dozen of catches, specific system restrictions, etc. The official hierarchy is as follows

Diskpart.efi Disk Partition Tool   -> access to ESP MSR Data
Diskpart.exe Disk Partition Tool  -> access to ESP MSR Data   
Diskmgmt.msc Logical Disk Manager -> access to ESP Data   
Explorer.exe File Explorer -> access to Data   

As far as the WD "smartware" is concerned, I had no problems getting rid of mine to create "clean" disks. It may have changed though, but when I last looked at it (mid 2010 I think)it was simply a "hidden" partition.

[John.Murray]

As far as the WD "smartware" is concerned, I had no problems getting rid of mine to create "clean" disks. It may have changed though, but when I last looked at it (mid 2010 I think)it was simply a "hidden" partition.

I'm not sure how diskpart's advanced abilities are relevant here, but ok....

The VCD is built into the firmware of the drive and can not be eliminated, only hidden - this has nothing to do with partitions on the drive itself.  WD has an update that allows you to hide (but not eliminate) the VCD.  You'll need to run this on a windows machine, afterwords the drive can be used and prepared for any platform.

[PierreVandevenne]

Diskpart definitely allows you to get rid of it, and regain the (small) space allocated to it. At least, as I said, in the models I purchased in 2010. WD may have moved it into the firmware now, after all, the boundaries are disappearing. The "patch" I have seen (again, that was about a year ago) simply allowed the system to "ignore" that partition.

Which exact model do you have?

[John.Murray]

Please provide details on how you accomplish this