Help - External back-up drive just died!

[davidedric]

Just like that. One minute it was there, the next minute disappeared. Neither my desk top, where it normally lives, or my laptop can see it. (It was a WD "desk top" style device, and hadn't been moved at all for months)

Fortunately, it was a back-up drive, so I still have latest versions of the data, though I regret the loss of some incremental back-ups. Even if I could somehow resurrect it, it has to be replaced, and there is nothing that I need that would cause me to spend spend an arm and a leg to pay a data recovery firm to get back.

So, recommendations, please. My in-box drives are a pair of 2Tb RAID 1 disks, and a 250Gb SSD.

Any suggestions gratefully received. I haven't set a budget at the moment.

Dave

[Manfred M]

That's why you have an external backup isn't it? Yes, they can die as well. I use external RAID (D-Link DNS-323 - 2-bay)(now discontinued) and a Drobe-FS (5-Bay - RAID like device). Both are on my home network and while I have suffered drive failures, all I had to do was replace the failed drives and the units continued to work well and managed themselves after the replacement drive was installed. It took a few days, but there was a lot of data to move around and rebuild.

The downside of a single drive is that you have backup, but you have to rebuild the backup when you do get a disk failure.

I would strongly suggest you look a multi-drive external RAID system for this reason. I prefer the Drobos because they allow different sizes of drives and understand that some RAID units have problems if you don't use identical drives.

[Adrian]

I use RAID 5 across a 6 disk NAS array with I fully redundant hot swap disk ( so it fires up and reports the fault as soon as a disk dies). Key things back up to cloud too (but that is slow and overkill for many) and quarterly we run a full backup of the NAS array to another big twin disk drive.

This lot cost about £1200 in hardware plus VAT. You need either IT knowledge or a friendly IT person to set it up.

All back up is automated and wireless. It is set to have various shared folders as well.

I can have two disks fail at the same time with no data loss on the NAS backup. I will still have the originals spread across three computers and the fail safe independent backup (ignoring the cloud).

Can dial into back up securely from anywhere.

Would be worth checking the basics on your existing failed backup (is it getting power, can another machine see it, can you run disk utility etc).

[davidedric]

Thanks, gentlemen.

Adrian, just to complete the picture. When I first looked the power indicator was not showing. I plugged and unplugged a couple of times, and it showed again. With the power on? the drive still wasn't visible in Computer. I went via devices, it was there but not recognised and I invited Windows to find a driver. Probably a mistake! It found and installed completely the wrong driver. I still can't see it in Computer, but Windows now recognises it wrongly in which ever USB port I attach it to. I tried it on my laptop, but still not visible. I won't take a hammer to it just yet, but I do want to get an alternative in place. Not sure I'm ready to spend £1000+ though. I could get a 70D for that. Down to priorities, I guess.

[Shadowman]

I used to be brand specific but now I go for availability, longevity in the business, and % excellent reviews. I currently on WD, Toshiba, and Seagate FreeAgent drives. I've had the Seagate the longest, about three years, the others are recent purchases.

[proseak]

It may just be the USB controller, in which case removing it from it's case and using an enclosure or dock would resolve matters. They're useful just to have around. here's one that I've used in the past -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/IT735U3--SAT...rive+enclosure

HTH

Peter

[Tringa]

Dave, have you being able to try your external drive on another machine, or a friend's machine; just to try to isolate the cause of the problem?

I don't want to hijack this thread but I seem to recall, admittedly from some years ago and with very little knowledge, that RAID is a drive failure solution but should never be considered as a backup option. Have things changed now?

Dave

[Adrian]

A RAID array can provide backup. It depends how you use it.

Simplistically:

Layer 1 - data stored on PC / MAC
Layer 2 - RAID configuration striped across various disks providing automated backup
Layer 3 - another disk in the RAID array that is dedicated to separate backups that are not automatically overwritten (see * below)
Layer 4 - separate drive that takes a copy of either layer 2 or 3
Layer 5 - cloud backup of key data (overkill for many)

* the snag with the RAID backup is it is overwritten. In my case I am using Mac and Time Machine, this enables replication of the entire hard drive and then all changes thereto each hour, recovery being available for any given date until the backup disks are full, and then the oldest backups start being overwritten. If you have a defect in the source (your computer) or delete things by mistake, the auto back up is obviously affected too. Different RAID configurations deliver more or less security at the expense of using far more disk space. RAID 10 is the highest in common use, RAID 5 is excellent, other RAID configurations are more of a compromise.

As regards backup v new camera: this depends on how you value your photo archive. Once your archive is gone, you can't replace it. You can always replace a new camera eventually. So it is a value judgement.

In my case I figure the sheer hassle of losing all my photos or having to spend an arm and a leg getting disks recovered makes it well worth about £1,000 or so on having a very good back-up system. I have the advantage that I can also privately share photos (or anything) with my wife and son on the RAID and we can get into it from anywhere in the world (security protected). I can automatically take it off line any time I wish. The layer 4 backup is never on-line and never exposed to the internet. It contains raw, TIFF, psd and jpeg versions of images.

I know many use DVD copies too, but I don't bother.

Kind regards

Adrian

[Manfred M]

Dave, have you being able to try your external drive on another machine, or a friend's machine; just to try to isolate the cause of the problem?

I don't want to hijack this thread but I seem to recall, admittedly from some years ago and with very little knowledge, that RAID is a drive failure solution but should never be considered as a backup option. Have things changed now?

Dave

Dave - RAID makes a fine backup, in fact much better than a non-RAID solution. That being said, there are different RAID levels and implementations. I personally do not find RAID implementations on the computer itself particularly useful, just because on generally has to disassemble the machine to get access to the drives and one can't be sure which of the drives has gone bad.

External RAID I love, because if a drive goes, access generally is through an easily accessible panel and depending on the RAID box you might not even have to power down to change drives ("hot" swap). My systems even have an indicator telling me which drive has gone bad.

[davidedric]

Thanks for the responses, everyone.

To clarify a couple of points. Dave, I did try in on another machine - same result.

Peter - didn't think of that option. Unfortunately when I come to look at the drive it's in a sealed plastic case, so I can only get in with a hammer. I'll have to hammer it anyway, because there is data on there that shouldn't be freely available.

I have decided on a two phase approach: put an inexpensive single disk replacement in (which will be a plus anyway because it is USB 3 and the old one was USB 2), then re-evaluate my priorities and decide whether I need to put something more robust in place.

On the question of back-up itself. I am very wary of complex, software-managed back up solutions. You usually have no way of knowing whether they are effective until you have to use them in anger - when it's too late if they are buggy (I may have banged on about this before - my professional experience of disaster recovery exercises has rarely been happy!). For that reason I do periodic full copies of my (to me) essential folders. I'm not a professional, so cannot lose a client's shots, and I have decided that is good enough for me.

One thing this has taught me. The back-up drive will be used just for that, then I know exactly where I am up to.

Dave

[shreds]

Which reminds me….of my x10 backup drives, I haven't altered anything in over a year. Methinks its time for an upgrade to pre-empt anything as the drives get older.

[proseak]

David, you can often find a video on Youtube showing how to take these apart; if you type in the drive model to Google, see what comes up.

HTH

[ajohnw]

If your have 2 internal drives or an external 2 bay drive d-link etc it's best to set them up mirrored. That way if one goes down a fresh drive can be put in and the set up restored.. There are 3 drive arrangements as well that can rebuild from any 2.. Best way to find out about these is to google raid modes.

USB drives have proved to be fairly reliable for back up providing they aren't used continuously. If there is a fairly safe set up some where these can be used to provide extra back up periodically. Say 250gb a time. Not sure if 250gb or smaller sizes of these are still available but in some ways the smaller the better. It's worth noting that disks have a start stop life. The best thing for them in boxes is continuous running and adequate cooling. So if you do use usb discs try to fill them up in one go or add to them as infrequently as possible.

Hard drives are not as reliable as they were since the storage capacity has gone way up. There are some "self healing" storage file formats about but it's early days for them at the moment.

DVD's storage size is limited by region locking. Suspect that blue ray is too but once again if you fill one up and put in a decent case it's reliable storage. The problems arise when they are used frequently but in real terms they aren't too bad even then.

Really when the cost of something even like maintaining a 2 bay d-link box is considered cloud storage looks attractive. That way some one else is looking after drive failure and replacement etc. A search will show that plenty of companies are offering it. HP looked attractive to me but there are plenty of others. In the not too distant future people are likely to find they have no choice about using the cloud even for applications so may as well start now.

Cloud - Having had a drive fail in a 2 bay d-;ink box I decided to build up a smaller server with 5 drives in it. Buying very carefully including a small HP server that was drastically reduced in price as it was shortly going to be superseded I reckon I spent about 350 quid in total. That would buy rather a lot of long term cloud storage. A simiar NAS (that''s what the 2 bay d-link boxes are called) would cost more than the server once the disks are put in it so would buy even more cloud usage.

Personally I never reformat a camera card either, just buy another. Yet another back up. I have some that are at least 15 years old and those I am fairly sure would last for in excess of 100 years providing they are never rewritten to. Not so sure about the latest stuff. It's still possible to read all of the common formats on these and that can be expected to continue for rather a long time. There is a possible replacement that has been around for at least 20 years but absolutely no signs of it going commercial even after that time period.

John
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[davidedric]

Ah yes, The Cloud.

Unfortunately, with an upload speed topping out at 1.8Mb and download at 500Kb, I don't think it's a realistic option.

BT proudly say they have installed FTTC, but neglect to say that there is around 2 kilometres of dodgy copper between our house and the Cabinet!

[ajohnw]

Ah yes, The Cloud.

Unfortunately, with an upload speed topping out at 1.8Mb and download at 500Kb, I don't think it's a realistic option.

BT proudly say they have installed FTTC, but neglect to say that there is around 2 kilometres of dodgy copper between our house and the Cabinet!

I suppose catching up on back up for those that have a lot of files stored already would take some time and using the cloud would depend on how many photo's are taken. PC's aren't doing anything overnight and cloud providers probably hand out back up software. Would need to do some sums and I only get 800k bits / sec up even with an office type router capable of a lot more. Not too concerned about download times as suggested use is backups but even from local disks a couple of gigs takes a long time.

Might also be possible to back up for 24hrs a day when needed but I have some suspicions that uploads can really slow up downloads.

Download speeds are partly determined by the server. I have seen some getting near 1mb/sec. I downloaded 4gig of software this evening and that ran at 700kb/sec. Took less than the initial estimate of 2 1/4 hrs.

John
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