2 TB WD external hard drive

[Tom]

The way I use my externals:
They are plugged in, data is transferred, they are unmounted and unplugged.

So I have two drives that are mirrored. When I am ready to work on something, I plug the primary one into my iMac and copy it to the corresponding folder. Then I work on it, and replace the original with the new, edited folder, which is then backed up to the backup.

I'm never editing from the externals, which keeps the amount of time they are being used to a minimum. Every external has a mirror. This system has worked great for me.

[TXAvi8tor]

Originally Posted by Thomas Campbell

The way I use my externals:
They are plugged in, data is transferred, they are unmounted and unplugged.

So I have two drives that are mirrored. When I am ready to work on something, I plug the primary one into my iMac and copy it to the corresponding folder. Then I work on it, and replace the original with the new, edited folder, which is then backed up to the backup.

I'm never editing from the externals, which keeps the amount of time they are being used to a minimum. Every external has a mirror. This system has worked great for me.

That's may be a good idea or not, depending on how often they're started & stopped, and how good is their cooling. Solid state electronics are designed to be on all the time. As I understand it, they have low resistance when first turned on, so each power-up is spiking the electronics.

Your practice limits the heat load (maybe not so much if they're in well-designed enclosures), and decreases the operating hours, but you may be spiking the circuit boards, r/w heads, etc.

Unless a Texas frog choker is bearing down on us with prominent lightning and thunder, my stuff runs 24x7, plugged into quality surge protectors, which in turn are plugged into a good sized battery backup (an APC SmartUPS 1000), which provides additional surge protection.

Some current hard drive models are rated at 500,000 hours MTBF. In a certain population of drives, half will have failed by that many hours of on-time, and half should still be functioning properly. Some that fail before that point will have lasted 10 or 100 hours, some 1,000, some 10,000, etc.

24x7x52=8736 hours in a year. 500K / 8736= 57.23 years. In my earlier post I said 'lies, damn lies and statistics.' Obviously the mfr's MTBF is statistically derived - most of us have experienced a drive crash, which had to be WAY before 57 years of use.

Taking all this into account, current drives are designed to be on all the time. If you select drives carefully, not solely on price, KEEP 'EM COOL, and protect 'em from electrical fluctuations, I'm comfortable with keeping them powered up.

If the particular drive you purchased is a weakling, and is going to fail around 10,000 hours of total time, you may have extended it's calendar life. But if it happens to be good for as little as 20% of the design life, that's 11.45 years (100,000 / 8736). If the particular drives you own are good for >11 years, is it worth switching them on and off?

I also disable most of the energy saving features on my desktops. Unlike laptops, they're plugged into power all the time (and usually run cooler than the tightly packed innards of most portable computers). My desktop monitor sleeps after a few minutes of inactivity, but my drives NEVER spin down. Given that they're consuming <10 watts at idle, and <15 when in use, I'm content with using a little more of our resources.

If your drives run cool and are plugged into good surge protectors (rule of thumb: selling price >$20), you may be just as well off leaving 'em powered up.

hth,

Larry

[David Whatley]

After reading your recomendation on cooling, I packed mine in ice today. That ought to keep them cool. As the ice melts, I just test the water to make sure its still cool. :)

[S-Man]

After reading both posts (here and in the business forum) regarding the futility of external drives, I guess I'm up a creek.

[TXAvi8tor]

Originally Posted by David Whatley

After reading your recomendation on cooling, I packed mine in ice today. That ought to keep them cool. As the ice melts, I just test the water to make sure its still cool. :)

Liquid nitrogen is best. As it boils off, the drives stay dry.

Originally Posted by S-Man

After reading both posts (here and in the business forum) regarding the futility of external drives, I guess I'm up a creek.

I use external hard drives at home and the office and have recommended them to customers. They ain't futile.

I've only personally examined a couple of Mybook models. Neither had a cooling fan or heat sink; I suspect they're all like that. Were I you, I'd buy a couple of external drive enclosures providing better cooling, such as the ones I linked to in my previous post.

Directron is a Houston-based computer parts distributor my business uses. AFAIK, they sell to anyone with a valid credit card - you don't have to be a reseller to purchase from them. Their prices are competitive; we can order after 4PM and generally get the order via UPS ground the next day and they carry a good selection. Newegg is another trustworthy reseller. They're out of state, so no sales tax for individuals, and the product reviews from other customers are particularly useful.

Get yourself some good external enclosures with fans. The drives in your MyBooks should be completely standard - nothing special that makes 'em 'Mybook only.' If you're presently connecting via USB, swapping the drives into different enclosures requires only hand tools, not new/different drivers or any other configuration changes. Plug 'em into your computer after the swap and they should appear exactly as they did in the poopy plastic Mybooks.

[S-Man]

Thanks for the info. Ideally I want to get a Drobo, but perhaps with time and more income...

[TXAvi8tor]

Originally Posted by S-Man

Thanks for the info. Ideally I want to get a Drobo, but perhaps with time and more income...

Understood, but were I in your shoes, <$100 NOW would provide more piece of mind about the images stored on the drives you already have. btw, I visited your blog & web site. Good work!

[S-Man]

Thanks, and currently I have around 5 TB of external drives, Some back up the others and so on. And they are WD so your posts got me a little worried. I looked into the online backups such as Crashplan, but it would take FOR EV ER to backup all my TB's of RAW files. It was suggested to just use my Smugmug as a backup for my JPEG's since really, you don't NEED the RAWs after you've completed a contract with a client. They're just good to have in case.

[TXAvi8tor]

Originally Posted by S-Man

Thanks, and currently I have around 5 TB of external drives, Some back up the others and so on. And they are WD so your posts got me a little worried. I looked into the online backups such as Crashplan, but it would take FOR EV ER to backup all my TB's of RAW files. It was suggested to just use my Smugmug as a backup for my JPEG's since really, you don't NEED the RAWs after you've completed a contract with a client. They're just good to have in case.

I use on-line backup (currently >200GB backed up), but I also back up to multiple local hard drives that swap in/out of a Thermaltake USB/eSATA dock to which I've added a cooling fan. The 500GB WD Black drive currently in it is running at 86*F.

You're right that backing up 5TB on-line would take forever. It would also be costly.

I suppose you could backup only the JPGs. In the days of film I got a little freaked at studios tossing client negatives after a year. Probably the reorder rate justifies that, but I feel the same way you do: I want the RAWs.

Many commercial photogs, and higher volume studios seem to shoot liberally, then edit their take without mercy first time around. Kelby or McNally or someone else big says that if it ain't worth tagging as a keeper first time through, DELETE IT.

I'm not quite to that stage, but I'm getting there. When my wife is looking over my shoulder, she fusses when I delete the 'almost' shots, but if I don't, it's easy to drown in images.

After looking at your work, you probably have 5TB _after_ editing hard.

[lokerd]

Originally Posted by TXAvi8tor

My apologies for such a long post, hth. Larry

No worries Larry...sounds like solid advice to me.

My thoughts are pretty simple. I assume that a hard drive is GOING to fail at any given moment.

Pictures (my most valuable files), are stored in three places (at two completely different locations) before they are deleted from their memory cards. I copy them to my home computer, then to an external drive, and then to a computer at work.

At work, I store stuff on a 4 drive raid NAS. If a drive fails, the idea is that I can pop in a 500gb and it will rebuild the data from the other three drives. I am not 100% sure how all that works, but I assume it will work. Even still, I have that drive back up it's data once a week to externally connected drives.

And I always turn off drives when not in use. For the middle 10 years of the last 20 (1990 with my first Mac Plus), I kept hard drives spinning about 360 days a year. But for the last 5 years or so, I cut them off. Too many drives dying around the 3 year mark. Also, since getting an iPad, I go days and days with out using a computer at home, other than the iPad.

[TXAvi8tor]

Originally Posted by lokerd

No worries Larry...sounds like solid advice to me.

My thoughts are pretty simple. I assume that a hard drive is GOING to fail at any given moment.

Pictures (my most valuable files), are stored in three places (at two completely different locations) before they are deleted from their memory cards. I copy them to my home computer, then to an external drive, and then to a computer at work.

At work, I store stuff on a 4 drive raid NAS. If a drive fails, the idea is that I can pop in a 500gb and it will rebuild the data from the other three drives. I am not 100% sure how all that works, but I assume it will work. Even still, I have that drive back up it's data once a week to externally connected drives.

And I always turn off drives when not in use. For the middle 10 years of the last 20 (1990 with my first Mac Plus), I kept hard drives spinning about 360 days a year. But for the last 5 years or so, I cut them off. Too many drives dying around the 3 year mark. Also, since getting an iPad, I go days and days with out using a computer at home, other than the iPad.

Your assumption is the same as mine. Nothing critical is in only one place. I back up the internal drive to a couple of 500GB externals; the cold drive goes to the office (offsite). They will be replaced with 2TB drives when prices fall a little further, and when those fill up....

And I use an online backup service. I'm not gonna say who cause I'm less than thrilled with this particular provider, but execution is what I'm unhappy with. The concept is sound.

Since the 1990s, the MTBF on high-quality drives has gone from 100,000 to 300,000 to 500,000 hours, which is why I leave my desktop drives spun up, and keep 'em cool, which has significantly improved longevity, in my direct experience. That's why I emphasize it so much.

Still doesn't mean a specific drive isn't going to fail in the next 100 hours, and if I were going days at a time between uses, I'd turn 'em off too. That's what I do with the laptop, though it's not critical storage.

RAID increases fault tolerance, but not to 99.999%. I've seen arrays fail, sometimes with human assistance, sometimes by themselves. Material stored on a RAID should be backed up just like files stored anywhere else.