Question Advice on large storage drive, and backups needed ?

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Compused said:
@USAFRet You mentioned in another thread about enclosures that you have the Mediasonic PROBOX 8 bay H82-SU3S3. I was looking at several options, some more than what I need, but regardless, and came across the PROBOX 4 HF2-SU3S3. When looking at review on YT, I saw a lot of people having some type of software issue (which might have been a combo of software and not knowing how to change/reconfigure some settings). I guess you haven't had those/any issues with it?
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24/7 use since 2016. The only issue I have with it is that the LEDs on the front are too bright.

EDIT: And actually, I have the 4 bay version.
 
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How important is the orientation of the hdds inside an enclosure (caddy, nas, das, etc.)? Is the best orientation having them "flat" like you would lay one on a table - like how you would put it down to read the sticker on the "top"?
Some have the drives on the sideds, or even upright/vertical.
 
Compused said:
How important is the orientation of the hdds inside an enclosure (caddy, nas, das, etc.)? Is the best orientation having them "flat" like you would lay one on a table - like how you would put it down to read the sticker on the "top"?
Some have the drives on the sideds, or even upright/vertical.
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In my QNAP NAS and TR-004, vertical.
In the MediaSonic, horizontal, label side up.

There is no "best".
 
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My thinkpad w530 has an "express card slot" on the right side, above the "card reader". From the thinkpad wiki, it mentions an "Mini PCI express slot": https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:W530
Can I take advantage of that for anything, like connecting an HDD (like the one I just got) or similar, for faster (than the usb 3.0) ports, and if so - how? I tried to look for an adapter cable but I'm not sure what I'm looking for or if it exists.

Thank you.
 
thestryker said:
As long as you're using SATA and more importantly HDDs nothing faster than USB 3.0 matters.
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First, thank you. Saved me some time and money there.

Next, it'd be smart to portion out this "copying" of my 5tb elements hdd to any new drive, right? A 5tb at one time transfer is probably a bad idea. 500gb-1tb at a time, does that sound good? I've portioned it out like this when I moved stuff to a new drive before, but don't recall how much at a time. I also keep a 4" pc fan blowing over the drive now, just while in use, and will use that while doing the transfer too.

Thanks.
 
Compused said:
First, thank you. Saved me some time and money there.
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No problem I've always thought buying what's right for the application is better than buying "the best/fastest".
Compused said:
Next, it'd be smart to portion out this "copying" of my 5tb elements hdd to any new drive, right? A 5tb at one time transfer is probably a bad idea. 500gb-1tb at a time, does that sound good? I've portioned it out like this when I moved stuff to a new drive before, but don't recall how much at a time. I also keep a 4" pc fan blowing over the drive now, just while in use, and will use that while doing the transfer too.

Thanks.
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Given that we're talking external drives I think this is a good idea just to minimize the possible impact of USB doing dumb USB things. Physically the drives themselves would be perfectly fine with a long transfer.
 
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thestryker said:
No problem I've always thought buying what's right for the application is better than buying "the best/fastest".

Given that we're talking external drives I think this is a good idea just to minimize the possible impact of USB doing dumb USB things. Physically the drives themselves would be perfectly fine with a long transfer.
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Thank you. I'll try no more than 1tb at a time.
Curious - what dumb USB things? Haha.
 
I read the Orico dual bay I ordered, I decided to check the lower 1 and 2 star amazon reviews, and now I can't bring myself to even try it. Plenty of the same complaints about ruining data, formatting their drives to "RAW"(?), failing, loosing everything. And noting what I thought was pretty poor fan placement/design, and physical "security" or retention of the drives inside.

The Maiwo single bay I ordered has its 1 star reviews saying it is an incredibl hot box.

I want to ask, again, if there's any actual good brand, that uses good components and has a functional and safe design for their enclosure that inspires even a modest amount of confidence in the user. Please recommend something, if it exists. If not, I'm at a loss here for what to ask or what to do - maybe someone can request somewhere else for me to ask this/these questions then?
I can't just lose terabytes worth of data, and hundreds of dollars in brand new drives to a garbage piece of equipment. Where are the good ones?

Thank you.
 
Compused said:
Some have the drives on the sideds, or even upright/vertical.
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Since I've had fun collecting ball bearings from long since dying hdd's this is an easy one. The orientation for a hdd vertically mounted doesn't matter.

Why - because the center of gravity on the rotating head is pretty much in the center of the hole of the ball bearing 😎
 
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So. I'm taking the risk of tryin out the Maiwo on a new drive. I've never had to initialize a drive before. In disk manager, I right clicked the drive, and chose initialize. Of the two options (MBR and GPT), I chose GPT. It did something real quick, and then/now it shows as "Online". Shows 11175.58 GB unallocated.
What else do I need to do, if anything, before proceeding and using this drive as normal? Do I need to format it as NTFS, and assign a drive letter now? Anything else?

Thanks.

(I've never bought a new drive that wasn't an external. Only for a mac, ssd, and I don't remember this process - maybe it was slightly different).
 
Compused said:
So. I'm taking the risk of tryin out the Maiwo on a new drive. I've never had to initialize a drive before. In disk manager, I right clicked the drive, and chose initialize. Of the two options (MBR and GPT), I chose GPT. It did something real quick, and then/now it shows as "Online". Shows 11175.58 GB unallocated.
What else do I need to do, if anything, before proceeding and using this drive as normal? Do I need to format it as NTFS, and assign a drive letter now? Anything else?

Thanks.

(I've never bought a new drive that wasn't an external. Only for a mac, ssd, and I don't remember this process - maybe it was slightly different).
Click to expand...
Please show us a screencap of your Disk Management window.
 
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USAFRet said:
Upload your pic to imgur.com, post the link here.
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Ok, yea. Found a couple threads on this.
I'm getting an error from imgur. "imgur is temporarily over capacity. Please try again later." Looks like...a coding window...
Am I going to have to sign up to one of these image hosting sites? <-- Nevermind, sigh.
 
Compused said:
Ok, yea. Found a couple threads on this.
I'm getting an error from imgur. "imgur is temporarily over capacity. Please try again later." Looks like...a coding window...
Am I going to have to sign up to one of these image hosting sites? <-- Nevermind, sigh.
Click to expand...
For imgur, you don't need an account.

But yeah, that over capacity thing happens once in a while.Not often, though.
 
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USAFRet said:
But it sounds like you just need to Initialize, format and give it a drive letter.
Right click, and see where that leads.

I asked for the screencap, because 11175GB is an odd capacity.
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I guess I'll just wait...how annoying. Can't hurt to just leave this sketchy enclosure and drive in it while I wait, can it? Haha. It's initialized, but that's all...

Yea, I don't know. Why is it odd? MY 5tb WD Passport shows up as 4657.49 GB NTFS...
 
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USAFRet said:
OK...at "12TB", that listed capacity is correct.
No problems.
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Ok.
Might as well try this:

Qwq6wT2IDuIUqNMkXdMhTQ5LkWttJ9MeloozAHDG.png


That work ok?
 
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