[SOLVED] is there a secure way to back up a HHD?

[Carlos2109]

Hello guys!
Here I am asking a dumb question, but here me out... I kinda have a reason for this...

So, I build my first PC in 2017, nothing fancy, its an 7th Gen i5 with a NVIDIA 710 Graphics, I'm old school, so I bought a DVD/Blu-Ray optic unit, just to have it there, Anyway...
I had an non working HP Pavilion Desktop, so I used its HHD of 1 TB as my Storage unit, and bought my first SSD of 256GB for the OS.

I am a movie and TV Series maniac, you have no Idea how many DVDs and Blu-Rays I have in my collection, In late 2018, I discovered the PLEX Media Server and realized I could turn my PC into a media server and watch all my collection everywhere I had a compatible device to use PLEX.
I spent HOURS Ripping every single disc I own to make it playable on PLEX, so as you can imagine, that 1 TB HHD was not enough so I upgraded to 3TB and then 5TB and my last upgrade is an 8TB HHD. (as of 2019)
So, in between upgrades, I would use the previous HHD for Miscellaneous storage. I don't have that kind of money to be spending in Hard Drives, so what I always do, I go to Walmart or Office Max and buy the Western Digital or similar external Drive (retail price 189.99 for the 8TB) and get it around 59.99 to 69.99 in Clearance. Just open the case and extract the HHD.

When I got to the 5TB drive, I used the 3TB for storage, it was working just fine, I would store Music, Pictures... you name it. (Now before you say anything like "you should buy HHDs specifically for what you are intended to use it for" This 3TB was from a Clearance sale for a My Cloud Drive and it was a red label NAS Drive)

So, one day my 3TB drive stopped working, and I was loosing it, all my daughters pics where gone!! from all the files that drive had, those pictures where sacred because I had all their childhood there, and knowing I will not be able to recover them made me realized how fragile mechanical Hard Drives are, and to my surprise this other 5TB being a blue label lasted longer that a supposed more durable HHD [That is the one I am currently using for storage 3 years later]
Luckily for me, I found a USB stick with the same pictures in it, now thanks to this incident... I am a little skeptical about Mechanical Hard Drives.

What would I do if my media drive (8TB) suddenly stop working and all my Movies and TV Series are gone forever...

How can I back up such large amount of data, without the worry of malfunction.

So.. in conclusion, what do you recommend me to do here... should I buy a bigger HHD and use it for backup of my current media library ONLY and keep it in a safe place...
or in case of a malfunction start looking for my discs and do it all over again and rebuild my media library...

I have been thinking about cloud based storage. But I don't what them to think I am doing piracy and delete all my files. it has happened before with MediaFire and Google Drive.

 

[Lutfij]

First rule with drives and the data that reside on them, never entrust mission critical information on clearance goods. Never being the key word here! If you should know, I've moved away from WD drives since they all tend to develop a slight ticking/clicking noise prior to saying goodbye. I've had some WD's fail without a warning or lag(which is often tell tale that the drive is going away). Not to be confused with just me bashing WD, I've had the issue with other brands of drives. Simple answer is you entrust your life's data on a drive that is not connected to your system, regardless of how much said drive might be marketed as a NAS/server drive. Everything has a lifespan, so do HDD's...even SSD's conk out.

You buy a proper portable HDD that houses all your content and disconnect from the system, only plugging it into the system when necessary or you have multiple copies of what you have. The latter is obviously going to be expensive but you should start wondering what's more important to you out of all the data that's stored on the drives, since you mentioned you can't spend on proper drives.

 

[USAFRet]

Drive space is cheap.
Software is free or cheap.

My personal backup routine (modified somewhat since I wrote this, but heres the basics)

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com