Question What would be a good 3.5 Inch SATA III Drive for Backups ONLY?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
M

mpsan

Distinguished
Sep 11, 2009
52
0
18,530
Looking for good Backup DRIVE...
You guys know a lot about this and I wonder if there is a BEST drive for me to consider.
I have Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit 1909 and Reflect 7.2....

I have 2 systems and each have an ICYDOCK SATA Cage. I have BIOS configured for the drive to be hot swapable and all works. I run backups on a 4 TB drive...it is a normal 7200 rpm INTERNAL drive...So, I just thought for the BEST protection I should get a 2nd drive so I can rotate which drive I run my backup images to. These are powered off unless I am running a backup.

I thought I may as well get an 8TB drive but need the best reliability. Also, they must be 3.5 inch but wonder if a 5400 rpm drive would save money and be good enough? Even a 4 TB should be OK.

Thank you for any help
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
M

mdd1963

Titan
Jan 14, 2006
16,616
1,735
81,240
as the 4 TB units are indeed half the cost of typical 8 TB drives, they should be more than adequate...especially in light of your plan to acquire a pair of them... The 5400 rpm drives will require a few extra minutes to complete the image backup if copying 200-300 GB worth of OS and applications.

(I had a good plan to do good backups similar to yours, complete with an IcyDockBay that holds both a 3.5" and a 2.5" drive simultaneously...but, before I knew it, i confess it's been 8 months since my last backup. Why?
As I have any file needed/worth having on multiple cloud storage sites, the event of a drive loss or corruption would only cause the inconvenience me with having to reinstall my applications (only 10% of which I would ever need 'right now'), what with Win10 being able to be installed to an NVME drive in ~4 minutes these days...)

I don't keep spare NVME drives around, but, can live from a Live-Linux USB environment while awaiting a part to arrive if becomes necessary...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

mpsan

Distinguished
Sep 11, 2009
52
0
18,530
Thank You. I already have one 4 TB drive and just want another one to rotate my Backups. The one I have is a 7200 RPM 4 TB drive, but MAY consider a 5400 RPM drive. I also have the ICYDOCK but is 1 bay only and fits in the front of my Case. I have 2 of them...1 for each system. I had been looking at a WD RED but do NOT want anything but a CMR drive.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

mpsan

Distinguished
Sep 11, 2009
52
0
18,530
This should not be so hard. I wonder if the Toshiba NAS drive would be good? In fact, what is so special about a NAS drive anyway? GOHARDDRIVE has Toshibas but they say they are 512e sectors. My other one is not so should that matter and why is it so hard to find out if they are CMR?
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

mpsan

Distinguished
Sep 11, 2009
52
0
18,530
Well, I found that Newegg had the WD Blue 4TB at a good price and they even gave me a code for $10 off so I paid $79.99. It should be OK and is a CMR Drive.. Should be good for what I will be using it for. One question, however, is that when I format it should I keep it as an AF drive (Default) or should I force it to 512 bytes per sector? Otherwise will it matter at all? I am in Windows 10 64bit Pro 1909.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom