How To Store Internal Hard Drives? 393
mike writes "I have been ripping all my movies and TV shows for easy viewing through a media PC. Because I would rather not rip everything again I'm looking for a simple backup solution. I'm considering a hard drive dock and several internal hard drives to use as 'disks' to back things up every once in a while but I don't know what the best way to store internal drives would be in the meantime. Could they sit together in any empty box and be OK, or would a number of externals be worth the slightly higher cost with fewer worries about storing them in the meantime?"
Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Interesting)
I use em (Score:1, Interesting)
I use a removable chassis system (with built in fans). Hard drives have trouble catching viruses or wearing out if they are sitting in a drawer.
I keep the chassis in one of those little plastic sets of drawers from Target. Works like a champ.
RAID 1 (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually had the same problem. I've got my entire 1,000+ Movie DVD and 400+ Television collection ripped to hard drive for use as streaming media to a media PC. I've been working on it for about 4 years now.
I ended up buying and setting up a bare-bones computers with RAID capabilities. Get a big tower with plenty of cooling. I originally used your same method. I purchased hard drives and external hard drive enclosures. This was cheaper than building pre-made drives. I especially like Vantec enclosures. However, I had a couple of drives go bad over the years. After some experimentation, I found that underpowered drives tend to loose data.
Now, I use the aforementioned RAID 1 solution. Originally I used 400gb drives but now I'm up to purchasing 1-TB drives. I've only had 1 drive go bad in the last 3 years and it was easily replaced with no loss of data. You could probably use Raid 5 just as easily, but my first setup didn't support it so I defaulted to Raid 1. The extra controller cars also used to be cheaper for RAID 1 but the costs have since equalized.
For the moment, I would advise against the 2TB drives. Many have serious slowdown problems and the cost/storage ratio is to high. 1.5tb drives are looking better and better.
Just remember good cooling! This may be the most important factor. Hot hard drives last a MUCH shorter time. I REALLY like Thermatake icage bays. They change 3-5.25" bays into 3-3.5" hard drive bays and have a really nice 120x120 fan on them to keep the drives cool.
If you buy a hard drive a month you can get some enormous storage capacity really quickly without breaking the bank. I'm up to 8TB right now. (16TB of drives).
Rotate the backups! (Score:3, Interesting)
Do a backup, drop it in the safe deposit box at the bank, take the other one out. Next quarter, rotate them.
eSATA and 'books' (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How about... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nah, you can get better density if you use the original foam packing that they come with, the only problem is if you spin them up in it you will cook the things, I solved this by lining up a big 3" drill bit and driving it down through all the drives and attaching a fan to the end, keeps em cool.
Or (if you want a real solution) you could, I dunno, get an old army ammo case from your local disposals store (we have em called Aussie Disposals), cut the same packing foam used to ship (as joked about above) and fit about 20 drives in a nice tin safely and bullet proof :)
Re:Take your pick (Score:4, Interesting)
You could attach a metal handle and call them 'wedges' a la Dollhouse.
The scene where he 'saves' the wedge from calling, they show the back of the drive and they're SATA. Hehe.
Re:Take your pick (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:RAID 1 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Point Missed (Score:1, Interesting)
And spin up every single drive through a boot cycle. Not even decent offline storage.
Also, you would have to unplug the entire rig when you're not using it to get even a comparable level of hardware integrity. You would still be causing n times as much wear on your drives, where n = (number of drives) / (average number of drives you want to use at once.)
Also be using probably 2n+k times as much power, since if you buy a cheap refurbished box off the 'net, it probably has some very large constant k power usage next to which the hard drive dock is effectively zero.
Re:Take your pick (Score:3, Interesting)
For old drives that I pulled from servers, I just stuck them in a cardboard box on the floor of my office. When I needed an old small drive for something, I'd pull it from the box. :) I wasn't confident in wiping them to sell or dispose of, so staying in my control was safer. Hey, they were old, they weren't worth anything to sell anyways.
Except for the drives that already had stickers that said "bad sectors" or "clicks", they usually worked years later.
The static bag and desiccant isn't a bad idea, but it's not always necessary. Now, if they were in a very dry static or high humidity environment, I'd definitely want them stored that way.
Re:Take your pick (Score:2, Interesting)
I hear (from someone that kept HD's on a shelf for years) that the oil will run out of the bearings if the drives are left sitting for years, causing the platters to freeze up when they were turned on.
Admittedly, this is old information, and who knows what the new drives do (maybe they have better seals?) and I'm not even sure that keeping them cold will help, spinning up the platters for 15 minutes once a week might work too.
Re:Keep in mind (Score:3, Interesting)
Is magnetic tape practical for home backups? Last time I checked, it wasn't. Hard drives offer the best value and reliability I have found for personal backups. Certainly they are far easier and more reliable than burning DVDs.
I would forget about RAID, and instead make your goal to have 3 separate copies of your files on 3 sets of hard drives. One set on hard drives is the live data that you use on your home server. The other two are backups, and you alternate between them, backing up with whatever frequency you deem sufficient. If at all possible, keep one set of drives off site by taking them to work or a friends' place, then swap them after each backup operation.
Write scripts to simplify your backup process, so that it takes as little effort as possible. (I use a simple rsync command.)
Wall mounting is artistic and effective (Score:2, Interesting)
Simple solution with hard drives. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Easy solution (Score:4, Interesting)
It's actually far more important for the temperature to remain relatively constant (a 10F degree range or so) than it is to remain under a certain temp. your closet isn't going to get anywhere near 158 degrees, or more than 40 below zero... Even when spinning HDDs are acceptable up to quite uncomfortable for human temperatures! at idle the range increases quite a bit. However, a poorly insulared closet could fluctuate 30 degrees or more, and on a daily basis, that couold cause a lot of damage. Keeping your PC powered on helps maintain HDD life by keeping a slightly more contact temp (this used to be to avoid chip creap in the old days, but now it's about the PS and HDD).
Also, 300G shocks are within the "normal" range for a non-spinning disk. Shock absorption is not a requirement unless you plan to ship it. I think it was Seagate who used to have a commercial where they froze a HDD in a block of ice, played hockey with it, then thawed it out and it worked...
Re:Static bags and a cardboard box (Score:3, Interesting)
And I don't even get that fancy -- I just store them in a cardboard box. (Make sure it's not the shiny cardboard; that can hold a static charge.) So long as the logic board components aren't touching anything conductive, which you can ensure well enough with a layer of cardboard between 'em if you're paranoid (I don't bother) all should be well. Note: my oldest working IDE HD dates to 1991. My oldest of any type dates to 1986. The only ones I've lost in storage are Conners, which have always had a problem with losing data if they sit around doing nothing for several months.
Re:Take your pick (Score:3, Interesting)
The ultra paranoids should watch the mythbusters episode where the water pressure prevented the manual windows from rolling down.
Curiously enough, they submerged a battery and a door and the power windows still worked underwater.
http://mythbustersresults.com/episode72 [mythbustersresults.com]