How should I move my hard drives?

[GigabitXe]

I am going to be moving soon, and I have to take my NAS with me. It has six drives in it that house my media server and local backups. I was wondering if I need to take any special precautions when transporting it. I know that I need to be careful in general, but I am looking for specific considerations. Will I be fine just putting the whole tower on some blankets and foam in my car, or should I take the drives out and pack them separately? I will be driving less than an hour to my new place, but some of the roads are kind of bumpy.

[Metallus97]

10 minutes ago, GigabitXe said:

-snip-

Idd take em out of the NAS and put em in antistatic bags. Then in a box with some blankets separating them form each other. 

OH AND: Lable them so you know wich HDD for wich bay when you’re at your new place... (i did this mistake once)

 

That the super carefull way, but properly they will be fine simply in the NAS and the NAS with some blankets in your car

 

Oh and dont drift on the way  

[GigabitXe]

35 minutes ago, Metallus97 said:

Idd take em out of the NAS and put em in antistatic bags. Then in a box with some blankets separating them form each other. 

OH AND: Lable them so you know wich HDD for wich bay when you’re at your new place... (i did this mistake once)

 

That the super carefull way, but properly they will be fine simply in the NAS and the NAS with some blankets in your car

 

Oh and dont drift on the way  

I was thinking about that, but I only have a couple of anti static bags. Maybe I'll just take out the most important drives to pack separately and hope for the best for the other ones.

[Metallus97]

4 minutes ago, GigabitXe said:

I was thinking about that, but I only have a couple of anti static bags. Maybe I'll just take out the most important drives to pack separately and hope for the best for the other ones.

Put them in paper or something but DONT put them directly in the blankets. Some materials used in blankets and also car interior can build up static hella fast. Paper wont protect much but shield a bit. Simply roll em in a bit of newspaper

[GigabitXe]

7 minutes ago, Metallus97 said:

Put them in paper or something but DONT put them directly in the blankets. Some materials used in blankets and also car interior can build up static hella fast. Paper wont protect much but shield a bit. Simply roll em in a bit of newspaper

Sounds good I will try that. Thanks!

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Before moving the NAS, back it up! Move the NAS first, make sure it survived the trip, then move the backup.

[GigabitXe]

1 minute ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Before moving the NAS, back it up! Move the NAS first, make sure it survived the trip, then move the backup.

I would do that, but I don't have any extra drives to back it up to, nor do I have the money to buy them right now.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

2 minutes ago, GigabitXe said:

I would do that, but I don't have any extra drives to back it up to, nor do I have the money to buy them right now.

You need to start saving your pennies, then. Even a NAS needs to be backed up.

[GigabitXe]

Just now, Lady Fitzgerald said:

You need to start saving your pennies, then. Even a NAS needs to be backed up.

Yeah I know, but technically my NAS is my back up. I have copies of all my super important data on my main PC as well.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 minute ago, GigabitXe said:

Yeah I know, but technically my NAS is my back up. I have copies of all my super important data on my main PC as well.

Unless the NAS is kept disconnected from the network and powered down at all times except when updating it, it is redundancy, not a backup.

[GigabitXe]

Just now, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Unless the NAS is kept disconnected from the network and powered down at all times except when updating it, it is redundancy, not a backup.

Believe it or not that is actually what I do. I used to keep it running all the time, but then I realized that I hardly ever access it. Now it is only powered on and connected when I need to use it.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 minute ago, GigabitXe said:

Believe it or not that is actually what I do. I used to keep it running all the time, but then I realized that I hardly ever access it. Now it is only powered on and connected when I need to use it.

[Anomnomnomaly]

5 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

You need to start saving your pennies, then. Even a NAS needs to be backed up.

It's not always possible to back up very large storage... my mediaserver is currently 28TB... It would cost a fortune to back that up... I'd need a new NAS with at least 4 bays and a minimum of 3x 10TB drives... We're looking at around £1000... and that doesn't even include the need to expand my storage as my collection grows. At the very least to cover me through the next few years based on the growth in my media storage needs... 4x10TB is the absolute minimum. Which pushes the price up towards £1300.

 

just to back up my own data on a system that cost me around £500 to put together 6yrs ago, and incremental upgrades in storage capacity in the interim when I've found drives on sale... Not worth it.  There's nothing I can't replace given time, any personal data is on my main system which does get personal files backup weekly.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

39 minutes ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

It's not always possible to back up very large storage... my mediaserver is currently 28TB... It would cost a fortune to back that up... I'd need a new NAS with at least 4 bays and a minimum of 3x 10TB drives... We're looking at around £1000... and that doesn't even include the need to expand my storage as my collection grows. At the very least to cover me through the next few years based on the growth in my media storage needs... 4x10TB is the absolute minimum. Which pushes the price up towards £1300.

 

just to back up my own data on a system that cost me around £500 to put together 6yrs ago, and incremental upgrades in storage capacity in the interim when I've found drives on sale... Not worth it.  There's nothing I can't replace given time, any personal data is on my main system which does get personal files backup weekly.

 

Not everyone has data they can afford to lose. Everyone has to decide how much their data is worth to them

 

Yes, backing up large volumes of data can be expensive. My approach when buying a new drive to add capacity to my system (one I recommend to others) is to budget enough for the drive and four backup drives (a little extreme for most people; two backup drives is normally enough). That way, the cost of backups s spread out over time.

 

Many times, the issue isn't whether one can replace lost media files but how much it would cost to replace them, how long it would take to replace them, and if they even can be replaced. Pretty much all my music was ripped from CDs. I prefer getting it from CDs because I usually can get better audio quality from them than from downloads and the meta data from the album "art" is much better than the tagging that usually comes with downloads. I would really hate to lose my rips, both because it would take longer than the amount of time I have left on Earth (I'm old enough to be staring death in the face) and because many of my CDs will probably have gone bad by then and most are no longer available.

 

The same is true of my movie collection (no, not porn; get your minds out of the gutter) only the time factor dramatically increases. For all my ripped optical media, I would much rather not spend my time reripping everything. Keep in mind some downloaded media may no longer be available to redownloading at a later date.

 

You point out the expense of backing up a NAS. That is one reason I do not recommend most people use one (an exception being when it is used to share data with multiple computers). It's much simpler and less expensive to back up individual drives inside a computer (and drives in a computer take up much less room than a NAS). I currently have capacity for 20TB (14TB usable) of data for a desktop computer.

 

Backing up data should not be reactive. It needs to be proactive. One should plan ahead for the most practical way to store and backup data before buying any storage.