External drive for back up. Help!

[CriSis_]

Hi,

For some time I have been looking for an external drive, however, it seems many have some form of data loss problem caused by a poor quality drive or another variable. Can anybody recommend me a drive, preferably a hdd for long-ish term storage? (Although I may just buy a hdd and transfer it to my new build so it may only be short term.) 

 

I am looking to move family photos, program files and other data of which is currently stored on a six-ish year old WD blue 5400rpm hdd. I'm not certain, but I have a suspicion the drive is due to bite the dust soon so whichever drive I transfer to needs to be of good quality as it will be the only backup, for now. I only need 500gb-1tb so I don't have much need of a nas or anything similar for this particular backup. My maximum budget is up to £100 as I am in the process of building a new pc and do not have much room for additional expenses; due to this it would be preferable that it's below my maximum . 

 

Thanks for the help in advance, 

Stay safe,

Lex. 

[dizmo]

One form of data retention is not a backup.

You need to have 3. Sign up for OneDrive or Backblaze and use their service, as well as a local one, and depending on how much you value the data, an off site one. Realistically you'll have failures with anything you research. I'd personally just grab an enterprise HDD, put it in an external enclosure and call it a day. One of the Seagate reps said the drives in external enclosures aren't made to the same standard as the enterprise or even retail box drives.

 

[CriSis_]

17 minutes ago, dizmo said:

One form of data retention is not a backup.

You need to have 3. Sign up for OneDrive or Backblaze and use their service, as well as a local one, and depending on how much you value the data, an off site one. Realistically you'll have failures with anything you research.

Quote

I'd personally just grab an enterprise HDD, put it in an external enclosure and call it a day.

The enterprise drives seem quite expensive, do you think a retail drive such as a segate barracuda or a wd black would still be a better quality over a store bought external drive? Or perhaps do you think I should by something like an m.2 and store it on there for now (using a usb stick enclosure) since this particular copy will only be needed for around 3 months due it being transferred to my new system  

 

17 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Quote

One of the Seagate reps said the drives in external enclosures aren't made to the same standard as the enterprise or even retail box drives.

Thanks this helps a lot! Had no idea the externals drives were such poor quality, I figured they would have been retail box drives with a hefty price bump due to the enclosure each company designed 

Apologies, I shouldn't have called it a back up  . It's more so that I have a copy other than the one that is on my current computer. I will be transferring the data to a new system soon and may use this copy as an offsite drive . As I'm moving soon I do not wish to invest all that much now in something more thorough xD

 

Thanks for the help!  

 

 

[dizmo]

22 minutes ago, CriSis_ said:

 

Apologies, I shouldn't have called it a back up  . It's more so that I have a copy other than the one that is on my current computer. I will be transferring the data to a new system soon and may use this copy as an offsite drive . As I'm moving soon I do not wish to invest all that much now in something more thorough xD

 

Thanks for the help!  

 

 

OneDrive and BackBlaze are both free for the amount of data you'd have

That's still the method I'd use for transferring it, honestly. As long as you have internet at both places.

If you don't want to do that just get something like a WD external drive. 1TB ones are quite cheap.