Dock vs. External Enclosure for backups

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xFROSTx

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I am looking to setup some backup drives for my 2 drives that store all of my music, movies and recorded tv. My original plan was to buy 2 external enclosures and keep them unplugged except for the once a week backup. Data isn't changed that frequently on the drives so a weekly backup is just fine and wouldn't result in a loss of much data. I want to avoid keeping them plugged in all the time because I live in an older building and my outlets are not grounded (Terrified that a lightening strike will fry something. All of my equipment is on surge protectors, and the critical networking equipment and server is on an additional backup battery/surge protector). As I am looking for enclosures, I noticed that hard drive docks are rather inexpensive compared to buying 2 external enclosures. My question is do you think it is safe to use a dock to make my backups and then store the hard drives in a drawer or something? Being an IT geek I have kept hard drives in drawers before and they always seems to work just fine, but never with drive that has important info on it. Is there an easy way to safely store a hard drive, or is an enclosure worth more than just peace of mind?
 
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for my offline backup i have two seagate 1tb extreme eSATA/USB/FW harddrives

i plug them in via eSATA as required

i use syncback to mirror the source dir on my computer to the target dir on the external harddrive

i don't have to do anything on the external harddrive

syncback scan both dirs, looks for changes, that is, files that have been created, deleted or modified on the source dir

tells me what have changes have occured

i click ok and syncback updates the external drive

ask if you have any other questions.
 
Asposium said:
for my offline backup i have two seagate 1tb extreme eSATA/USB/FW harddrives

i plug them in via eSATA as required

i use syncback to mirror the source dir on my computer to the target dir on the external harddrive

i don't have to do anything on the external harddrive

syncback scan both dirs, looks for changes, that is, files that have been created, deleted or modified on the source dir

tells me what have changes have occured

i click ok and syncback updates the external drive

ask if you have any other questions.
Click to expand...

I have some syncing tools that I already plan on using. My question still remains, how do you store a hard drive with important data in your house? Is just throwing it in my drawer ok?
 
depends how "important" that data is

the "important" stuff is on a hard drive in my work desk draw, i.e. not in my house

being offline protects against electrical spike damage, but what about fire, or, to a lesser extent, theft

the drives don't seem to have suffered from irregular use, but it's early days

to directly answer your question, i imagine they'll be fine, but i wouldn't recommend "throwing it in [the] drawer" :)
 
I have a hard drive that I use for weekly backups only.

I have installed the (SATA internal) drive inside my computer along with the rest of my internal drives, connected to the motherboard to an AHCI SATA port. AHCI makes SATA hot swappable.
I have placed a switch (that cuts both 5V and 12V wires) in the power cable placed on a PCI bracket.

When I want to use it, I flip the switch. After the backup is complete, I eject the drive using the icon on the taskbar and after windows tells me it can be safely removed, I switch it off.
What is nice about this is:
- The drive is kept cool when in use.
- I don't have to keep attaching and disconnecting.
- I don't need to buy an external enclosure.
- The drive does not spin up every day when I power up the computer.
 
Asposium said:
depends how "important" that data is

the "important" stuff is on a hard drive in my work desk draw, i.e. not in my house

being offline protects against electrical spike damage, but what about fire, or, to a lesser extent, theft

the drives don't seem to have suffered from irregular use, but it's early days

to directly answer your question, i imagine they'll be fine, but i wouldn't recommend "throwing it in [the] drawer" :)
Click to expand...

Haha, that's the thing though. My gut instinct tells me that just "Throwing it in the drawer" would surely lead to corrupted data. But then I started thinking about it and I have a 40, 60 and a 120 gig hard drive that are literally throw in a drawer for storage and I have never once had a problem with them. Regardless, I would consider this critically important data. Not necessarily because it's irreplaceable, but due to how long it would take me to reload all the data. I'm looking to backup 4TB of data on 3 drives (Two 1.5TB drives and a 1TB drive), which mainly consist of recorded TV and movies and a little music. Having to rip and convert all those TV shows and movies again would literally take me months (Because that's how long it took me to load it all in the first place :D). I know I'm taking a risk by keeping it in my house, so I'm tempted to store it at my parents house. Then again, I run into the problem of how to safely store an unused hard drive long term. One option I was thinking is to store them in the boxes I bought them in and then stash them somewhere at my parents house. The other option I am considering is a fireproof safe (Which would be stored at my place so no off-site backup), but that means I probably would have to store the drives in only their anti-static bag due to space constraints.


MrF said:
I have a hard drive that I use for weekly backups only.

I have installed the (SATA internal) drive inside my computer along with the rest of my internal drives, connected to the motherboard to an AHCI SATA port. AHCI makes SATA hot swappable.
I have placed a switch (that cuts both 5V and 12V wires) in the power cable placed on a PCI bracket.

When I want to use it, I flip the switch. After the backup is complete, I eject the drive using the icon on the taskbar and after windows tells me it can be safely removed, I switch it off.
What is nice about this is:
- The drive is kept cool when in use.
- I don't have to keep attaching and disconnecting.
- I don't need to buy an external enclosure.
- The drive does not spin up every day when I power up the computer.
Click to expand...

I like your idea, easy and convenient for sure. I don't think it's going to work for me though since all of my SATA ports and 3.5 drive bays are filled. :(
 
Your method would be "ok" , if it were me, I would keep them in an antistatic bag like they came in, and then maybe inside like a tupperware container of styrofoam peanuts. It sure would suck to lose a drive cause you scrubbed your feet one time too many on that new carpet.
 
jay2472000 said:
Your method would be "ok" , if it were me, I would keep them in an antistatic bag like they came in, and then maybe inside like a tupperware container of styrofoam peanuts. It sure would suck to lose a drive cause you scrubbed your feet one time too many on that new carpet.
Click to expand...

Interesting idea! Where can I buy those styofoam peanuts and then cut it to protect the hard drive? I really want to do that!
 
For offline storage, an antistatic bag is a good idea and a packet of silica gel beads couldn't hurt either.

A dock will put more stress on the connectors, but they're rated for many thousands of plug/unplug cycles.
 
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