Most reliable drive for periodic backup purposes

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rbm

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I have a home media NAS server with 2TB of data which I need to backup periodically. I'm currently using software RAID (md-raid) on Ubuntu 10.10 but am planning on migrating soon to Nexentastor using ZFS. With Nexenta, I have the snapshot facility to create the images for periodic point-in-time backups for medium term retention (3-6 months).

The backup solution has to be convenient yet inexpensive. DVDs are too numerous for full backups although they make excellent archivial storage. Tape is far too expensive. This leaves large capacity 3.5" disks as the best backup media. Dispite the shortcomings with disks, I'd still like to know if there is a recommendation for a drive that is reliable over the medium term. For example, my RAID consists of 500GB Hitachi and Seagate drives all of which have been reliable in service over 4 years. I, personally, have had bad experience with Western Digital Caviar drives and avoid all WD products. I've read so much on different drive manufacturer's 2TB products; and there are advocates and critics for every manufacturer.

Does anyone use a hard disk backup solution and have success with a reliabile manufacturer?

Thanks.
- Robert.
 
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I have over 38 currently spinning WD disks, been using WD for 15 years. Each year I get more and have less failures. I had one failure last year, zero in 2009, two in 2008 and three in 2007 - maintaining approx. 40 spinning disks. Usually a bad disk will fail within the first three months of use, after that it should last 2-3 years based on averages calculated by Google's internal storage department.
 
terayon1515 said:
I have over 38 currently spinning WD disks, been using WD for 15 years.
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I can see the disks from your signature. It's reassuring to hear your experiences; most people only post their bad experiences which skews one's ability to objectively evaluate a disk product. I'll look into WD closer since there are usually deals at the local computer stores.

-Robert.
 
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rbm said:
I can see the disks from your signature. It's reassuring to hear your experiences; most people only post their bad experiences which skews one's ability to objectively evaluate a disk product. I'll look into WD closer since there are usually deals at the local computer stores.

-Robert.
Click to expand...

I grew to love the WD Blue's, especially the 500GB WD5000AAKS drives. They are still very reliable and most of mine have lapsed their 3 year warranties. The new versions of the WD5000AAKS drives are even better, have only a single platter (vs. 3 in the older ones) and last longer because of that fact (less spindles, less R/W heads = a 66% more reliable drive in the long run,) [and it's less than half the weight :cool: ]

I have invested a couple thousand into Green drives since they came out. I have had an insanely positive experience with them, they are dead quiet and very cool running. As for RAID, most of my drives don't have TLER, and most (that have the capability to active it) haven't had any timeout problems with my hardware controller (Dell PERC 5/i) or onboard Intel ICHxR and older nVidia 680i and 570i chipsets. They have slowish write rates, but in a nice RAID they perform very very well. My 6x WD20EARS RAID5 array (w/o any TLER on an Intel ICH10R board) hasn't had an issue for close to a year, and does 110-160MB/s reads and 65-90MB/s writes. Not bad for an onboard RAID5 with low spindle speed drives.

Here in Canada WD20EARS drives dip down around $85 CAN + tax. Super cheap, and they have the best RMA service I have seen from the big four manufacturers.
 
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