For how long are you using your External HDD ? Which brand is it ?

[linuxyogi]

I purchased a WD Elements Portable 2.5 inch 500 GB External Hard Disk some 3 years back. It went bad just after 1 year of use. I felt terrible about the waste of money.

For how long are you using your External HDD ? Which brand is it ?

[SeijiSensei]

I write backups to this device every night for a couple of years now:

https://www.newegg.com/seagate-model...82E16822178817

[linuxyogi]

I write backups to this device every night for a couple of years now:

https://www.newegg.com/seagate-model...82E16822178817

The next I buy a external hdd I will definitely consider a Seagate.

[mastablasta]

a similar experience. 500 GB WD Elements. it was used to backup server OS and PC OS and few other partitions. it was kept in original packaging. suddenly i needed it and it was corrupted. that was just after about 2 years. so no warranty. i tried to troubleshoot (changed cable, scanned etc.) and complained to WD, but no good answer. i plan to smash it with a sledgehammer.

i bought a WD passport to replace it. so far it works, but who knows. it seem these are not good.

[rbmorse]

I bought an external 3.5 inch HDD caddy and a couple of iTB Western Digital WD1003FBYK hard drives about four years ago. All still in use on a daily basis (the drives get swapped about once a week). It's not very pretty, but I've never had good luck with "portable" external hard drives.

I also have a couple of WD Passports, but they're very picky about which USB port they will work with, and they absolutely hate hubs, except for the one in my Dell monitor. Haven't worked out why.

[TheFu]

2.5 inch disks are made for laptops unless they are enterprise SAS devices.

I've had good and bad luck with every drive vendor, every sort of device, over the decades.
When buying, pay attention to the warranty provided by the vendor. They make millions of each type and those with better warranties are much more likely to last at least through the warranty period. Which disk type should be used depends on your purpose for the disk and how much abuse you give it.

Pretty much all external USB disks only have 90-1 yr warranties, because the market wants cheap over long life models. However, sometimes there is a fortunate overlap where we can get higher quality HDDs that happen to get put inside a cheaper USB enclosure by the vendor. WD has been doing this for years to use up some of their excess Red HDDs. If you run a NAS, you probably know about Red Drives and seek them out. These are 3.5 inch HDDs, not 2.5 inch. While we can never be 100% certain about the actual disk inside a USB enclosure without looking, often the vendor will provide hints in the model number. There are entire threads about seeking quality Red HDDs in cheap enclosures to save $50/ea HDD for a NAS build. Look for drive shucking.

I use a dual eSATA "dock" which lets me drop in 1 or 2 HDDs for access using the native SATA command set, not just the USB one. There is a difference when it comes to real performance with multiple programs writing concurrently.

As for Seagate, never again. When 750G HDDs were a thing all the way until 8TB HDDs became common, Seagate had quality and durability issues. Early on, the company lied about the issues for a few years, which made enterprise customers avoid anything from Seagate if they could.

Every quarter, there's a company - backblaze that posts drive lifetime reports for everyone to see. They are an online storage company, buying hundreds of thousands of HDDs yearly, so they have a statistical sample unlike most of us. Based on those reports, it appears that almost any brand making 10-12TB HDDs is doing a very good job with longevity and avoiding initial dead drives.

For 500G sized storage, I'd just get a WD Blue or Green (for backup use only), and move on. Heck, I've bought used WD Blue 250G HDDs for $10 when I just needed some cheap storage. 3.5 inch in size. I avoid 2.5in HDDs - no good reason why - I just do. Perhaps it is because they cost more and are slower with shorter warranty periods?

Regardless of the disk, I run smartctl tests weekly and compare the results from week-to-week so any changes over time are highlighted.

How long do I use a disk? 5 - 10 yrs, until the SMART data screams - I'm failing. Since I have excellent backups, a HDD failure is just a minor inconvenience, not anything big. At some point, my backup disk (7.6 yrs old, on 24/7/365), which holds all the versioned backups for all systems here (HOMEs OS, settings), will fail. The SMART data for it shows it is fine, though a few CRC errors had me swap the SATA cable a few years ago.

[sudodus]

I use a dual eSATA "dock" which lets me drop in 1 or 2 HDDs for access using the native SATA command set, not just the USB one. There is a difference when it comes to real performance with multiple programs writing concurrently.

+1

I use eSATA (and USB 3) external enclosures (boxes) and put high quality 'internal' 3,5 inch HDD drives into them. Lifetime as well as speed is so much better than with the cheap alternatives (I know, because I used to buy cheaper drives ...). The price is higher too, but not that much higher, and I get a much smoother ride.

Edit: It is important that the drives are not overheated, and some enclosures do not get rid of the heat well enough. It may be worthwhile to monitor the temperature.

I run a shellscript with hddtemp via root's crontab.

You find the package hddtemp in the repository universe.

[linuxyogi]

@Everyone
Thanks for the replies.
The only file that I need to backup is my KeePassXC database.
Do you think a 32GB flash drive is enough for my purpose ?

[mastablasta]

@Everyone
Thanks for the replies.
The only file that I need to backup is my KeePassXC database.
Do you think a 32GB flash drive is enough for my purpose ?

yes a quality UBS key or good SD card will also do. it can be smaller than 32GB, unless you have a really large password database.

however, to go back to me it would not be anything unusual if the drive was being used a lot and failed. however it is strange that it failed (got corrupted), when it wasn't used at all or was used rarely. luckily it didn't have anything important on it. and i could rescue some config files to help me remember how i configure it all.

since their failure rate can be high i find the advice by salesman even more ridiculous. they had this gaming laptop, win10 preloaded with 256GB SSD drive. so i told them that it's not a big enough drive to have games on. how can this be a gaming laptop?!. i said windows can eat up 120 Gb and games can take 50 GB these days. so at best you could get maybe 4 of these AAA games. so what is the point of such a small drive? and the guy said well you can get external drive at a discount with it.

anyway most laptops here have 256 SSD inside. with win 10 preloaded this is really small tight space. maybe with linux it is kind of enough for home office stuff, but not with windows. at least they should have the 2.5 " HDD also installed. i have 500 Gb HDD at work laptop and with not that much stuff added on disk i have about 300 GB taken and about 200 GB available.

[sudodus]

A 32GB USB pendrive is not very reliable. This type of product is mass-produced and is subject to wear and corruption. It is more likely to fail without warning compared to other alternatives.

I would double the backup (using two 32GB USB pendrives) in order to decrease the risk.

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A 32 GB SSD connected via USB is a more reliable alternative (and survives mechanical shock much better than a HDD).