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Thread: Hard drive recommendations for backups ?

  1. #1
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    Hard drive recommendations for backups ?

    Needing a 2TB external hard drive for backups. I have been informed by Seagate that their external hard drives are only compatible with Windows or Mac. Does anyone have any recommendations for hard drives to backup Linux/Kubuntu data please ?

    Some info - Linux OS Support for Disk Drives Beyond 2.2 TeraBytes (TB) and (SOLVED) Buying a new external hard drive
    Last edited by oygle; April 16th, 2020 at 10:50 AM.

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    Re: Hard drive recommendations for backups ?

    Drives are drives. There's no specific OS compatibility.

    All drive manufacturers have bad spells. Pick any manufacturer you like and you'll be able to find horror stories about one model or another that "ate all my data."

    Multiple redundant versioned backups are the way to go: automatic backups one place, manual backups another place, offsite backups somewhere else. The failure rate of any part of that doesn't really matter then, because they're redundant. It's never been easier or cheaper to do it that way.

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    Re: Hard drive recommendations for backups ?

    Seagate obviously don't know enough about Linux to tell you anything useful; I am using a 2TB external USB3 disk for my backups with no problems at all.

    They might not actively support its use with Linux but I suspect also that they do not actually say that it won't work, and you therefore use it at your own risk.

    The disk I have is brilliant, fast and compact, a Seagate Expansion Portable drive, now formatted to ext4. No doubt it came with NTFS but that is hopeless as I don't have Windows to repair any filesystem problems that might arise, and NTFS is hopeless dealing with Linux permissions.

    The first of your links points to an old discussion; note the kernel versions mentioned; 2.6.35, which I think was in the first versions of Ubuntu, 16 years ago, so forget about that. The second link to the Linuc Mint discussion is much more as I have now suggested; just forget about any of the software which might come on the disk and completely reformat it as you want.

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    Re: Hard drive recommendations for backups ?

    I've been writing backups to this device every night for a couple of years now.

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

    Never had a hiccup.
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    Re: Hard drive recommendations for backups ?

    Quote Originally Posted by CatKiller View Post
    Drives are drives. There's no specific OS compatibility.
    Yes, I have only just realised the external drive i have been using for about 10 years (500 Gb and starting to fail) is a Seagate...lol

    Quote Originally Posted by CatKiller View Post
    Multiple redundant versioned backups are the way to go: automatic backups one place, manual backups another place, offsite backups somewhere else. The failure rate of any part of that doesn't really matter then, because they're redundant. It's never been easier or cheaper to do it that way.
    Yes, agreed, redundancy is the way to go. For now, I just use Beyond Compare, easy to use and the 'synchronise' function is very quick. But there is no redundancy there, it is simply updating on a mirror basis.

    Quote Originally Posted by ajgreeny View Post
    Seagate obviously don't know enough about Linux to tell you anything useful; I am using a 2TB external USB3 disk for my backups with no problems at all.
    Thanks, good to know that others are using Seagate successfully.

    Quote Originally Posted by ajgreeny View Post
    They might not actively support its use with Linux but I suspect also that they do not actually say that it won't work, and you therefore use it at your own risk.
    Yes, good point, they don't actually say it doesn't work.

    Quote Originally Posted by ajgreeny View Post
    The disk I have is brilliant, fast and compact, a Seagate Expansion Portable drive, now formatted to ext4.
    When I get it, I'll just use Partition Manager to format to EXT4. I don't use Windows, other than an old laptop running inverter monitoring software. It's easier to just backup that up onto a USB stick as it's only a few Mb.

    Quote Originally Posted by ajgreeny View Post
    The first of your links points to an old discussion; note the kernel versions mentioned; 2.6.35, which I think was in the first versions of Ubuntu, 16 years ago, so forget about that. The second link to the Linuc Mint discussion is much more as I have now suggested; just forget about any of the software which might come on the disk and completely reformat it as you want.
    I didn't realise the first link was so old. Yep, format is the way to go.

    Quote Originally Posted by SeijiSensei View Post
    I've been writing backups to this device every night for a couple of years now.

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

    Never had a hiccup.
    Thanks, I may need one very similar, as photos and videos from mobile phones take up a fair bit. The Kubuntu is only about 240 Gb, and takes about 4 to 5 hours to the current (failing) external. It is only USB 2 , so very slow.

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    Re: Hard drive recommendations for backups ?

    Quote Originally Posted by ajgreeny View Post
    Seagate obviously don't know enough about Linux to tell you anything useful;
    Seagate knows enough not to cross their corporate partners at Microsoft and Apple...and give customers a reliable open-source alternative.

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    Re: Hard drive recommendations for backups ?

    5-10 years ago, a few USB external disks didn't implement the full USB-storage protocol and there were some that didn't work with Linux. People had to really watch the USB interfaces used. That's mostly been handled today with workarounds in software on the Linux side. I have some HW from 2010 that still doesn't handle USB3 speeds well, but my research about it is that the motherboard from that time just didn't have sufficient bandwidth for anything except the x16 GPU.

    So ... my only real recommendations for 2TB external disks are this:
    • Don't get Seagate for this size. Check out the BackBlaze reliability reports for why.
    • Avoid the 2.5inch size, get the 3.5inch disks, which are faster and often we can "shuck" the enclosure to find a quality RED HDD inside which is worth 50% more than the price paid for the disk+enclosure. WD does this fairly often.
    • Get an enclosure with external power so the full available speed can be used.
    • Don't worry about USB3 or USB 3.1 ... no spinning HDDs can come close to either.


    So, I have a 2TB WD external WDC WD20EARX-00PASB0 that has been going strong for more years than I remember - ok 55576 hrs (6.3 yrs) according to SMART today. Still looks good, SMART-wise. But nobody here has statistical samples counts. The 2 Seagate 2TB disks that I had, which failed just after 1 yr don't prove anything - except that I was really happy my credit card doubled the warranty so I could get better replacement HDDs.

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    Re: Hard drive recommendations for backups ?

    Quote Originally Posted by TheFu View Post
    So, I have a 2TB WD external WDC WD20EARX-00PASB0 that has been going strong for more years than I remember - ok 55576 hrs (6.3 yrs) according to SMART today.
    Hmm. Mine's just a young pup then at 31,558 hours or about 3.6 years.
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    Re: Hard drive recommendations for backups ?

    I just purchased a SATA disk enclosure, I think the brand is Orico. I have a 500 GB. 3.5" spinning hard drive in it. Easy to swap out drives as desired. That always made more sense to me than a purpose-built backup device. I guess some backup devices come with backup software but I'm pretty sure those only work with Windows & maybe Mac. There are GUIs for Rsync and backup software for Linux so I don't see that having included backup software is that big a deal.

  10. #10
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    Re: Hard drive recommendations for backups ?

    Ended up purchasing a Seagate 4TB backup plus.Difficult to tell if it is 3.5 " disk. Have backed up what was on the HDD, as some of it was warranty information. Now I presume I can simply format the drive to EXT4, is that correct ?

    I did a test with a small directory and it took 10 minutes to backup 4 Gb. Much SLOWER than the old hard drive (Seagate) using usb 2. But need to test after reformatting (it is NTFS now), as there were a number of errors because of long filenames.
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    Last edited by oygle; April 24th, 2020 at 05:01 AM.

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