How often do you replace your hard drives?

[PARANOiA]

Simple question. I usually replace my HDD's every 18 months or so, just to ensure my data will be relatively safe from disk failure. I occasionally back up the super-important stuff - photos and whatnot - but it's simply too much effort to burn 200+gb to DVDs on a regular basis.

Is this paranoid, or should I be doing it more often?

 

[Bludd]

I buy new ones when I run out of space. I move my backups to the most recent disk and keep the old disks until they go poo-poo.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Simple question. I usually replace my HDD's every 18 months or so, just to ensure my data will be relatively safe from disk failure. I occasionally back up the super-important stuff - photos and whatnot - but it's simply too much effort to burn 200+gb to DVDs on a regular basis.

Is this paranoid, or should I be doing it more often?

I only replace hard drives if they go faulty, or if I need bigger/faster drives.

If you're really backing up 200GB regularly, you're better off getting a proper backup system like DLT or some other form of offline tape. It's a much better recovery system as it can be kept away from the original system that might perish completely, eg, theft, lightning strike, power surge, PSU failure that takes out the whole system, house fire, etc.

 

[Gerry]

Simple question. I usually replace my HDD's every 18 months or so, just to ensure my data will be relatively safe from disk failure. I occasionally back up the super-important stuff - photos and whatnot - but it's simply too much effort to burn 200+gb to DVDs on a regular basis.

Is this paranoid, or should I be doing it more often?

I thought disk drives are more likely to to fail early on in their life, so surely by replacing more often you're making it more likely that you have a HDD fail at some point? If a drive stays reliable in the first 3 months or so, it's much more likely to stay reliable.

 

[hoho]

I usually don't replace drives, I just get additional ones when space runs out (currently at 5 drives with ~1.3TB space). Important stuff is copied over multiple disks, more important in couple of web servers and most important stuff I send to gmail (in addition to other places)

So far I have not had a single drive go bad on me but I have broken a couple myself because of bad handling. I don't back up anything on optical disks, it is not worth the time or effort. If I really wanted to get a half-decent backup system I'd get a couple of external HDDs for multiple copies.

 

[Valzic]

I also do not replace drives and I have a huge amount of critical data and databases. I add newer drives when I need space or am building a replacement system. I have had 1 drive failure in years and that was the infamous IBM Deathstar (Deskstar) and I have massive amount of drives from 750GB down to paper weights of 13GB drives that would not die and can't find a use for.

However, I have had more problems with my backups not being readable (DVD and CD). Hard Drives seems to be a lot more reliable.

 

[Humus]

I thought disk drives are more likely to to fail early on in their life, so surely by replacing more often you're making it more likely that you have a HDD fail at some point?

That has been my experience. My old drives keep running well. All the drives that have failed (and I've had a drive from every major vendor fail on me) have been less than a year old IIRC.

 

[Bludd]

So I think we can conclude that PARANOiA is misguided and paranoid.

 

[PARANOiA]

So I think we can conclude that PARANOiA is misguided and paranoid.

It's all true

Thanks for the input guys. I think I need to rethink my situation. I'm majorly concerned about losing all my photos and whatnot, since our hard drives are the photo albums of this generation. A simple hard drive crash will kill all of the photos of my birthdays, holidays, etc.

 

[Ty]

It's all true

Thanks for the input guys. I think I need to rethink my situation. I'm majorly concerned about losing all my photos and whatnot, since our hard drives are the photo albums of this generation. A simple hard drive crash will kill all of the photos of my birthdays, holidays, etc.

Certainly that would suck. No access to a DVD burner? I do have older, spare HDs lying around and do keep copies of important data on them as well....just in case.

 

[Sobek]

Simple question. I usually replace my HDD's every 18 months or so, just to ensure my data will be relatively safe from disk failure.

I buy new ones when I run out of space. I move my backups to the most recent disk and keep the old disks until they go poo-poo.

The combination of those two is my tact. I do replace my drives every year simply to avoid unwanted failures (I find that often after a years solid use, drives start getting noisy and that just aint right). I basically run two of whatever the largest drives available at the time are in my PC in raid 0, and keep a nice stack of massive drives in my server to store all my legal movie backups and whatnot. Typically, every 10 months or so i'll replace at least one drive in my server (or add a new one) either because it starts acting up, getting a little too noisy, or I just plain run out of space.

I do have a lot of 'critical' data, which I keep on my PC alone. Somehow, without ever backing up, i've managed to keep this over time. Just get lucky I suppose

 

[NovemberMike]

It's all true

Thanks for the input guys. I think I need to rethink my situation. I'm majorly concerned about losing all my photos and whatnot, since our hard drives are the photo albums of this generation. A simple hard drive crash will kill all of the photos of my birthdays, holidays, etc.

I would look at RAID setups, backups to external HDDs and images stored on DVDs. A mixture of those should keep you from losing any important data (barring a metoer striking every location you keep backups at).

 

[hoho]

RAID won't help with file system corruption and accidental deletion. I'd say that two separate disks with incremental backups done to the second disk is much safer than any RAID.

 

[Blazkowicz]

the last times it was for drive failure, which means the data was lost (and I don't burn disks) . that allowed me to get rid of the crap and start fresh with a ridiculously simpler and better directory structure.

I currently have a 250GB hdd, full off course, and a dead PC, gotta get some money soon, I'll get PC parts and a 500GB hdd, not sure what data I'll replicate.


Gerry : you're right about early failure, though past a certain times hard disks are freaking unreliable as well (about 3 years). failure rate is like this : \__/
off course there are the 15 year old HDD still running (and the ones that work like a charm then fail on you)

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I've noticed that the price of external area network drives are getting pretty cheap. You could bung a stack of disks in there, RAID them and put in on the network.

 

[Valzic]

I am trying a new tact here. I have ordered an evaluation copy of Microsoft's new Windows Home Server and I am putting together a old parts and new parts server.

I have been following the discussions in the Beta and the automatic nature of the backups of all computers on the network really appeals to me. With critical stuff on my system and my families 4 other computers, I will be relieved to not have to micro manage all the recovery problems. Also I can going to make use of a lot of these hard drives I have deemed too small to use on my main computers as WHS just pools all hard drives into 1 large storage area.

This might be a solution that might help in keeping all stuff safe.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/default.mspx

 

[Moloch]

I usally end up buying a few a year, this year I ended up getting 3- a 500GB WD (which is failing and I need to rma..) and the 2x320GB maxtor (really seagate) deal that outpost had going on earlier in the year for something like 70 bucks.
I replace as they fail

 

[{Sniping}Waste]

It's all true

Thanks for the input guys. I think I need to rethink my situation. I'm majorly concerned about losing all my photos and whatnot, since our hard drives are the photo albums of this generation. A simple hard drive crash will kill all of the photos of my birthdays, holidays, etc.

Get another HDD of the same size and just RAID 1 them. If one crashes then you have a second drive with all the data on it and you can replace the bad HDD and RAID 1 them again.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Get another HDD of the same size and just RAID 1 them. If one crashes then you have a second drive with all the data on it and you can replace the bad HDD and RAID 1 them again.

The problem with that is that if one disc slowly fails and corrupts data, that can get copied to the good disc. Accidentally delete the folder with all your photos on it? Oops, it's gone off the second drive too!

 

[Humus]

I'd simply buy an external HD for backup. For personal data that's probably the most convenient solution.