Reading reviews of the options from WD and Seagate makes me wonder that nothing out there if reliable anymore.
I can't afford NAS and online cloud storage services is my last on list as they manipulate and change prices.
Which Hard Drive (Brand/Type and Capacity) to Save Important Family Photos
whatswrongwithya on 26/07/2022 - 11:37
Comments
Which service, If cloud is a decent option?
Take your pick, they are all fine. Apple Icloud, Dropbox, Onedrive (harder to use for me personally)
I've been happy with iDrive.
Quick Google search provided this page, links to a few options
https://www.itproportal.com/guides/the-best-cloud-storage-fo…If they are important, use more than 1, I use Backblaze + Google
I have a relative who somehow managed to permanently erase their cloud backed up photos from their iPhone somehow. They said they were just clicking it like a zombie and saw two warnings, but absentmindedly clicked to delete it all anyway. They don't even drink or use drugs. But anyway, it's literally not foolproof.
No system that is used by a human (which is all systems) are really fool proof.
AFAIK cloud services have a recovery feature provided you realise the mistake in time (30 days) of course.
Certainly present in OneDrive, Google, Dropbox and iCloud.This is why you make two copies, maybe store one on the cloud and the other on an external hard drive or USB stick? If one fails it's not so bad, you just make another copy on some other medium.
the cloud is just bigger setups of hard drives / ssds run by people like apple, google, their drives can fail as well. unlikely, but possible.
Cloud services all have redundancy to cover disk failures.
As well as a team of professionals monitoring for performance and signs of failure to dramatically limit the number of failures from that of random chance.You could build similar at home with a NAS set up with RAID or ZFS storage, but then you're signing up to be the "team of professionals".
↑ This. Well said.
Expect not just multiple redundancies for drives in production, but also offline backups. And almost certainly backups of backups.
Plus probably SLAs of over 99% availability in general, and well over 99% for commercial enterprises.
Agreed. My pick would be Google Photos. Schedule a Google Takeout once every 2 months (you get an email notification). Then download that archive to a HDD of your choice. Keep the last few archives so you can recover from accidentally deleted photos. Done.
I have my family photos on my PC's HDD and it's SSD and on my NAS and on an external HDD that I keep at work. Should probably pay for cloud as well….
You have the data on almost everything. lol
It's important
That's why the backup 3-2-1 rule exists ;) Pointless relying on a single backup :/
For example, put in on a thumbdrive, 2 portable HDDs and a DVD - keep the DVD at work/parents/friends
Which harddrives are reliable, I had 2tb portable WD failed on me this year. luckily, It was the connector issue.
Doesn't matter when you have redundant copies ;)
3-2-1-1-0 is the updated version of that rule, adding;
- 1 air-gapped copy: to remove risk of a ransomware attack damaging backup data)
- 0 errors: a good backup scheme is fantastic until you go to restore something and find that you did something wrong with your implementation
Also print all pictures on a paper and store in 3 different places. Can do the same for video too.
Assuming your comment is made in jest, but it is not actually that bad of an idea.
#2 of the 3-2-1 rule is two media formats: a physical copy of a photo or a Betamax/VHS/DVD copy of a video is a different media format. You are likely to "lose" data due to the phyiscal formats being "lossy", i.e. limited resolution, no metadata, etc; although some of these can be counteracted (metadata being written on the back of the photo / label of the DVD like time/date, location, etc).
Google One. 200GB (A$1.00 monthly /$10.04 yearly)
or 2TB (A$2.51monthly / $25.11 yearly) via Turkey
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/710753Lets say you have a 2TB subscription and you are nearly full. If you don't pay monthly, will google block you from accessing your files?
If these are important family photos I wouldn't advise testing out cancelling your account and seeing if Google delete your data to save just $25 a year. Their policy is they keep it for 2 years, but that's liable to change.
Also you can't send/receive emails if you use the attached gmail account.
What happens when you cancel Google One
You immediately lose the Google One "perks". Then you'll lose access to gmail — you can't send or receiving any mail.
Important: As of June 1, 2021, if you remain inactive or go over your storage quota for 2 years or longer, all of your emails may be deleted.
Google Drive
You can’t sync or upload new files. You can’t create new files in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, and Jamboard. Until you reduce the amount of storage you use, neither you nor anyone else can edit or copy your files. Syncs stop between your computer's Google Drive folder and My Drive.According to the Google One product manager https://support.google.com/drive/thread/13321050/what-will-h…
They don't delete your files, but note that they probably have a fair use policy which allows them to probably just nuke all your files if you keep them there for an extended period of time as a freeloader.That said, you probably should not just rely on the cloud, but have multiple local copies on a hard drive. External HDD's are cheap and it does not matter what model you buy when you're just using it for archives. You'll only be powering up the drive "once in a while" to add more photos from it and you're not using 24 hours a day.
That's decent data from a huge (200,000-plus units) hard drive user.
Super-interesting to note in their Q1 2022 report, none of their 12,000 WD drives have failed — including a model that's racked up 700,000 drive days. Having said that, they only use 3 models.
Seagate had a worse showing, even when balanced with the fact they use 11 models — only one had a zero failure rate.
None of my own WD drives have failed either. I was running 2x500gb raid 0 with 7 years powered on time still reporting OK and no bad sectors in smart data.
Recently plugged in my 1tb external seagate and it went pop. Have a new logi board here for it, but very disappointing as even tho it was also old, it's spent most of its life powered off.
Hmm… I wonder if being powered off is a Pro or a Con when it comes to spinning drives, i.e., is there any component / lubricant / moving doodad that has a tiny but measurable decay in performance over time when it's not being used, e.g., they'd benefit from occasional running just like cars? 🤔
@Member 0230: If you leave a HDD powered off for a long period of time (like 10+ years) you risk losing the/some data due to polarity. This is more prudent on USB keys and SSD's, the firmware/os itself has some technology to try to help repair damaged files but if the files too corrupt it just won't work.
So yes, it is beneficial to power the drive up once in a blue moon. There's lots of information on google about it.
@A-mak: Never thought to look until now — thanks! Obviously you didn't have your 1TB Seagate powered down that long.
Random fact: I grabbed a few old PCs from my parents' place a few months ago and decided to power them up for the heck of it — including a:
- 386 (yes, almost prehistoric)
- Pentium 90
- Celeron 300 overclocked to 450, and an
- AMD Athlon 64 3000+ from 2004-2006
I think the last three actually POSTed successfully, but none loaded the OS — so given what you said, the likely culprit for me would be the HDD.
Another vote for b2 from me.
I have about 250gb on there, costs around $2 a month depending on exchange rate.
This is my archive of last resort in case my iMac and both my cheap and cheerful 1tb alternating Time Machine backup drives explode at once.
b2 takes a little patience to set up and the initial upload takes a while, but it works for me. I just upload any new photos in a new folder once a month.
I'd say it's more of an insurance policy than a day-to-day solution that you want to access all the time.Good to know Backblaze is serving you well, I'm looking at it carefully too.
My backup… isn't. I clone via SuperDuper to a weekly-rotating "offsite" drive (in quotes because the car isn't really, but, since WFH I don't have a weekly place to rotate it to.)
For a real backup, I really should make use of Time Machine since I have a Time Capsule 🤦🏻♂️
Just rediscovered Arq after reading this MaCPU post Abandoning Time Machine; moving to Arq?.
Could be a worthy compliment to B2, like this guy is looking to do.
Also, do you use Backblaze Backup at all, or just B2 as straight cloud storage? If just cloud storage, then I imagine you have your own backup system to store stuff into B2?
Which brand doesn't really matter that much if you keep multiple copies of all the important stuff. It's unlikely that all of them would die at the same time.
Multiple copies, in multiple locations. There is no brand of drive that cannot fail.
^ This.
2 is 1, and 1 is none. Golden rule for backup is that if you ond't have at least 3 copies in at least 2 different locations, you don't really have it at all.
Make copies, keep one in a fireproof location, 1 offsite, 1 cloud based, 1 "live" version (that you back up regularly). Should be a start.
Nothing is failproof/foolproof, when people say it is, it's because the latest edition of fool hasn't yet got their hands on it!
The real challenge is in knowing which is the most current backup, so you don't archive old over newer stuff!
Do you recommend using a software? like the one comes with WD mybook? I am confused because they say cheaper hard drives with 4tb or less storage have poor HDs like WD blue in 4tb WD elements and mybook.
Would be interested to know too. I currently just copy the files over, which is a bit painful to manage and means you can't really do incremental backups except manually, which is prone to error.
But I'd hate to have backups from some backup software as that's an extra layer where a problem could occur?
For important photos and files I use M-Disc Blu-Ray discs. Don't need a special writer, any Blu-Ray writer will work. Link
I keep 2 copies, 1 at home and 1 at office, and I keep 2 Blu-Ray drives.
I buy the 25GB discs which have a single layer as they're cost effective and I don't trust having too many layers due to the risk of delamination.
I also have copies on hard drives but I don't trust the hard drives for long term storage.
I tried using microSD cards once for long term storage but that was a really bad idea. Luckily I didn't rely on them. Whilst the microSD claimed to be X-Ray and water proof I had too many microSD's randomly die on me that I don't trust them at all.
Thanks for sharing the link for the disks. Do you have a link for the blue ray drives or share the names so I can have a look. I bought a 2tb SSD in 2021 but they have gone so much up in the price now.
You don't need an SSD to store photos
SSDs are worse for long term storage compared to HDDs, i think the expected lifespan for an SSD is 5 - 7 years while for an HDD it is somewhere between 7 - 15 years, of course those lifetimes can be exceeded, it's just luck of the draw.
go with the M Disc option, then HDD and then SSD if you really want an SSD.
HDDs do not take kindly to being moved around / jostled a lot, there are magnets and a small disc in side them, you should keep it still as much as possible, definitely not in a backpack that you are chucking around a lot, treat it like delicate glass.
SSD's use electric charges to store data, after time the electric charges dissipate and the data becomes corrupted and is lost. They need regular power to maintain data integrity. With the M-Disc you don't need any special Blu-Ray writers, any current Blu-Ray writer can do the job. I use the Verbatim one. Link I've had hard drives just die on me in the past and it's very scary. I never trust putting my data onto one device. I always have automated backups and at least 1 off site. I also ensure I have point in time backups because if my data got encrypted by ransomware then that would be a disaster.
When I was looking for long term stable storage options the M-Disc was the closest one that I could find. I also ensure that every 5 or so years I revisit current technologies and transfer over to them. No point having stored data when there's no reader or computer that can extract that data.
Whilst I have a lot of data it turns out that the really important photos and files that I want to keep long term aren't that large.
I would try an enterprise drive, much more reliable than standard drives, and prices to match. I have a WD Gold 10TB that is in my NAS.
But I don't have a NAS. Anyway you can have them in an external drive box etc? I have a laptop at this stage.
You can stick any kind of SATA drive into a HDD enclosure.
Cloud.
None - more specifically, you shouldn't trust any one device/storage medium not to fail. Including the cloud. Hence the 3-2-1 backup solution.
If your photos are are important as you say (they always are) then you need to treat them with enough importance and funds to pay for sufficient backups.
I can't afford NAS
You can't afford to lose your photos.
If you lost it all, would you pay $1000 to get them back? $2000? Then that's at least as much as you should spend backing them up. $2k would get you a redundant NAS with 4x 12Tb drives.
Become a nihilist. Take no photos. Have no files. Be one with the universe. Backup issue solved.
You sound like a zen ethan hunt
Occasionally I try to live like this. But occasionally it's nice to share memories with family and friends you don't see often.
More important than 'which drive' I think is the backup methodology.
You can have the most reliable drive in the world, but it'll be useless unless you're backing your photos up regularly.
There's software that helps you do this.
Can also use google drive or similar, when you plug your hard drive in they prompt you to save photos to cloud.
Disclaimer: I don't do any of this myself for photos, but at work I have a daily backup of my working drive, saved to server. For photos I just use iCloud.
print em and have a book type album nothing on hdd/ssd and cloud is safe all will fail, get lost hacked eventually
Degoo 100 gb
Terabyte 1 TB
Both for free
Be greedy setup multiple accounts that's with all cloud services, even free email accounts 👍😁🤣Have got a 1.3TB Degoo.
Wrong question. You want redundancy, not the most reliable drive. Office365 Home gives you 6TB of OneDrive online storage that you can use for backups and it’s cheap. Use that in conjunction with a new hard drive for local storage and you’re good to go.
No drive is 100% reliable which is why you need redundancy. Local drive for quick access, cloud copy (OneDrive would be the cheapest) for offsite storage
I was about to write a separate post saying the same thing when I saw your post.
It is a mistake to store your important data on a single drive.
ALWAYS STORE IMPORTANT DATA ON TWO DIFFERENT PHYSICAL MEDIA, THEN GEOGRAPHICALLY SEPARATE THEM.
I recommend two different brands of hard drive - because then they are more likely to fail for different reasons at different times, than two identical drives of the same type and brand - which could very well fail at exactly the same time in the same way. Or a mix of media type, e.g. hard drive and DVD, or hard drive and cloud. (Be aware that even reputable cloud providers can lose your data).
Use a hard drive as your main storage. Use the cloud as your backup. Best cloud option is MS Office 365 family with 1 TB of OneDrive storage for each account plus you get Office. Synch your hard drive with OneDrive so it automatically keeps both up to date.
I went simple: a ready to go NAS (Synology, QNAP) with 2 disks in RAID 1 (the two disks are mirroring each other), and a cloud service for out of site backup, done automatically by the device, twice a week.
Working fine so far, easy to setup, gives me enough peace of mind. Can probably be done better.
Which cloud service is being used also how much did the NAS setup cost you?
I am using AWS S3 Glacier, but the automatic Synology backup tool supports a large range of options.
The device I have is this one: https://www.centrecom.com.au/synology-diskstation-ds220j-2-b…
Could be faster, but works ok. As for disks, I bought two external 4TB ones that OzBargain always has deals for and shucked them. Probably spent around 700 bucks for the whole thing.
Sorry I forgot to ask which drives did you go with? WD or Seagate? I bought an external 4tb WD elements drive and it broke making beep sound.
The most effective thing that I have done with 'important family photos' is that I have created a number of photobooks that many in my family have received as gifts.
They are always received happily and I know I have a number of copies that I can access if needed.
I basically created a couple with all of the old inherited photos once I had scanned them all. Then I make a new book for each important occassion/holiday etc.The other advantage to this is that it helps me reduce the number of images that there is no real need to store.
I find so much duplication and so many unimportant images.
There is no need to keep every photo taken and all of those old, out of focus snapshots (unless it's the only one you have of someone important).I do have online storage but I find that after I select the images that I need/want to keep I don't need anywhere as much storage space as I thought.
If you don't actually do anything thing with these 'important family photos' other than store them are they really of any importance?
Thank you to all who have contributed to this discussion. I am in the process of copying lots of family history and photos to an external source. I note that M-Disc Blu-Ray discs seem to be the best alternative if not using Cloud, Google or similar storage.
Can these M-Disc Blu-Ray discs be written and read on a standard disc writer as on a desktop computer? Do I need to purchase a particular writer/reader to process these discs? Comments please.OP, when you say "online cloud storage services is my last on list as they manipulate and change prices", do you mean straight cloud storage? Or dedicated online backup like Backblaze?
I don't use Backblaze, but I like their post which recommends - specifically for photos which are some of the most precious files people have - using four layers: How to Use Free Cloud Storage and Unlimited Online Backup Together.
Up to you:
- How many layers (but 3+ is great).
- The order of layers, and
- Which product you use in each layer
but I think it makes great sense to have at least one layer being a dedicated online backup service, i.e., not just Google Drive / MS OneDrive / iCloud, etc.
if you value them that much, the cloud
Any hard drive can fail no matter what brand or size.