"Tom Gardner" wrote in message
...
On 3/7/2015 6:46 PM, Karl Townsend wrote:

External hard drives!

Karl




You have all the eggs in one basket. I too have a lot of video but
it's distributed over a number of computers on the network. None of
the computers are "first flight" and they have a couple of external
USB drives hanging off of them. The one computer on the TV then
plays the video from wherever it is, I have all the drives listed on
the desktop, all running XP. I think active UPS's give good
electrical protection but I just have MOV's. I prefer 1TB drives
for price and reliability.

My backup scheme for valuable files is one port-powered 1 TB or 2 TB
portable drive to copy to immediately plus two AC-powered ones that I
save to when the internal drive approaches full. The USB drives are
plugged in only when I'm using them.

Fairly valuable files go on pairs of 2 TB externals, stuff I wouldn't
care too much about losing goes on the 5 TB drives which I bought to
free up filled pairs of smaller backup drives.

I've had one WD backup drive degrade to complete failure before I
could copy all the files off it, and a drive with a reallocated sector
count rising fast enough that Seagate replaced it without arguing,
although it passed their fitness test.

Here is a large user's comparison of drive reliability. Notice that
they may choose cheaper over better, and Seagates vary wildly by
model.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

Elsewhere they point out that their 24/7 environment doesn't imitate
the average user.

-jsw