External Hard Drive for Backing Up Stuff

I will tell you after having a number of backup drives fail, i got spendy and got a Glyph Raid 1 system. Noisy as hell. Relativly slow, but i got the version with the industry stabdard Hitachi enterprise drives….i was a little disappointed to learn you cant just replace one if it fails….it has the individual status lights, but if/when one fails youre supposed to send it into Glyph for replacement….I figured like most hardware RAID, youd get whatever right spec drive and unplug the failed, and boot up with the new in and it would auto populate data from the good one.

Luckily, its been like 3+ years now and ihavent needed to test that.

Do you use the B2 storage on BB? I just recently got a new Mac and my license was for the other Mac of course. Once it hadn’t backed up for a week or so, the “safety froze” it. I had been using it to backup my boot drive and two other external drives…on the external drive, I would delete things that were over a year old because: I have Backblaze and it’s stored. That’s what it’s for, right?
Well come to find out, they tell me that’s not what it’s for. I could transfer that license to my new computer, but not all the secondary drives. So I had to download years of different shit - because I would finish a job - it’s backed up - and I don’t need it locally anymore. If somebody asked for a fix from something I did a year ago, I’d just go to the date and download it. Major PITA.

Now that I’m on the new computer, hopefully it should last another 6-10 years. So I might just do the same thing.

Aside from numerous external drives, I use Backblaze for a cloud based backup and it has saved my ass twice in the last couple years (had a few external drives die). It’s like $9 a month and very worth it

Just bought a couple of Samsung SSD T7s (USB C ) in boxing day sale (different colours so I can tell 'em apart) $129 ea AUD for 500 gigs. haven't tried them but I'm sure they are fine for my needs. Will use them as main drives on a new Mac and back up to the on board as well as a 2 TB spinner.
Cheers, Ross

Thanks to a lot of you. I had not heard of Backblaze so I am glad to learn something here! Unlimited data! $7 month. WOW!
Though I am in the habit of saving to multiple SSDS, and I will still do that as well.

Archivists really know how to store data for the long term:
library.si.edu/research/best-practices-storing-archiving-and-preserving-data
And then there is M-Disc which may last 1000 years (or your money back - just notify then after about 900 years. )

i have a second HD in my macbook pro (took out the cd-rom drive). thats my FIRST backup which gets automatically backed up by timemachine. than i have a second external samsung HD on which at the end of the day i do a backup.
i am not paranoid but i like to play safe! never have files lost!

I have recently been trying to expand my system. Ideally I'd get a RAID system, but I'm just not bringing in enough business to justify that right now. (with paying for other gear at the moment.)

I have it where I have two backup drives for current work, and two drives for archive work. Anything that hasn't been touched in a year moves to the archive.

I have experienced some failures in the past with the portable drives that only run off USB power. I'm now leaning on enclosures that have their own power supply and I buy the NMVE SSD separately. These can often be faster than many of the current gen portable drives, and if your SSD fills up, you can just swap it out. And getting something with a heatsink can really help extend the life of the drive.

OWC and Sabrent are bigger names for enclosures, but really there are lots of brands that I'd never heard of that have thousands of positive reviews on Amazon. Just look for something with thunderbolt 3 or 4, so it can also be current USB compatible and somewhat more future proof.

Whether it's online or on physical media, just make sure you can be disciplined about backing up, so nothing is left to chance.

I've been using one of these the past year - extremely fast - convenient - no glitches so far. I use the USB Type C -to-A cable - still really fast.

I use Time Machine for hourly incremental backups to an SSD (for speed).

I use a scheduled rsync command to duplicate my primary drive over to an HDD once a week. rsync synchronizes the source drive with the target drive, so after the initial sync it's pretty fast. Now that Windows supports unix shells, scheduling an rsync might work on it as well -- but I don't know Windows.

No argument with your way of working Jeremy - sounds right to me , especially the 3 drives bit. I have 2 time machine drives which I institute after every major piece of work (could be after a good take or a major mix move) and definitely when taking a break
Cheers, Ross

I've used Carbon Copy Cloner for several years now. I do a DR run now and then and make sure I can boot from the backup of the Mini I use for my DAW.

That said, looking at Synology after hearing about it on the WCA podcast. Need a cloud solution and will check out Backblaze. I use Sync for manual stuff but I hate the auto-app tools DB and Sync and others use. They're always running and doubling your storage usage locally, IMHO.