New 6TB USB 3.0 hard drive - opinions

[Dan]

I need to back up my hard drives in my desktop, which ones from this
list is recommended?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Expansion-External-PlayStation-STEB6000403/dp/B07C7V494X/ref=sr_1_3?crid=335N7E24XEJWE&dchild=1&keywords=6tb+external+hard+drive+usb+3.0&qid=1624038775&sprefix=6TB+usb+3.0%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-3

Seagate Expansion Desktop 6 TB External Hard Drive HDD – USB 3.0 for
PC Laptop (STEB6000403) - Amazon Exclusive the cheapest



https://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-WDBWLG0060HBK-EESN-Elements-External/dp/B077RV4ZLY/ref=sr_1_4?crid=335N7E24XEJWE&dchild=1&keywords=6tb+external+hard+drive+usb+3.0&qid=1624038775&sprefix=6TB+usb+3.0%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-4
WD 6 TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0, Black


https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Desktop-External-Creative-Photography/dp/B01IAD5ZEE/ref=sr_1_5?crid=335N7E24XEJWE&dchild=1&keywords=6tb+external+hard+drive+usb+3.0&qid=1624038775&sprefix=6TB+usb+3.0%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-5
Seagate 6 TB Backup Plus Hub USB 3.0 Desktop 3.5 Inch External Hard
Drive for PC and Mac with 2 Months Free Adobe Creative Cloud
Photography Plan, Black

[nospam]

In article <61opcgpfl2bmi9ra4...@4ax.com>, Dan

<notg...@guesswho.com> wrote:

> I need to back up my hard drives in my desktop, which ones from this
> list is recommended?

nothing is perfect. all drives will fail at some point.

you can always get two backup drives. if one fails, you have the other
while you replace the failed drive. the chances of *both* drives
failing at exactly the same time are *extremely* low.

[Teddy-Bears]

And you can alternate your backups between them. That's one part of a good backup plan.

--
Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.1 64bit, Dell Inspiron 5570 laptop
Quad Core i7-8550U, 16G Memory, 512G SSD, 750G & 1TB HDDs
*I collect teddy bears.

[nospam]

In article <sairgu$400$2...@dont-email.me>, Teddy-Bears

<Be...@invalid.com> wrote:

> >> I need to back up my hard drives in my desktop, which ones from this
> >> list is recommended?
> >
> > nothing is perfect. all drives will fail at some point.
> >
> > you can always get two backup drives. if one fails, you have the other
> > while you replace the failed drive. the chances of *both* drives
> > failing at exactly the same time are *extremely* low.
> >
> And you can alternate your backups between them. That's one part of a good backup plan.

that's also true, but murphy's law dictates that the most recent drive
will fail, leaving you with an outdated backup. better than nothing,
though.

another part of a good plan is offsite, just in case of fire, flood,
theft, etc.

[Frank Slootweg]

Indeed. I rotate/switch two drives between onsite/offsite *and* put
differential backups of the most important stuff in the cloud. That way,
there's never a single-point-of-failure.

[Theo]

Dan <notg...@guesswho.com> wrote:
> I need to back up my hard drives in my desktop, which ones from this
> list is recommended?

If it's just occasional backups, anything should do. If you are doing other
things that involve more non-sequential writing (eg databases) then you
might wish to avoid SMR drives, but that shouldn't affect use for basic
backup purposes.

Theo

[Paul]

Dan wrote:
> I need to back up my hard drives in my desktop, which ones from this
> list is recommended?
>
> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Expansion-External-PlayStation-STEB6000403/dp/B07C7V494X
>

> Seagate Expansion Desktop 6 TB External Hard Drive HDD – USB 3.0 for
> PC Laptop (STEB6000403) - Amazon Exclusive the cheapest

ST6000DM003 5400rpm Barracuda (need name for SMR determination)
256MB cache
185MB/sec (outer diameter - note, drive will stutter sometimes...)
600000 load/unload
1E15 error rate
55 TBW per year (best HDD are 550TBW per year)
Power on - allowed 100 days of 365 day year
Warranty 2 years
5.3W read/write
3.4W idle
0.25W standby/sleep (implies motor off)
https://www.seagate.com/ca/en/internal-hard-drives/cmr-smr-list/ Drive is SMR.

SMR = Shingled Magnetic Recording, every operation involves rewriting 7 tracks.

So that would be a SMR drive, unsuited to 3.5" shucking and using as
a boot drive. That would absolutely suck as your Windows 10 C: :-)
It would be like stirring porridge with a drinking straw.

However, for sequential backups, it'll be fine. It's tailor made
for that, as if it was a bog roll. Unplug between uses.

>
> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-WDBWLG0060HBK-EESN-Elements-External/dp/B077RV4ZLY

> WD 6 TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0, Black

"Drive inside is WD Blue WD60EZRZ
according to here https://hddscan.com/blog/2020/hdd-wd-smr.html
is CMR"

Another comment in the same thread said "varies". Since at least some
hard drives are under slight supply pressure right now, there may be a
scramble to find something to stuff them with. Presumably WDC has some
sweet SMR materials that could go in the box too. That helps them
hit a price point (one fewer platters perhaps). Many times, they could
do better than make SMR ones, but they do it anyway (a 3TB drive could
be made either way).

>
> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Desktop-External-Creative-Photography/dp/B01IAD5ZEE

> Seagate 6 TB Backup Plus Hub USB 3.0 Desktop 3.5 Inch External Hard
> Drive for PC and Mac with 2 Months Free Adobe Creative Cloud
> Photography Plan, Black

"One of the buyers tested a 6TB drive via USB 3.0 and found out
that the write speed reaches 110 MB / s, and the read speed is 160 MB / s,
which is in line with the manufacturer’s specs."

So that one is SMR from the year 2016. PMR drives, read == write
on sustained. SMR writes in chunks, and sometimes the cache behavior
makes it stutter or pause a bit. The very first SMR drives used
to write at 25MB/sec, so the cache improved a lot since original
introduction. You would not want one of the very first SMR drives,
as they were pretty sad (wet bog roll).

If you were, perhaps, sitting there waiting for the backup
to complete (which with VSS is not necessary), then you could
likely find a better drive as an internal one. But they're all
HDD, so, there's a limit to how magical they can be. There is
a drive currently, with dual arms, but I doubt that would
be priced for home usage. That idea can hit 500MB/sec under some
sort of ideal conditions. The arm groups run on the same pivot
and have independent voice coils. Presumably using an
even number of platters (six or eight).

I find some Internet tidbits to be spot-on, like if a reviewer
on the Internet says "drive makes a funny noise at shutdown",
that's precisely what it did (means FDB motor only uses one
support). But when it comes to "what's inside" questions,
it's a bit perilous trying to avoid SMR ones. The middle drive
might be CMR slash PMR.

The companies have been caught before, being disingenuous.
Like selling SMR drives as "NAS drives", which would lead
to a very sad storage experience for random access.

Paul

[Jeff Barnett]

If you are just setting up your backup solution, I'd recommend a
slightly different approach: Buy a disk dock (such as this
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/877711-REG/Newer_Technology_nwtu3s3hd_Voyager_S3_USB_3_0.html)
and two SATA III disks of your choice. You swap the disk in the dock
with the other periodically, e.g., once a month. The one not in the dock
is kept somewhere safe. The dock attaches to one of your computer by USB
3 and in any WINDOWS in recent history the OS provides the drivers.

I have this setup and have used it for a while. Every two months, I swap
drives keeping the away one in a safety deposit box at a local bank. I'm
running Win 7 on a few home computers and am able to use 99+% of a
gigabit ether's bandwidth to transfer 100GB images from one computer to
another. I also run backup software on a laptop that uses the ethernet
to another machine hosting the dock (i.e., output goes "directly" from
laptop to drive in dock) and that backup runs at about 75% of ethernet
speed. My backup software is Macrium Reflect Free.

A dock such as the one cited above costs around $35 US. I'm sure there
are choices that cost less and some that cost more. Read reviews and be
careful what you buy. Since these are for backups, quality & reliability
are more important than raw speed. I bought a couple of Seagate 4TB
IronWolf Pro 7200 rpm SATA III 3.5" Internal NAS HDD for myself about a
year and a half ago and have had no problems. I typically copy /
transfer .5-.75TB a week to the disk in the dock.
--
Jeff Barnett

[Dan]

On Fri, 18 Jun 2021 16:56:28 -0600, Jeff Barnett <j...@notatt.com>
wrote:

it is just going to be used for backing up old data and then looking
at it every few months if I need a file from it.

[Mark Lloyd]

On 6/18/21 2:17 PM, Teddy-Bears wrote:
> On 6/18/21 2:11 PM, this is what nospam wrote:
>> In article <61opcgpfl2bmi9ra4...@4ax.com>, Dan
>> <notg...@guesswho.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I need to back up my hard drives in my desktop, which ones from this
>>> list is recommended?
>>
>> nothing is perfect. all drives will fail at some point.

Perfection doesn't seem to exist anywhere in this world. Perfection can
always be approached but never attained.

>> you can always get two backup drives. if one fails, you have the other
>> while you replace the failed drive. the chances of *both* drives
>> failing at exactly the same time are *extremely* low.
>>
> And you can alternate your backups between them.  That's one part of a
> good backup plan.

Yes, and a lot of people seem to forget. Don't have both drives
connected at the same time.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our
inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the
state of facts and evidence." -- John Adams

[nospam]

In article <8DnzI.653733$ST2.3...@fx47.iad>, Mark Lloyd

<n...@mail.invalid> wrote:

> >>> I need to back up my hard drives in my desktop, which ones from this
> >>> list is recommended?
> >>
> >> nothing is perfect. all drives will fail at some point.
>
> Perfection doesn't seem to exist anywhere in this world.

it never will, especially when humans are involved.

> Perfection can
> always be approached but never attained.

yep

> >> you can always get two backup drives. if one fails, you have the other
> >> while you replace the failed drive. the chances of *both* drives
> >> failing at exactly the same time are *extremely* low.
> >>
> > And you can alternate your backups between them.  That's one part of a
> > good backup plan.
>
> Yes, and a lot of people seem to forget. Don't have both drives
> connected at the same time.

there's nothing wrong with that.

if the user has to manually connect and disconnect drives, then they're
not likely to back up regularly.

[...w¡ñ§±¤n]

All those should meet your need.
For my personal use - backup data, image(System, OS, Recovery partition) I
prefer the WD Passport 5GB. If 5GB is sufficient you might consider it as
an option (currently on sale at WD website for $110 U.S.)
--
...w¡ñ§±¤n

[Ant]

In alt.comp.os.windows-10 Mark Lloyd <n...@mail.invalid> wrote:
> On 6/18/21 2:17 PM, Teddy-Bears wrote:
> > On 6/18/21 2:11 PM, this is what nospam wrote:
> >> In article <61opcgpfl2bmi9ra4...@4ax.com>, Dan
> >> <notg...@guesswho.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I need to back up my hard drives in my desktop, which ones from this
> >>> list is recommended?
> >>
> >> nothing is perfect. all drives will fail at some point.

> Perfection doesn't seem to exist anywhere in this world. Perfection can
> always be approached but never attained.

Did Perfection even exist anywhere in this world? If so, then please
prove it. ;)

> >> you can always get two backup drives. if one fails, you have the other
> >> while you replace the failed drive. the chances of *both* drives
> >> failing at exactly the same time are *extremely* low.
> >>
> > And you can alternate your backups between them.  That's one part of a
> > good backup plan.

> Yes, and a lot of people seem to forget. Don't have both drives
> connected at the same time.

And don't leave them connected all the time. Malwares, hacks, ransomwares, etc.
--
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/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
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[Ant]

In alt.comp.os.windows-10 ...w♂妤孓 <winst...@gmail.com> wrote:
...

> All those should meet your need.
> For my personal use - backup data, image(System, OS, Recovery partition) I
> prefer the WD Passport 5GB. If 5GB is sufficient you might consider it as
> an option (currently on sale at WD website for $110 U.S.)

5 GB?!?!? Even W10 doesn't fit! I hope you meant TB!

[...w¡ñ§±¤n]

Ant wrote:

> In alt.comp.os.windows-10 ...w¡ñ§±¤n <winst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
>> All those should meet your need.
>> For my personal use - backup data, image(System, OS, Recovery partition) I
>> prefer the WD Passport 5GB. If 5GB is sufficient you might consider it as
>> an option (currently on sale at WD website for $110 U.S.)
>
> 5 GB?!?!? Even W10 doesn't fit! I hope you meant TB!
>

:) TB should do.

--
...w¡ñ§±¤n