Prevent storage from dying?

I read stories of people's flash drives and hard drives dying, my brother's 1gb flash drive died a while back and I freak out.

Now I'm worrying if my flash drive will die with all my school documents on it or my laptop's hard drive.

How do these things just suddenly die? Its real scary if your storage just suddenly dies without any warning with all your important files on it.

I know sometimes things just happen but it really sucks for those that lose their data without backups. But then what if I backup the data from my flash drive to my laptop hard drive and then that dies? Then I have to backup and backup and backup to an infinite amount of hard drives. Geez, I'm freaking out here. Need to relax

 

hehe Dont get too paranoid, usually cheap crap-brand flash drives fail easier. I havent had a flash drive fail on me so far, aswell as anyone here in my office (we use flash drives instead transfer files to other buildings instead of VPN). What brand was your brother using?

As for hard drives..ive only had 1 fail on me so far and that was on my desktop years back. Also no one has had a failed hard drive here in my office since i started working here 2 years ago. Theres about 40 typist computers here i have to take care of.

Drives can die at any given moment unexpectedly. Just like how a person can die at any given time. This is why manufacturers arent liable for lost data

Theres always risks for everything. Only way to avoid this is to make multiple backup's

 

Which would be the best methods to backup? Like external hard drive, flash drive, DVDs, which are the best ways?

Its better when in some cases you have warning signs your hard drive is about to die (S.M.A.R.T technology) and you get all your data off of it ASAP . But scary when it just dies without warning suddenly, like the laptop I gave my brother.

 

Well here in my office everything gets saved into the server which uses backup tapes.

Flash drives seem to be the safest IMO since it is not mechanical like HD's. DVD's would be great too but they arent really quick re-writeable.

If you have webspace online, you should save it there too (depending on the sensitivity of the data). Webservers use backups too thats why.

 

In my opinion, there is no better choice. Like Flipfire said, any one of them can fail at any moment. Find something with enough space on it and back up your important files. Forget the rest. You should be safe by doing that.

 

If you have critical data, maintain two copies at all times.

Ask me about my 40GB hard drive full of mp3s that I was too cheap to back up on CD-Rs (DVD-Rs didn't exist back then)

 

Wouldnt happen to be a 40gb maxtor hd? if it is well then same thing happened to me, lost everything.

 

YEAH! Stupid Maxtor hard drive. I still don't have most of the music I lost.

 

I just read of USB flash drives and USB hard drives dying and its really unnerving.

My brother says his MicroCenter brand 1gb flash drive died after a few months and I just bought an 8gb version of it last month. Now I'm worrying if this will die without warning.

Its scary if these things die with no warning, at least give me warning before you die so I can get my info off of it.

I even hear of big-brand storage devices failing. I just want reliability, not worrying, is that too much to ask?

 

Its usually fake or cheap brand flash drives that die quickly. I suggest you try copying 8 gigs of files into your flashdrive and paste it somewhere else. This a good self-test to see all 8 gigs is in check, if you get an error then thats a problem. There might even be a program to check these things but i dont know any atm.

Flash drives are supposed to have a longer life than standard mechanical HDD's mainly because it doesnt have any moving parts that wear out. They also survive abuse and torture better.

Flash drives DO have limited erase/write cycles but with wear levelling technology it still takes a while for it to gradually die. Your brother either had a lemon or something happened to it (like put near a magnet or something)

I bought a sandisk 4gb micro cruzer 4months ago and its still working fine. I use it for Readyboost and temporary storage from work to home.

 

Note that your typical SSD -may- be adversely affected by magnets, but it's not that likely to happen without a fairly strong magnet being placed nearby, and constantly moved.

The average thumb drive is, as far as I know, another matter entirely. If you're ever holding your thumb drive near something strong enough to magnetically wipe it, I'd suggest letting go of it and running in the opposite direction instead.

 

According to this, flash disks are immune to magnets since theres nothing magnetic about them. Learnt something new today

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,116572-page,1/article.html

 

My seagate 100GB laptop HDD crashed 2 months ago. no warnings or anything. I checked the SMART and nothing was really wrong with it. lucky it was warranty.

its all luck of the draw. people expect WD to crash, none of my WDs have crashed, but nobody would expect a seagate to die, but mine did.

can't wait until large capacity SSD become cheaper, those seem like they would last a long time, and survive falls easily.

 

I don't care about losing my drives, I'm worried about losing the data in them.

My brother's MicroCenter 1gb flash drive died a while back and I read another story of the same drive dying. I just bought an 8gb version of it and am worried of it dying suddenly.

I guess its not wise to buy generic brand flash drives? I know not all flash memory is made equal, some is slower than others, I don't care about that, I just want it to last at least a year.

I apologize if I am being annoying (sounds like I am). I know **** happens at times but I want peace of mind my storage devices will last at a while with my precious files on them. All the stores of people's flash drives and hard drives with their precious family photos and whatnot really scares me.

 

this is probably a fact:

NO single storage device will be 100% reliable. They will all fail in a matter of time. This is why hd manufacturers arent liable for any lost information. The only way to avoid this is to make backups on multiple mediums.

Right now i have all my stuff backed up on an external drive. If that thing fails, im gonna kill someone...

 

We had a winner in this one from flipfire it's not "probably a fact" -- it is a fact...

Correct. If you look at data center architectures, they tend to have multiple copies and redundancy all in an effort not to lose the data.

Redundancy? Yes. RAID-1, RAID-5, RAID-DP, RAID-Z, RAID-6 etc all can tolerate single spindle failures. Add multiples and it may be a bit more difficult, though there are solutions that can sustain multiple drive losses. That's Layer 1, the actual on-line storage.

If you use bigger storage solutions (think EMC / NetApps etc) then you will have multiple copies of your data out there. Think snap mirrors etc. This buys you point in time recovery from a defined length of time. We tend to do snaps multiple times per day to recover data in a smaller window. Layers 2-N.

Then there's tape backup where the data will again reside on multiple backups. That's Layers N+1 - P

Those who rely on a single copy are doomed to failure.

I have RAID + physical media for my a/v content, plus my data I can't afford to lose. Someday I'll have to get another layer for the stuff I really really can't afford to lose.

Cheers,

 

Yeah my flash drives stick to magnets in my messenger bag all the time - it doesnt do anything

 

i have lots of cds friends. i have less dvd friends, but they're all friends.

 

The most reliable storage at this moment is CD or DVD. Verbatim is the best and should last a life time if you take care of it.

 

Cd/dvd is also the easiest to break and get scratched. Also its not very quick & efficient for daily storage. For long term storage like photos then yes.

Id have to vote for flash memory as the safest/reliable out of all mediums.

 

backups don't have to be quick and efficient. reliable and accessible is more important. if you back something up on an optical media, i hope you put it in a fireproof safe or in a not read often book on the bookshelf. if you're worried about your optical media backup getting broke or scratched you're not treating it like backup data and that defeats the purpose of backup.

my hp pavilion just died on me and i had cd backups of my mp3's and critical data. i just got it on my sager. after i did those 7cds, i went through some miscellaneous cds/dvds and i started cussing profusely. about 95 percent of the data i had on those cds i had on 2 dvds. shame on me for forgetting i am smart sometimes but dumb to forget how smart i am. would've saved me about 4 hours because i could've copied and pasted once instead of several times and killing time in the mouse clicks. plus, i had to babysit the backup of the cds, because for some reason my optical drive registered several errors on some of the cds, and i had to do extra clicking.

 

Like i said for long term storage of photos/music its fine, but if you use it for work and need to save your work everyday. CD/dvd isnt the way to go.

I was having a look at a new 7200rpm hd and it says this in the specs lol

 

The bad news: any storage drive can fail at any time. That's the harsh reality. Buying a more expensive drive might protect you to a very limited extent against random failures, but any flash drive can get lost, stolen or physically damaged. Any hard drive can, and probably will, break if you drop it.

In other words, having only one copy of your important data is one mistake, and worrying about whether the drive it's on is a reliable enough one is another. Don't wait until you learn from these mistakes - learn from other peoples', it's much less painful!

The good news is that 8GB really isn't enough data to give you any problem backing it up. That's especially true if what you're doing is creating new material, saving it, then leaving it unchanged.

DVD-R discs are dirt cheap, and two of them will hold the entire contents of your 8GB drive. So make a couple of copies right now, put them in cases and store them somewhere cool, dark and out of the way. Then, every so often (and especially, when you've added something new that you don't want to lose), save that extra data to a couple of CD-Rs (even cheaper than a DVD-R!) and store them with your backups. Or just take new full backups if you prefer. Just make sure you always have two up-to-date copies PLUS your flash drive, kept in different places.

Actually that's not something which would bother me unduly. I've yet to see any credible evidence that the flash memory manufacturers - of which there are only a few worldwide - actually sell 'duff' chips on-the-cheap to unscrupulous OEMs. There just seems to be a suspicion that they might - which, of course, vendors of branded kit aren't exactly going to discourage.

That scares me too. You have to be a special kind of stupid to keep only one copy of that sort of thing.