Recommendation sought...

Recommendation sought for a 1TB disk drive for backing-up purposes. Not
necessarily literally a disk, solid state gubbins might be better?

Purely for backup, I'd probably still go for spinning rust - though the
sweet spot price/capacity-wise for those is probably well above 1 TB by
now (I suspect >2TB for laptop size, >3 for desktop).

How are you going to connect it? If via external USB, then if it's USB2,
there's no point in paying the extra for an SSD, as the speed advantage
won't show (and they _do_ cost more - I think the price/GB sweetspot is
still around 500G to 1T for SSDs). If it's going inside the computer
being backed up, or connected by some sort of fast interface, the speed
may show. (A 1T SSD with 5y "Warranty" is about 110 - I'd just been
looking at those for someone else:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303920853229 - they're Samsung, which I
respect as a general electronics company, but have no idea if their SSDs
are particularly good or bad.)

Note there are at least two sorts of SSD: the ones like the above with
SATA interfaces, which will fit in place of a hard drive in most
laptops, desktops (with a caddy), or external housings, and a faster
(and longer and thinner) type.

How much does speed matter for your backup - would you leave it running?

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)***@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The desire to remain private and/or anonymous used to be a core British value,
but in recent times it has been treated with suspicion - an unfortunate by-
product of the widespread desire for fame. - Chris Middleton,
Computing 6 September 2011

Peter

2021-06-25 21:45:01 UTC

Post by Peter
Recommendation sought for a 1TB disk drive for backing-up purposes.
Not necessarily literally a disk, solid state gubbins might be better?

Yes.

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
, then if it's USB2,
there's no point in paying the extra for an SSD, as the speed advantage
won't show (and they _do_ cost more - I think the price/GB sweetspot is
still around 500G to 1T for SSDs). If it's going inside the computer
being backed up, or connected by some sort of fast interface, the speed
may show. (A 1T SSD with 5y "Warranty" is about 110 - I'd just been
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303920853229 - they're Samsung, which I
respect as a general electronics company, but have no idea if their SSDs
are particularly good or bad.)
Note there are at least two sorts of SSD: the ones like the above with
SATA interfaces, which will fit in place of a hard drive in most
laptops, desktops (with a caddy), or external housings, and a faster
(and longer and thinner) type.
How much does speed matter for your backup - would you leave it running?

Overnight probably.

--
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here
Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg

Peter

2021-06-25 21:48:27 UTC

Post by Peter
Recommendation sought for a 1TB disk drive for backing-up purposes.
Not necessarily literally a disk, solid state gubbins might be better?

Will that connect via USB?

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
- they're Samsung, which I
respect as a general electronics company, but have no idea if their SSDs
are particularly good or bad.)
Note there are at least two sorts of SSD: the ones like the above with
SATA interfaces, which will fit in place of a hard drive in most
laptops, desktops (with a caddy), or external housings, and a faster
(and longer and thinner) type.
How much does speed matter for your backup - would you leave it running?

--
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here
Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg

J. P. Gilliver (John)

2021-06-25 23:56:47 UTC

Post by Peter
Recommendation sought for a 1TB disk drive for backing-up purposes.
Not necessarily literally a disk, solid state gubbins might be better?

Purely for backup, I'd probably still go for spinning rust - though

[]

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
interface, the speed may show. (A 1T SSD with 5y "Warranty" is about
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303920853229

Will that connect via USB?

Not by itself, no; it is of the interface (SATA) and form factor that
would fit inside all but the most recent laptops to replace the 2½" hard
drive. Most external USB drives would have inside them something of the
same shape/size/interface, though in most cases would be a hard drive,
since for USB2, the extra speed of an SSD would not be worth it: USB2 is
slower than even a hard drive can manage, i. e. the speed is limited by
the interface. I'm not sure about UB3 (does your PC have any USB3 slots
anyway? [The plastic tongue inside them is usually dark blue, rather
than black or white as the older USB sockets have.]
[]

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
How much does speed matter for your backup - would you leave it running?

Not sure where it's gone, but you said probably overnight. So speed's
not a major concern - so you might as well go for something like the one
Marmaduke found, for 38 and already in an external case, rather than the
110 SSD. Looks pretty, comes with the USB cable (note: like most
external drives it in theory needs two USB sockets - it's only for the
power, and they'll often work OK on only one, it depends on the
computer). [Ignore the Amazon offer to "Include installation" for an
exorbitant amount - they've just done their standard thing; there _is_
no installation for an external USB drive!]

I share Marmaduke's uncertainty about solid state drives - their mode of
stopping at end of life being sudden and total, whereas (not always! But
more often than not, IME) hard drives you have fair warning that they're
failing - make funny noises, or go slow (as the internal electronics
switch in spare sectors for ones that go bad). Others tell me that
modern SSDs actually last longer than HDs, and that may be so - I still
prefer the gradual fade. Plus, at the present date, if you're going to
connect by USB and aren't bothered about speed, there is a significant
cost advantage, at the 1 TB level.

I don't know the make Marmaduke pointed to, so I'm happy to accept his
experiences.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)***@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The losses on both sides at Borodino [1812], 70 miles from Moscow, are the
equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing into an area of six square miles every five
minutes for the whole ten hours of the battle, killing or wounding everyone on
board. - Andrew Roberts on Napoleon, RT 2015/6/13-19

Marmaduke Jinks

2021-06-26 10:19:15 UTC

Recommendation sought for a 1TB disk drive for backing-up purposes. Not
necessarily literally a disk, solid state gubbins might be better?

Purely for backup, I'd probably still go for spinning rust - though

[]

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
interface, the speed may show. (A 1T SSD with 5y "Warranty" is about
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303920853229

Will that connect via USB?

Not by itself, no; it is of the interface (SATA) and form factor that
would fit inside all but the most recent laptops to replace the 2œ" hard
drive. Most external USB drives would have inside them something of the
same shape/size/interface, though in most cases would be a hard drive,
since for USB2, the extra speed of an SSD would not be worth it: USB2 is
slower than even a hard drive can manage, i. e. the speed is limited by
the interface. I'm not sure about UB3 (does your PC have any USB3 slots
anyway? [The plastic tongue inside them is usually dark blue, rather than
black or white as the older USB sockets have.]
[]

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
How much does speed matter for your backup - would you leave it running?

Not sure where it's gone, but you said probably overnight. So speed's not
a major concern - so you might as well go for something like the one
Marmaduke found, for 38 and already in an external case, rather than the
110 SSD. Looks pretty, comes with the USB cable (note: like most external
drives it in theory needs two USB sockets - it's only for the power, and
they'll often work OK on only one, it depends on the computer). [Ignore
the Amazon offer to "Include installation" for an exorbitant amount -
they've just done their standard thing; there _is_ no installation for an
external USB drive!]
I share Marmaduke's uncertainty about solid state drives - their mode of
stopping at end of life being sudden and total, whereas (not always! But
more often than not, IME) hard drives you have fair warning that they're
failing - make funny noises, or go slow (as the internal electronics
switch in spare sectors for ones that go bad). Others tell me that modern
SSDs actually last longer than HDs, and that may be so - I still prefer
the gradual fade. Plus, at the present date, if you're going to connect by
USB and aren't bothered about speed, there is a significant cost
advantage, at the 1 TB level.
I don't know the make Marmaduke pointed to, so I'm happy to accept his
experiences.
--
The losses on both sides at Borodino [1812], 70 miles from Moscow, are the
equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing into an area of six square miles every five
minutes for the whole ten hours of the battle, killing or wounding everyone on
board. - Andrew Roberts on Napoleon, RT 2015/6/13-19

Your comments are very good John. :-)

I like Bipra - I believe they are the manufacturer.

I remember one time, back in the day, we didn't want to buy a new data
server for a small database that was being created so we hooked up a BIpra
drive to the network. It still got backed up. It did the job.

MJ

J. P. Gilliver (John)

2021-06-26 23:12:44 UTC

[]

Post by Marmaduke Jinks

Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)
I share Marmaduke's uncertainty about solid state drives - their mode of
stopping at end of life being sudden and total, whereas (not always! But
more often than not, IME) hard drives you have fair warning that they're
failing - make funny noises, or go slow (as the internal electronics
switch in spare sectors for ones that go bad). Others tell me that modern
SSDs actually last longer than HDs, and that may be so - I still prefer
the gradual fade. Plus, at the present date, if you're going to connect by
USB and aren't bothered about speed, there is a significant cost
advantage, at the 1 TB level.
I don't know the make Marmaduke pointed to, so I'm happy to accept his
experiences.

[]

Post by Marmaduke Jinks
Your comments are very good John. :-)

Thanks. I've been around computers since the 1970s (the first I
programmed had 16 - not 16Mi, not 16K, 16 - 7-bit memory locations), and
built my first (1K RAM, half of which was the video area!) in the 1980s;
I've certainly not kept up with all aspects of hardware and software,
but have picked up a certain pragmatism - and a tendency to operate on
the trailing edge. Not dinosaur - I'm on Windows 7, not XP, but also not
10. (As a sidebar - I recently saw something about Windows 11:
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2021/06/24/introducing-windows-11/
which I found truly horrid: not so much W11 itself, though that
certainly has its problems IMO, but the insufferable smugness of the
piece.)

So for SSDs, I don't like the fact that they fail suddenly and
completely when the time comes - even though this is _probably_ _after_
a hard drive would have failed. I accept that that's illogical. But
also, currently, around the 1T mark, an HD in an external case with
cable costs about a third what a bare SSD does, so for backup that's
likely to be left overnight, the extra expense isn't worth it - in fact
yields no benefit.

Post by Marmaduke Jinks
I like Bipra - I believe they are the manufacturer.

Possibly. I _think_ I've heard of most of the actual HD manufacturers,
so I suspect they only make the enclosures (including the little circuit
board inside), and the actual drives inside them are one of the usual
suspects - Hitachi, WD (Western Digital), and so on. But if the
assembled units are as reliable as you say, I guess you've never had
occasion to dismantle one to find out! (Maybe one of the utilities that
electronically reads the model number [in the case of these as part of
doing something else], such as HDTune or DiskCheckup, might give a
hint.)
[]

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)***@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. -Leo Tolstoy,
novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

Marmaduke Jinks

2021-06-25 22:16:46 UTC

Recommendation sought for a 1TB disk drive for backing-up purposes. Not
necessarily literally a disk, solid state gubbins might be better?

Purely for backup, I'd probably still go for spinning rust - though the
sweet spot price/capacity-wise for those is probably well above 1 TB by
now (I suspect >2TB for laptop size, >3 for desktop).
How are you going to connect it? If via external USB, then if it's USB2,
there's no point in paying the extra for an SSD, as the speed advantage
won't show (and they _do_ cost more - I think the price/GB sweetspot is
still around 500G to 1T for SSDs). If it's going inside the computer being
backed up, or connected by some sort of fast interface, the speed may
show. (A 1T SSD with 5y "Warranty" is about 110 - I'd just been looking at
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303920853229 - they're Samsung, which I respect
as a general electronics company, but have no idea if their SSDs are
particularly good or bad.)
Note there are at least two sorts of SSD: the ones like the above with
SATA interfaces, which will fit in place of a hard drive in most laptops,
desktops (with a caddy), or external housings, and a faster (and longer
and thinner) type.
How much does speed matter for your backup - would you leave it running?
--
The desire to remain private and/or anonymous used to be a core British value,
but in recent times it has been treated with suspicion - an unfortunate by-
product of the widespread desire for fame. - Chris Middleton,
Computing 6 September 2011

I'm not a huge fan of solid state drives, although I have one on one of my
desktops; it came with it. At some point they will fail quickly.

I've always liked Bipra external drives. I can see one on Amazing for
£37.95.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/BIPRA-1TB-External-Hard-Drive/dp/B00PSBJR32/ref=sr_1_19?crid=7H2GTIEFM844&dchild=1&keywords=bipra+1tb+2.5+inch+5400rpm+sata+iii+hard+disk+drive&qid=1624659015&sprefix=Bipra+1Tb%2Cshoes%2C254&sr=8-19

I have had Bipras for over 20 years and not one has failed yet.

MJ

Peter

2021-06-26 12:24:26 UTC

Post by Marmaduke Jinks