Submitted 1 year ago by Leax@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world
I use a simple 2.5" external usb drive connecter to my router as a shared drive on my home network. I also use it to run my router’s torrent download tool and get new content.
The external drive is not new and I worry that with the constant load it might fail one day. It’s also slow sometimes when watching content directly from it with kodi.
What would you suggest I replace it with? Would a 3.5" external usb drive be safer?
A single drive is always going to be a potential point of failure. Definitely make periodic backups to a different device if you don’t want to potentially lose everything on it without warning.
There are more complicated solutions available, such as a RAID array, but it sounds like you want to keep things relatively simple. In that case, I don’t think there will be a whole lot of difference between 2.5 and 3.5 inch drives – except that there are 3.5 inch drives designed for data center applications which may net you some extra reliability.
That said, there’s only so much you should expect to get out of a single drive connected via USB (relatively slower transfers, reliance on the bespoke external bay, potentially not getting warned if SMART status changes).
You’re right, if I really want to improve things, I should go for a Raid solution, but that invoke a NAS or a desktop pc I suppose, so… Maybe next year! Thank you!
Old saying. If you do not have 3 copies of you data, consider it lost already. Get another drive, in your setup type does not mater what size. And if there any important data on that drive, create a couple of backups in different places.
You’re right! I do have another drive for backup
bobsuruncle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
All drives will ultimately fail, could be 10years, could be 10mins. If you don’t want to lose your data, back it up. Have a storage drive and a backup drive. Don’t both connected them to the router. Use an alternative method to connect , like to a computer and have run a backup protocol on a regular basis. As for 2.5 over 3.5, the 3.5 are usually faster but it probably doesn’t matter reliability wise.
Leax@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Thank you!