[vox-tech] External vs. Bare Drive/Case

[Bill Broadley]

> While I like the 2.5" drive option, I don't see them having the capacity
> I need and I'm not sure if I can find as good of external cases for them

The URL I included was a 2.5" drive, 1TB, and has a nice external case.

> (need to look more). 2x 1TB drives just seems to double the number of
> cases, usb ports, power ports etc... I'll have to price it to see if
> makes sense, just seems like a lot of extra cordage.

Yeah, it wouldn't make particularly good sense unless you wanted backups 
to 2 distinct locations.  Say email them both to separate friends/family.

> I am thinking about 2x 2TB actually, one on-site and one offsite cloned
> with something like drbd.

Sounds kind of scary.  So if you accidentally delete a file you want it 
deleted off the remote copy with 100ms?  Drbd will also tend to be more 
bandwidth intensive than rsync (depending on usage of course).

> Since I always seem to be expanding my photos
> and science data, I easily see the need for additional 2 TB drives in a
> couple of years (another reason why starting with 1 TB might be a nuisance)

Sure if you need the capacity, I'd suggest rsync or a rsync based 
backup.  There's plenty of backup programs that will not only give you a 
copy, but also include some churn, not to mention encryption.  So if you 
do some updates that corrupt something and don't catch it till after the 
rsync you could still revert the changes.

> I agree seagate seems to have hit bottom lately (that was my historical
> brand).

Mine as well, seems like a perfect storm of issues.  Bad hardware, bad 
firmware, a bad firmware fix, etc.