Damn It - I need reliable storage - Failed 1TB Seagate Xtreme - SSD FTW?

[ChrisA]

I just bought am External Seagate Xtreme 1TB hard drive and it failed in the 2 weeks.

I've got everything backed up on my old WD hard drive. This is my first seagate and I'm still pissed off for the inconvenience and the current risk I have of my back up drive failing![/QUOTE

Now you know why everyone recommends multiple redundant backups. Drives can fail at any time. The most likely time for a failure is either when the drive is very new (as you found out) or when it is very old.

A mirrored set up (raid 1) can help but no more then simply having two single drive backups used in rotation. The raid is less hassle but using two drives and rotating them is more secure (A lightening strike, fire or theft will only get one of the drives) The idel plan is to have three and rotate one to an off-site location, have one connected and used by Time machine and the third off-line in a fire safe. That's what I do. The goal is to never have only one copy of the data even after a failure.

 

[AboveTheChaos]

I just bought am External Seagate Xtreme 1TB hard drive and it failed in the 2 weeks.

I've got everything backed up on my old WD hard drive. This is my first seagate and I'm still pissed off for the inconvenience and the current risk I have of my back up drive failing!

I need a better solution since my data is very precious to me.

Is SSD more 'fail safe'? Are there alternatives? THey are expensive but may be worth it - I just want to back up 500GB and have it save. I have most of my stuff on DVD-r which I never use and put away safe but this isn't really a great method. I hear about hard discs failing all the time and I can't afford for this to happen to me.

I can't afford more than a 200GBP though so I guess SSD is out or the question juding by prices I've seen.

It needs to be external storage for mac and pc and use usb2/fw400/800 - if an external case is required than that's ok.

Any advice would be great - thanks.

How likely is it that both discs would fail one after the other on a RAID 1 WD drive?

Just an FYI as this doesn't necessarily relate to your question...when my WD MyBook failed, just for giggles, I took it out of its case and then hooked it up to my computer via a SATA to USB cable I had. The drive was actually fine and I could get my data off of it. So I popped the drive into an external enclosure that I got and it's been fine ever since. (I'm paranoid and don't use it for backups though, just things that are expendable.)