Important for back up drive to be fast?

[big dainjerus]

I am going to pick up my mac pro today. I will be ordering HDs soon after. How important is it to have my 4th drive (backup) be fast? I will be getting 1 WD 640 aaks, 2 samsung spinpoints, and a 4th for back up. Should I get another spinpoint or just go with a seagate for reliability?

Does speed and performance matter when it is a back up?

 

[sickmacdoc]

I am going to pick up my mac pro today. I will be ordering HDs soon after. How important is it to have my 4th drive (backup) be fast? I will be getting 1 WD 640 aaks, 2 samsung spinpoints, and a 4th for back up. Should I get another spinpoint or just go with a seagate for reliability?

Does speed and performance matter when it is a back up?

When used as you are going to do it (as an internal drive) the tiny speed differences you are going to see between those drives (literally milliseconds) will make NO difference whatsoever for your backup drive. Many people use drives as slow as USB 2.0 in external cases for backup drives and the only complaint is how long it takes to backup to it due to the interface - not that there are any functional problems!

Now just a personal preference of mine as an aside- I always prefer to keep all my backup drives as externals and unhook the cables and unplug them between backups. I do this for several reasons- not the least being I don't like the idea of a drive that is simply for backup being powered up and running all the time. I would rather have it fresh and ready should I need to restore a backup from it. Also that keeps them totally isolated from my system should there be a power problem (or even a MacPro internal power supply problem). I would hate to fry my backup right along with other internal drives.

And yes, I do have the system hooked up to a UPS, but would rather be safe than sorry with the importance (to me anyways!) of the data and project files I store. Just a personal thing that has served me well over many years though!

BTW though- I don't use Time Machine at all for my backups. If I did, I would obviously not be able to isolate my backups plus I do not like the idea of having system disk backups that are not bootable. Geez- long answer to a short question- sorry!

 

[Infrared]

I am going to pick up my mac pro today. I will be ordering HDs soon after. How important is it to have my 4th drive (backup) be fast? I will be getting 1 WD 640 aaks, 2 samsung spinpoints, and a 4th for back up. Should I get another spinpoint or just go with a seagate for reliability?

Does speed and performance matter when it is a back up?

Reliability is paramount. Speed is a secondary issue.

 

[xgman]

You've spent all that money on a MP and still have to ask? I want that TM and back up done, and done fast. In fact I connected the extra sata port on my MP and through a bracket on the rear have an external esata 7200 drive. The difference between that and a usb or even firewire drive is amazing.

 

[sickmacdoc]

You've spent all that money on a MP and still have to ask? I want that TM and back up done, and done fast. In fact I connected the extra sata port on my MP and through a bracket on the rear have an external esata 7200 drive. The difference between that and a usb or even firewire drive is amazing.

Well since the OP was talking about a fourth drive as a backup, I believe they were inquiring about the importance of speed of internal drives, not external enclosures/interfaces.