Interesting I have had the exact opposite experience; I had an external seagate that died on me (all data went bye-bye), and the next time I bought a WD (not caviar series though), internal 1TB sata with an antec external adapter, smooth sailing all the way.

I am weary on Maxtors, because the Maxtor drive on my parent's computer has suddenly appeared with 25MB of bad sectors on one partition, and 4kb of bad sectors on another one.

Yet my OLD WD (20GB) IDE on my 11 year old desktop, is still kicking. *shrug*

Typically I'd backup to external HDD... regularly...

@Salasi: I've read the papers you suggested: The most interesting misconception is the one saying that there's little probability of a disk failure after the initial period when the disk is new.

I'll probably go with rsync as a few years ago I wrote a script that worked nicely in my environment. For some reason I stopped using it.

Obviously, RW hasn't even crossed my mind

Fair enough, my backups though will be nowhere near as frequent as yours. I'll probably have to use 1 DVD every 2 months. In the meantime everything is going to be backed up incrementally onto external hardrives.
wow. Mind you I've got a laptop (which I don't use) from the early 90s. It is still in a working condition.


fsck is still running. It keeps cloning multiply-claimed blocks. The fact that there are so many of them does not make me optimistic as to the chances of recovering much (anything?) from the drive.

Just a thought, maybe try using dd to image that partition and try recovering data that way?

Thanks
Unfortunately I don't have another 500GB drive. Otherwise I would have done it in the first place.

Well, it depends on what you are backing up. If you're backing up either your entire system, or the same set of files over and over, then it will be wasteful. If you backup every day, do it to another HDD.

I backup only important, irreplaceable data, anything I cannot download from the internet and re-install. Usually this comes out to 4-5 DVDs per year (1-2 of them actually contain irreplaceable data, the others contain other stuff) ... not wasteful, IMO. Besides, there is some redundancy in that older backups often contain the same files as newer backups, and if one disk is scratched or destroyed, it's not such a big deal.

I would also like to mention that I consider HDDs and USB sticks as volatile media that are difficult or impossible to recover in many cases. If you HDD starts to die and you realize it, you may be able to salvage some data, or you may not, I would use SMART and other tools to help predict about when it might fail. If your USB stick dies, it is often impossible to recover anything, never use these for backups. If your DVD gets scratched, you still recover files, and if you use dvdisaster you may even recover all the files.

Just think about what, when, how you want to backup your data, and decide on the best strategy. Often, you may opt for more than one strategy, for example daily rsync to another drive, plus burning critical files to DVD stored in a safe place.

Oooh, nevermind then.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of doing.

I think the key to any backup solution is multiple copies. This way you can tolerate the failure of any part of the backup system. Another key is automation. The more a human is involved the more likely it won't get done.

If you have a lot of data and backup often then CDs/DVDs quickly become infeasible. If you only have enough data to fill 5 DVDs a year than using them is viable. What ever solution you decide don't rely on one device. At least 2 backup drives instead of 1 with recent backups on each. Your live drive fails then you have backups on 2 drives, a backup drive fails, you have a recent backup on the other one, and the live copy still.

I've had positive experiences with Hitachi and Seagate. 5400rpm HDDs are extremely reliable, quieter and cooler than their 7200rpm counterparts, but there are significantly slower as well. If you have the money, SSDs will last you a lifetime, run absolutely silently (no moving parts) and produce NO heat. They are faster than any HDD. But again they are ridiculously expensive.
I would not recommend DVD as a backup medium AT ALL. They are fragile, easily scratched, have low capacity, and a whole lot of other cons. However if you do, always burn them at the lowest speed. 4x is good, 2.4 is great. Verbatim is the BEST CD/DVD brand you can buy in terms of reliability and durability. With Verbatim, coasters are VERY rare. Storing them? A high quality CD/DVD case should do the job. Just make sure you don't store them in a place that gets too hot or too cold.
An external HDD (or SSD if you're rich) with Firewire or USB 3.0 is the best way to go. Flash media has a read/write ceiling that is very low on USB devices, so that is NOT recommended. As I said before, I would not use CDs/DVDs either.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't an SSD qualify as flash media, and is therefore subject to the same write/erase limit that is inherent in things like thumb drives?

Actually with DVDs, 'burning at lower speeds for better burns' is not really proven, there is no real optimal 'burning speed' since it depends on both media and drive, also 2.4x on most media now is impossible since the minimum is 4x, unless of course you do buy media that can still support such a low speed. Also in most cases, slower burns can actually tend to produce coasters, so it is better to go at a higher speed.

While I also use DVDs, the best thing to do after burning is to always make sure whatever burning program you use is to verify your burn afterwards.

Verbatim AND/OR Tayo-Yuden. Also when buying even Verbatims make sure you get the ones manufactured in Singapore, not Taiwan, or even worse India (sorry to all our Indian users, but when it comes to optical media, India just doesn't got it in terms of quality).

Verbatims usually have the disc IDs such as MKM-xxx. Buying by brand name alone though is a complete waste now, as they are all manufactured by third parties, and sometimes even Verbatims tend to be 'booby-trapped'. As I stated Verbatim DVDs usually have the MKM designation, but more cheaper priced ones have 'CMC-MAG' (CMC-Magnetics), this ID also comes up with Maxell, Memorex, and unfortunately now even TDK as they stopped making their own media and outsourced it to other parties.

--edit

Slight correction: TDK branded CD-Rs have CMC-MAG, single layer DVDs have the Ritek ID, as well as Double Layer, Ritek = Taiwan.

Low on USB devices. AKA removable media. SSDs usually come with a lifetime warranty and 1,000,000 hours or more of guaranteed use. SSD's don't qualify as removable media or a USB device. But you can make a jerryrigged external SSD by slapping on an HDD enclosure. But with USB 2.0 the speed would suck, even though it would remain reliable.

The dvd+rw-mediainfo command can be used to show this information.

Any suggestions for how to determine the best speed apart from the coaster rate?