Hello, I'm a newbie and looking for best xternal hd for linux in 2019

Joya75 · 02-01-2020, 12:17 AM

I'm very keen to find the best external hard-drive to back up my .odt docs. I thought I saw a "problem solved" on someone's previous question but I can't get back to it after registering. Appreciate any leads anyone has on this. Thank you. -Joya75

camorri · 02-01-2020, 10:09 AM

Welcome to the board.

Quote:

best external hard-drive

What criteria is "best" for you? For anyone to give you advice, we need to know what you think would make a drive best. My criteria may be very different than yours.

What type of back up back up drive are you thinking you want? USB? a Nas?

beachboy2 · 02-01-2020, 11:23 AM

Joya75,

Welcome to LQ forums.

Nothing special is needed for Linux in the way of USB external drives.

Choose the correct sized one with positive feedback that is within your budget:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?i=compute...f=sr_nr_p_36_2

mrmazda · 02-02-2020, 03:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joya75

I can't get back to it after registering.

I wonder if it might have been this thread: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...4/#post6077918

frankbell · 02-02-2020, 07:26 PM

I have had reliable service from USB drives from Passport (I have several), Iomega, and Seagate.

bitfuzzy · 02-03-2020, 05:25 AM

Western Digital Passports and MyBooks work fine for me

sevendogsbsd · 02-03-2020, 12:57 PM

Any drive will work as long as your system sees it and it has an appropriate file system. If you are not sharing it with Windows or Mac, then ext4 (my pref) or if you are, then fat32, unless large files (>4gb), then the dreaded ntfs but then I don't know if a Mac will read ntfs.

didntsellout · 02-03-2020, 01:31 PM

Just me, but I'd buy a Samsung SSD and go to newegg(dot)com looking for 2.5" hard drive enclosures and buy one of my choice. This would be 'best for me.
May not be for you, but this is but one freedom when using linux.

Format is another story, but I'd stay away from NTFS and use vfat if just for documents as you suggest; or
one partition ext4 and another vfat and be redundant (one copy each doc on both partitions).

Best wishes!

273 · 02-03-2020, 01:37 PM

Personally, I keep a few copies of files I don't want to lose and make sure every new drive I buy for data storage contains the most important ones.
Storage fails. Work around that.
I have lost files but only due to my stupidity in asuming I had them somewhere on a disc.

beachboy2 · 02-03-2020, 02:49 PM

Joya75,

With a failed HDD it is normally relatively easy and cheap to salvage the data by various DIY routes.

In the majority of cases the only (expensive) way to recover data from a failed SSD is to send it to a data recovery laboratory.

jefro · 02-03-2020, 03:50 PM

Not sure what the gold standard in backup is today. ANY backup is better than none.

You can use a common usb drive, make tapes, make dvd's and such.
You can use an enterprise level drive in an enclosure for more (statistically speaking) sure way.

Some sort of nas or raid or redundant scheme will be unproved over above.

No backup is secure unless you test it usually.

jmc1987 · 02-03-2020, 06:22 PM

Are you wanting a NAS (Network Attached Storage) or you want something that you can plug into your PC at any time.

Personal If you want one you can just plug in, I would just buy a hard disk Western Digistal and just get a separate enclosure for it.

But in all truth, they are all the same. Now you can get different quality drives though as well, like Enterprise grade, NAS grade, etc.