Why not portable HD for backups?

cmasoncmason Registered Users Posts: 2,506 Major grins
edited March 26, 2009 in Digital Darkroom
So I have a 500GB Firewire drive from Iomega, and another 250 GB USB external drive. Both are definitely desktop drives, and have external power connectors with wall warts, and powerswitches. It is a pain to unmount and turn them off an nite, but they are a bit noisy (not the fans, just the vibrations). These are used for backup and as a primary photo drive. I also have 4 bare IDE drives as backup, that I use a little USB to IDE adptor with.

I also own a 250GB Western Digital Passport harddrive I use for work. But I got to thinking: this drive works off of USB power only, is completely silent, and puts out almost no heat. So why not use these instead of the larger desktop external drives, as primary and backup? The sale prices I am seeing on these are pretty good. And yes, I know I can get a 1TB bare drive for $100, but I am trying to eliminate 1) noise, 2) power switches, and 3) clutter.

Any reason why I should not use the portable hard drives in place of the 'desktop" drives?

Comments

  • darkdragondarkdragon Registered Users Posts: 1,051 Major grins
    edited March 23, 2009
    The only downside I've seen/had with the small drives is the cost. If that doesn't bother you, then go for it. :D
    ~ Lisa
  • iotashaniotashan Registered Users Posts: 68 Big grins
    edited March 23, 2009
    cmason wrote:
    Any reason why I should not use the portable hard drives in place of the 'desktop" drives?

    Here I compare two typical drives, the WD My Book Essential and the WB Passport Essential:

    My Book:
    http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Essential-External-WDH1U10000N/dp/tech-data/B000VZCEUI/ref=de_a_smtd
    7200 RPM
    Buffer: 16mb
    1 Year Warranty

    Passport:
    http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Passport-Essential-WDME5000TN/dp/tech-data/B001F9LY14/ref=de_a_smtd
    5400 RPM
    Buffer: 2mb
    3 Year Warranty

    I was unable to find seek times on either drive, but I can guarantee that the portable is slower in that arena, too.
  • cmasoncmason Registered Users Posts: 2,506 Major grins
    edited March 23, 2009
    darkdragon wrote:
    The only downside I've seen/had with the small drives is the cost. If that doesn't bother you, then go for it. :D

    Thanks, yes, agree that price has always been the limiting factor.

    But you can find 320GB WD Passports for $79, and smaller ones for as low as $60. The larger model WD or Seagate drives sell for about $120 for 500GB in comparison, so the smaller models are much more competitive than before.

    By contrast, and Newertech 320GB HD in enclosure is $139, as is the similar Iomega Minimax, both Mac formatted. (I own a Minimax)
  • colourboxcolourbox Registered Users Posts: 2,095 Major grins
    edited March 23, 2009
    Cost, speed, and capacity are reasons not to, if they matter. I use external drives for backup, but there's no way a 2.5" drive with a USB (or even FireWire 800) connection is going to keep up with the 3.5" drive I connect via eSATA or FireWire 800. Even with the same interface the 2.5" drive will be slower. Plus I just upgraded my externals to 1TB which is not available in 2.5".

    But it's a personal decision in the end. If you're not backing up very many GB each time and you're dealing with the limited throughput of USB 2.0 anyway, the speed difference may not be a big deal if you prefer the simplicity.
  • Ric GrupeRic Grupe Registered Users Posts: 9,522 Major grins
    edited March 23, 2009
    Good question!

    Off hand...I see no reason.

    Things like write and read speeds are really neither here nor there when using strickly as back-ups. In case of internal drive failure...you are just going to copy the contents of the removable drive.

    Interesting...I'm gonna watch this thread...in case I didn't consider something that I should have.
  • cmasoncmason Registered Users Posts: 2,506 Major grins
    edited March 23, 2009
    iotashan wrote:
    Here I compare two typical drives, the WD My Book Essential and the WB Passport Essential:....

    Great point iotashan...the buffer size seems a big differentiator here. I noticed that the slightly more expensive WD Passport Elite uses a 8MB buffer, though it too is a 5400 rpm drive.

    I suspect that since I am not using these as anything other than storage drives, that the plate speed doesnt matter that much, since it is write speed more than seek speed that impacts my usage.

    I currently use an 160 GB SATA drive in a cheapo USB enclosure as my primary photo storage file. It is the same drive I used on my PC before it died and I got my Mac, so it is there due to momentum. However Lightroom and Photoshop both have had zero issues with this drive and I am perfectly happy with it as a primary photo storage drive.

    The other drive is a Minimax 500, running over FW400. So both of my drives max out at 400mb/s so I am not likely taxing the plate speed, though the buffer could be a concern. Perhaps the Elite would be better.

    Now as pure backup though, the buffer will slow things, but shoot, I have time to wait on a backup to finish, and storing these is much easier than bare drives.
  • cmasoncmason Registered Users Posts: 2,506 Major grins
    edited March 23, 2009
    colourbox wrote:
    Cost, speed, and capacity are reasons not to, if they matter. I use external drives for backup, but there's no way a 2.5" drive with a USB (or even FireWire 800) connection is going to keep up with the 3.5" drive I connect via eSATA or FireWire 800. Even with the same interface the 2.5" drive will be slower. Plus I just upgraded my externals to 1TB which is not available in 2.5".

    Since I use an iMac, an internal drive is not an option. I must use FW800, FW400 or USB. However, I do not use these as a main drive, therefore I am not concerned with using this a scratch disk, or as a primary OS disk, where thousands of 4k writes demand higher speed, as you pointed out.

    I dont have anything that is even approaching 1TB. I have a 320GB main drive, and 500GB TimeMachine backup, split into two 250 partitions, and 160GB photo storage drive. 1TB sounds cool, but it would be a singular point of failure for what I need. (perhaps you are saying I need to do more bit torrents? mwink.gif )
  • Rocketman766Rocketman766 Registered Users Posts: 332 Major grins
    edited March 23, 2009
    I use the WD 500gig portable (FW800 version), not sure of the exact name, for my backup drives. I am a bit paranoid about losing data, so I have 2 portables for backups, one desktop 2 TB drive that I back up ALL of my computers on and one of the WD drives that I carry around and immediately back up photos on while at events.
  • cmasoncmason Registered Users Posts: 2,506 Major grins
    edited March 23, 2009
    OK Well, I suppose there is nothing like an actual test to help me figure this out, so I decided to do just that:

    Test: copy representative files from my internal hard drive to the target backup hard drive. Record total time to copy files to each disk.

    Methodology: I created an Automator action that copied a set of files that were representative of the kind of photo files I might be backing up. The action copied four folders of podcasts, totaling 465.2MB, in 26 files. It then copied 1 file that was 2GB in size, and finally signaled completion with a Growl notification. I started a stopwatch 1 sec after hitting 'run' on the action, and stopped it the instant the growl notification appeared. Granted, dedicated backup software may have done this faster, but the Automator script was very flexible.

    Test hard drives:

    A: Internal SATA 300GB Hard Drive
    B: External 500GB Firewire 400 Iomega MiniMax Hard Drive
    C: External 300GB USB 2.0 DIY Cheapo enclosure (WD Caviar) Hard Drive
    D: External 250GB USB 2.0 Western Digital Passport Essential Hard Drive

    Machine: iMac 2.16 Ghz Intel Core2 Duo, 3GB RAM, Mac OSX 10.5.6



    Results:

    Hard drive A: completed test in 2min 50 sec
    Hard drive B: completed test in 2min 40 sec
    Hard drive C: completed test in 3min 07 sec
    Hard drive D: completed test in 5min 46 sec


    So, from this, it shows that the small portable hard drive clearly suffers from speed issues, taking twice as long as the internal drive and the Firewire drive. USB 2.0 was not that much to blame, as the desktop drive in the DIY enclosure was comparible to the other drives, taking just about 30 sec longer than the SATA and FW drives.

    A few other interesting bits: note that the source files were on Drive A:, and therefore the times for Drive A: are for this one drive reading and writing to the same drive. The FireWire drive had the best time overall, however, it failed the test twice, for unknown reasons, reporting 'connection errors'.

    So, clearly the portable drive is slower, and by quite a bit. I of course did not use this drive for active files, only for backups, but I suspect it will suffer similarly. You should recall that the drive in this WD Passport is the identical drive found in many laptops, though 'higher end' laptops are often found with 7200 rpm 8MB cache drives vs the 5400rpm 2Mb drive in my Passport.

    I would like to try this test with the higher end Passport Elite, as I suspect the larger cache would be a significant difference. There is also a Passport Studio that supports FW 800. In addition, Seagate offers similar portable drives that all have 8MB caches.

    I think for simple backups, the smaller portable drives are an ideal form factor, but I think I will use them for backups and snapshots, not as working drives. Until I test these other models, (which won't happen unless I find a truckload of change somewhere, or the manufacturer sends me one), I think my next drive purchase will be a desktop drive, vs a small portable drive.
  • PupatorPupator Registered Users Posts: 2,322 Major grins
    edited March 23, 2009
    My (local) backups happen to a slow USB drive, but I do them overnight, so I don't care.

    My primary (not local) backups happen through SugarSync which is also slow (because it involves uploading very large files over my DSL connection) but SugarSync handles it intelligently so I never mind.
  • iotashaniotashan Registered Users Posts: 68 Big grins
    edited March 24, 2009
    I can save you some trouble with testing.

    While USB 2.0 is *supposed* to be 480mbps, it typically is slower than Firewire 400, as you've found out. Firewire 800, with a proper drive (like an array-based drive, say, a <a href="http://www.drobo.com/">Drobo</a>), would blow any USB drive out of the water.

    I also believe that USB, as a protocol, actually ends up using some processing power to do it's work. Firewire, however, is nowhere near as taxing on the CPU.

    That being said, keep in mind that there are (though not as popular) portable FireWire drives:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822215018 <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/mwink.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >
  • iotashaniotashan Registered Users Posts: 68 Big grins
    edited March 24, 2009
    Pupator wrote:
    My primary (not local) backups happen through SugarSync which is also slow (because it involves uploading very large files over my DSL connection) but SugarSync handles it intelligently so I never mind.

    I switched to JungleDisk for off-site backups. It backs up to Amazon SC3, which some of you might recognize as the same storage engine that SmugMug utilizes for various stuffs including SmugMug Vault.

    I also upgraded from AT&T DSL (6mbps down/756kbps up) to Charter Cable (20mbps down/2mbps up). Can't wait till Charter's Ultra60 launches here (60mbps down, 5mbps up). iloveyou.gif
  • Art ScottArt Scott Registered Users Posts: 8,959 Major grins
    edited March 24, 2009
    I just built a new machine that has an extra 6 drive bays and I am also going to order a vantec drive dock that has 2 slots andI will keep my working drive and 1 back up in iside case and then 2 copies of each elsewhere backed up every time i do major downloads and processing to my files.....so I could be backing up alsmost daily and as soon as i fill a set of 3 internal drives I get 3 more to strt the process over again ....last year I was using segate external freeagent pros 500gb in sets of 3 now i am doing my first set of 3 1tb Hitachi sata drives......the Vantec Dock is only ~$80 and since the drive is exposed it is cool and seems quiet so far. Theraltake also has drive docks but they are only sigle drive docks for ~$60..............
    "Genuine Fractals was, is and will always be the best solution for enlarging digital photos." ....Vincent Versace ... ... COPYRIGHT YOUR WORK ONLINE ... ... My Website

  • BeachBillBeachBill Registered Users Posts: 1,311 Major grins
    edited March 24, 2009
    I have two 1TB Fantom Greendrives. These are external drives with USB 2.0 and eSata connections. I purchased the first one a few months back for $99 (after $20 rebate) and the 2nd one last month for $89 (after $20 rebate). I now back up the first drive to the second drive. The first drive is my primary photo storage (plus my LR catalogs are on it--all photos on the drive are indexed in LR).

    Both purchased from buy.com -- here is a link to the product. Yesterday it was $89 after rebate. Right now it's $99 after rebate.
    http://www.buy.com/prod/fantom-greendrive-1tb-usb-2-0-and-esata-external-hard-drive-2-year/q/loc/101/208503758.html

    I use a program callend SyncBack to keep the two drive syncronized. At the end of the day I run SyncBack to copy changes from the primary to backup drive, then shut down the backup.

    This system (LR + the two drives) works pretty good. Much better than the DVD backups I used to do.

    By the way, the drives use very little power, run cool and are pretty much silent.
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  • cmasoncmason Registered Users Posts: 2,506 Major grins
    edited March 24, 2009
    iotashan wrote:
    I can save you some trouble with testing.

    While USB 2.0 is *supposed* to be 480mbps, it typically is slower than Firewire 400, as you've found out. Firewire 800, with a proper drive (like an array-based drive, say, a Drobo), would blow any USB drive out of the water.

    I also believe that USB, as a protocol, actually ends up using some processing power to do it's work. Firewire, however, is nowhere near as taxing on the CPU.

    While USB and FW400 are roughly equivalent in throughput, FW has other advantages that reduce overhead,etc...and my test proved that out, barely. I suspect there were more impacts from the drives themselves, but without opening the FW enclosure, I will never know.

    That being said, there is a huge difference between the two USB drives, and this is likely due to the hard drive itself. I doubt my cheapo desktop drive enclosure has any special bits to make it perform better than the Passport, so my view is that you are better off with a fast drive, than a FW drive. I suspect a slow drive in a FW enclosure won't get you much.
  • cmasoncmason Registered Users Posts: 2,506 Major grins
    edited March 24, 2009
    iotashan wrote:
    I switched to JungleDisk for off-site backups. It backs up to Amazon SC3, which some of you might recognize as the same storage engine that SmugMug utilizes for various stuffs including SmugMug Vault.

    Actually, I use Mozy to backup my critical files, but have not moved to backing up my photos. (2GB is free at Mozy, otherwise it is unlimited for $50). Jungle Disk/Amazon just looked too expensive for 100GB images stored, with some 10GB per month upload, assuming I wish to back everything up as I do now. Again, this is compared to paying Mozy $50 a year for everything.
  • cmasoncmason Registered Users Posts: 2,506 Major grins
    edited March 24, 2009
    Art Scott wrote:
    the Vantec Dock is only ~$80 and since the drive is exposed it is cool and seems quiet so far. Theraltake also has drive docks but they are only sigle drive docks for ~$60..............

    Thanks Art. I don't have the Vantex dock, but I do have a IDE/Sata to USB doohicky that I use for my longterm backups. I don't want to use it for active drives, as I am not real big on them being exposed (kids balls, toys and other crap are in the same room as my iMac), but it is a convenient way to do backups.


    BeachBill wrote:
    I have two 1TB Fantom Greendrives. These are external drives with USB 2.0 and eSata connections. I purchased the first one a few months back for $99 (after $20 rebate) and the 2nd one last month for $89 (after $20 rebate). I now back up the first drive to the second drive. The first drive is my primary photo storage (plus my LR catalogs are on it--all photos on the drive are indexed in LR).


    BeachBill: I have a similar set up. Actually I have a total of 6 harddrives: I have a 500GB system backup, managed by TimeMachine. I also have a 300GB photo drive. I take snapshot images (compressed to .dmg) of the entire photodrive once a month (using Carbon Copy) and store the image on a partion of the system backup drive.

    I also take a complete copy of the photo disk, plus my Lightroom database, and literally copy it to 2 bare harddrives. One goes in the safe at the house, the other goes in a drawer in my office at work. I have two additional drives that are Carbon Copy snapshots of my system harddrive, again one in the safe, and one in the office drawer.

    My original thought was to eliminate these bare drives and move to a handful of small protable drives, which are more sturdy under transport and much easier to store in a safe/file cabinet. Tedious yes, but I have lost everything once before, and will never face that again...even from a, God forbid, house fire.

    I think that for these longterm backups, this is the way I will go. I will eventually get a 500GB portable, partion it, and store both photos and system images on one disk. But having faced hard drive failure before, I will always have two disks, and two different locations.
  • mercphotomercphoto Registered Users Posts: 4,550 Major grins
    edited March 24, 2009
    This is a pretty cool thread, glad I found it. I'm amazed at how large hard drives can be this day and still be bus-powered off a FireWire or USB connection. I agree the lack of a wall-plug is very nice. Currently the number of devices plugged into my walls kinda scares me (monitor, notebook, external main drive, external back-up drive, powered speakers, printer, cable modem, wireless base station, shredder...)

    I use Time Machine with a 1TB external for my backups. Problem is, my backups are right next to my main computer, plugged into the same wall outlet. I really need to do something better and I've considered Carbonite for some of my backups (really critical stuff).

    I do have a FireWire 400 enclosure that is bus-powered and I have an 80G drive in it. Problem is, that isn't really big anymore and I need a bigger drive in it. But I'm relatively sure the drive interface is outdated by now. Not even sure I could buy a larger drive for it these days. :(
    Bill Jurasz - Mercury Photography - Cedar Park, TX
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  • colourboxcolourbox Registered Users Posts: 2,095 Major grins
    edited March 24, 2009
    mercphoto wrote:
    I do have a FireWire 400 enclosure that is bus-powered and I have an 80G drive in it. Problem is, that isn't really big anymore and I need a bigger drive in it. But I'm relatively sure the drive interface is outdated by now. Not even sure I could buy a larger drive for it these days. :(

    If it's PATA/IDE, it's technically outdated, but you can still get plenty of service out of it. If it's a 2.5" drive, you can still get up to 320GB. (see list).
  • PupatorPupator Registered Users Posts: 2,322 Major grins
    edited March 24, 2009
    mercphoto wrote:
    I use Time Machine with a 1TB external for my backups. Problem is, my backups are right next to my main computer, plugged into the same wall outlet. I really need to do something better and I've considered Carbonite for some of my backups (really critical stuff).

    Look at SugarSync.com before you sign up for Carbonite. deal.gif
  • cmasoncmason Registered Users Posts: 2,506 Major grins
    edited March 24, 2009
    Pupator wrote:
    Look at SugarSync.com before you sign up for Carbonite. deal.gif

    Paul, does Sugarsync allow multiple computer backup on one account? I really like Mozy, since it is $50 for unlimited data, however, you have to pay $50 per computer. I don't need to sync any of them, but having all the computers in the house backed up would be great.

    The pricing seems to mention multiple computers, but is usually talking about sync, not backup.
  • mercphotomercphoto Registered Users Posts: 4,550 Major grins
    edited March 25, 2009
    colourbox wrote:
    If it's PATA/IDE, it's technically outdated, but you can still get plenty of service out of it. If it's a 2.5" drive, you can still get up to 320GB. (see list).
    Yes, I do believe its IDE. Thanks for the list! Can drives as big as 320GB be bus powered? Cool!

    I have the ADS API-808 Firewire enclosure: http://www.shopping.com/xPF-A-D-S-ADS-2-5-Pyro-Drive-Kit-for
    Bill Jurasz - Mercury Photography - Cedar Park, TX
    A former sports shooter
    Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
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  • PupatorPupator Registered Users Posts: 2,322 Major grins
    edited March 25, 2009
    cmason wrote:
    Paul, does Sugarsync allow multiple computer backup on one account? I really like Mozy, since it is $50 for unlimited data, however, you have to pay $50 per computer. I don't need to sync any of them, but having all the computers in the house backed up would be great.

    The pricing seems to mention multiple computers, but is usually talking about sync, not backup.

    One account, as many computers as you want. SugarSync really is more about Sync than backup, but there's no reason you have to use it that way. You set up the desktop client software on all your machines and choose (for that machine) what folders you want to have synced. After that initial setup you can also choose what folders you want synced down.

    Example: All computers have "My Documents" synced. This means that the My Docs folders on all computers will be identical (I have it this way for home, work, and laptop). As soon as you save a file it is instantly uploaded to the cloud and synced back down to the other two computers.

    Home-PC has "Photos" folder synced. It is synced up to the cloud but NOT down to the other computers (because they don't have lightroom and I don't want them on the other PCs).

    I'm pretty sure you could customize the workflow of SS to do whatever you wanted. The only "catch" perhaps is really large files that change frequently, such as my Lightroom DB file. Rather than having that synced every time I save it's better to set it to either sync manually (when I tell it to) or once at day (at 2 AM because it takes a while to upload).

    What we refer to as "backing up," SugarSync would call "syncing to the cloud."

    You can always sign up for the 45 day (10GB) free trial to see if it would work for you.
  • colourboxcolourbox Registered Users Posts: 2,095 Major grins
    edited March 26, 2009
    mercphoto wrote:
    Yes, I do believe its IDE. Thanks for the list! Can drives as big as 320GB be bus powered? Cool!

    I guess if its power consumption on its spec sheet is comparable to the lower capacities it should work. I can say that I have a 120GB 2.5" Western Digital running off of bus power in an OWC enclosure.
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