Buy large capacity off the shelf backup drive or assemble one myself?
Buy large capacity off the shelf backup drive or assemble one myself?
I'm going to be setting up my first NAS soon and want to be sure that I have a backup solution in place as well. I'd like to store all of my files locally rather than using a cloud service for backups. I could either buy a premade backup drive (WD Elements, Seagate Expansion, etc.) or a large hard disk and an enclosure and assemble one myself. Can those of you with experience in this area please guide me? I'd appreciate learning about the pros and cons from expert data hoarders :) Thank you!
-Cut and paste-
I wouldn't buy externals anymore. Better to spend a little more and get a guaranteed 1st tier internal drive from someone like ServerPartDeals.
Q: Is it true that the drives in externals can be: overstock, overruns, binned (out of spec drives), from cancelled orders.
A: Yes to all of it. Externals are the lowest bins above the [redated] (Edit: binned rives} we sell to third parties. It’s whatever is leftover. They have less warranty because they aren’t expected to last as long.
My notes: The first part is supported by what I posted in this thread, https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/11jmot5/to\_those\_asking\_what\_drive\_is\_inside\_my\_wd/ which has a link to WD's disclosure about this.
It's been confirmed by another source that the binned drives, are drives that are Out Of Spec, flashed with special firmware that can't be updated and is no longer supported by the manufacturer. This is source of SOME of the unbranded drives from certain resellers.
To those asking "What drive is inside my WD external?". From WD...
Drive Type Inside of a WD External Drive Enclosure
The drive inside of a Western Digital enclosure may vary depending on application.
Depending on model, the internal drive included an external enclosure could have a SATA or native USB interface.
We can only guarantee drive capacity.
We cannot guarantee a particular internal drive model, data interface, rotational speed, power consumption, transfer speed or cache size included in the external hard drive enclosure.
We can only guarantee a Western Digital Drive.
We cannot guarantee a particular enclosure will have a WD colored drive inside.
Dismantling any single-drive external enclosure to obtain this information will void the warranty of the hard drive.
Please refer to the Western Digital Warranty Policy.
Interface and cache of the drives inside the external enclosure does not affect the performance or the data transfer rate of the external drive unit.
Whats your plan on building a NAS?
I would just buy off the shelf
I don't think it matters that much. It's more important to have several backup copies and follow the 3-2-1 rule: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/. For backups, I would just go with a cheaper option.