Did decide to go the used drive route just saving up and waiting for the right deal from a good seller. I did notice on eBay specifically that some sellers have tested drives for a great price per tb with a shit seller’s warranty (30 days to 1 year) but offer insurance for a significantly longer length of time for a few more bucks. I’m wondering if that’s a good alternative to having a long seller’s warranty? Just assume I will back everything up properly so drive failure won’t be a massive concern I just want the option of returning it or getting a replacement if need be.
Bingo. I’ve been running refurb 4tb hgst drives for years now, oldest one has 50k power on hours and I’m not sure if that’s how long I’ve run it or if it had a bunch when it came. Either way, I have yet to lose one in years of use while popping several western digital and seagate drives.
I’m moving to 10tb drives (I tend to pick the biggest sub $100 drive option when I need a new standard) since I’m out of drive bays and nearly out of space on the old garbage array. Stick to the 3-2-1 rule and these should be fine.
The 3-2-1 rule can aid in the backup process. It states that there should be at least 3 copies of the data, stored on 2 different types of storage media, and one copy should be kept offsite, in a remote location (this can include cloud storage). 2 or more different media should be used to eliminate data loss due to similar reasons (for example, optical discs may tolerate being underwater while LTO tapes may not, and SSDs cannot fail due to head crashes or damaged spindle motors since they do not have any moving parts, unlike hard drives). An offsite copy protects against fire, theft of physical media (such as tapes or discs) and natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. Physically protected hard drives are an alternative to an offsite copy, but they have limitations like only being able to resist fire for a limited period of time, so an offsite copy still remains as the ideal choice.
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You reassured me thank you. Was straight up looking at 10tb hgst drives but was hesitant. I’ll still check out other drives that have manufacturer warranties on them but its nice to know I can fall back on my old plan if I don’t find a good deal.