External HDD storage for recordings

forzacalcio

ANy tips for a decent HDD to hold old Football game recordings etc? (About 6/7gb each per game)
Im currently using Dropbox to store them but Im running out of space and need something decent that will last. Looking at around 3-4tb. I gave up on the external HDD game when I lost all data on a NAS about 7 years ago. I assume Western DIgital are still decent?

I have an Nvidia Shield to play these but just looking for something as close to rock solid as possible. What are external HDD like these days?

Johnboy1951

no matter where you store the files you need a duplicate of that storage if the files are of any value to you.

HDDs fail regardless age so you must protect your files if they are important, by having a backup.

alta stare

forzacalcio wrote: »

ANy tips for a decent HDD to hold old Football game recordings etc? (About 6/7gb each per game)
Im currently using Dropbox to store them but Im running out of space and need something decent that will last. Looking at around 3-4tb. I gave up on the external HDD game when I lost all data on a NAS about 7 years ago. I assume Western DIgital are still decent?

I have an Nvidia Shield to play these but just looking for something as close to rock solid as possible. What are external HDD like these days?

Get a surveillance drive used in CCTV systems. They are designed for heavy usage. They are the ones which usually have a purple label if my memory serves me right and yes Western Digital still make good drives.

con747

I took 2 2TB drives out of my old sky boxes and bought the enclosures in Curry's for my freesat and freeview boxes 2 years ago and both still doing the job. You can pick up old sky boxes handy enough and easy to take the drives out and a lot cheaper than buying new ones. Might not be what you need though.

forzacalcio

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

no matter where you store the files you need a duplicate of that storage if the files are of any value to you.

HDDs fail regardless age so you must protect your files if they are important, by having a backup.

Im now thinking of buying two of them, one as a back up. Ive spent the last 5/6 years telling people not to buy external hdd as storage but I simply cant keep these on my dropbox as they are not of that kind of importance, just back ups of old world cup/Euro games etc. I will be keeping the important ones on Dropbox. Maybe DVD is an option actually as a second back up. Double layered DVD 8.5gb should work?

Thanks for the feedback all. Appreciate it.

Johnboy1951

forzacalcio wrote: »

Im now thinking of buying two of them, one as a back up. Ive spent the last 5/6 years telling people not to buy external hdd as storage but I simply cant keep these on my dropbox as they are not of that kind of importance, just back ups of old world cup/Euro games etc. I will be keeping the important ones on Dropbox. Maybe DVD is an option actually as a second back up. Double layered DVD 8.5gb should work?

Thanks for the feedback all. Appreciate it.

The difficulties I have seen with external drives are

1. The enclosure not providing sufficient thermal dissipation causing the drive to be hot all the time it is in use.

2. Knocks and drops ..... deadly if the drive is in use and definitely not good for it under other circumstances.

SSDs as external drives are not really susceptible to either of the above, but unfortunately are still costly for higher capacities.

For real data security one of the two backups should be held off-site.

All you can do is the best possible you can manage.