this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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It appears to work fine (it contains my home partition for my main machine I daily drive) and I haven't noticed signs of failure. Not noticeably slow either. I used to boot Windows off of it once upon a time which was incredibly slow to start up, but I haven't noticed slowness since using it for my home partition for my personal files.

Articles online seem to suggest the life expectancy for an HDD is 5–7 years. Should I be worried? How do I know when to get a new drive?

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[–] ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I just have them on a usb stick with a copy on the array as well so they can also be checked for bitrot. Even doing it for every file it’s not that much data and it’s scripted so it’s done pretty continuously (I do it weekly).

Actual file backups are what I store off site. 2 copies, one here and one off. My data generally isn’t changed all that much so I don’t bother continually backing up most directories. Like it doesn’t make sense to have 30 backups of my tv folder with my shows. They’re the same shows. I have some redundancy, I don’t just do one and done, but tape media is expensive so I don’t do like monthly backups either. Tape is wildly impractical for most home users though and offsite with tape means you need a trusted place to put it that’s reasonably safe and of moderately decent climate/humidity. Though an advantage of tape is that basically no one but the biggest of tech dorks is going to be able to read that data (versus something like leaving an external hard drive or bluray at a friends house. Even if you trust them a LOT they might plug it in. Although encryption exists)

It’s home data so it’s about balancing what makes sense with what’s cost effective and your risk tolerance

Some data is crucial of course. My personal documents are backed up far more regularly, like once an hour or so, and that’s where I utilize services like back blaze. My business, which is healthcare oriented, is entirely different and that data is segregated and utilizes backblaze as well as specialized software since it handles PHI and hipaa concerns. That’s backed up pretty much every few minutes.