Looking for some recommendations on which drives for a backup enclosure.

[Trash Man]

I currently use a 1TB USB drive to keep things backed up. It's old and I keep expecting it to die any time, I keep a copy of everything on there on the desktop as well.

I was thinking on getting an this enclosure and a couple of 3TB drives. Just to mirror each other.

I'm not fussed about it be on all the time, as I'll only be adding to it once to twice a week.

It's been a fair few years since I bought anything and I've noticed that there are a lot of different drives out there now, some even made just for NAS use?

What should I be looking at getting for what I'm after?

Thanks for any help.

[shaithis]

Looks quite nice for a small DAS box.

You could probably buy a second hand Microserver for around the same though and have a full NAS

[Spreadie]

I was thinking on getting an this enclosure and a couple of 3TB drives. Just to mirror each other.

From the description, that box supports JBOD and not RAID1, so it isn't a good choice.

+1 for grabbing a cheap Microserver.

[shaithis]

It does support RAID0 as well...

As for drives, everyone has their tales of woe....but after installing hundreds of drives in a ton of large synology boxes, I learnt to only trust WD Reds for reliable long-term operation....although I've since been warming to the HGST drives (which I started to use to replace failed Seagates)....the HGST 7.2k drives are around the same price as the slower WD reds as well.

[Spreadie]

It does support RAID0 as well...

A bad idea for a backup box though.

[cruiser]

Looks quite nice for a small DAS box.

You could probably buy a second hand Microserver for around the same though and have a full NAS

This seems a better choice especially if you need extra system with NAS.

[shaithis]

A bad idea for a backup box though.

I meant RAID 1 actually......it supports stripping, mirroring and JBOD.

[Trash Man]

I don't know anything about RAID really, would a box that supports RAID be better for a back up box? Also, what is a microserver? Are those NAS boxes mircoservers?

I just wanted a box I could use to manually back up files once or twice a week. It would be nice if I could just add the file to one drive and then it automatically added to the 2nd drive.

[peterb]

If you are looking for something to back up to, a USB enclosure would be fine - you really don't want something running 24/7 if it is only being used for archive/backup purposes.

RAID1 (mirroring) is sometimes touted as a back-up solution. It isn't - its a resilient system for minimising down time on a system - if one drive fails, it can be replaced with little (or zero - if the controller supports hot swapping) down time - but you still need a backup solution in case you get catastrophic system failure.