Hello,

I bought two Seagate 1TB ES 2 hard drives from newegg.com. Alot of people (Mostly the older versions) said there was a 20% failure rate in the Hard Drives. Heres the reviews:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...

I got two today and they seem to work fine so far (im still formatting them). Is it safe to store the same data on two of these drives and if one fails get it replaced? Im afraid that they will work but corrupt data slowly and I wont even know it with my 10000+- files. If one did go bad would it just go out or would the data start going bad very slowly? The last question was if the hard drive has bad sectors, does it check for them as its formatting or do you have to tell it to later, and if it does, can the data copy to that sector and go corrupt? Thanks!

Sincerely,
Jordan

After reading those comments I personally would try to exchange for a different brand.

Any data worth protecting is worth making backups, no matter what the brand.

"Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

All 1tb hard drive brands have the same kind of comments. I got a external kit for one drive. do you think two backups is enouth?

Are both of the new drives strictly for backup? Do you have a MBoard capable of RAID1? What kind of files are you saving on there that you are worried about losing?

Depending on what type and size files, 10,000 files isn't that much. I have about 4300 MP3 files that only occupy 19GB. Setting up a RAID array is probably the way for you to go.

Generally when hard drives "fail" they just completely die. It isn't a slow, gradual corruption of data.

That's not to say it doesn't happen, but I imagine that when people talk about the failure rate, they are referring to the drive working one minute and not the next.

Obviously you should be backing up your data. Having everything written to both drives would work (using RAID). Or you could go as low tech as using a batch file to copy everything from drive A to Drive B every 24 hours.

-Ryan Adams
http://RyanTAdams.com

Both drives are the sam and both are for just backup. I got it mostly to store abunch of camera pictures, videos and sound clips. About 20% is game stuff. I thought the safest thing to do would be to get two internal and buy a external kit for one. Also, when I turn them on, theres like three clanking sounds. Seagate heard and said it might be ok. It dosnt do it while its on, just booting up, and both sound the same. Seagate said they think it is the parking motor. I dont think both would make the same sound, and it would do it in operation to if it was bad?

If the failure rate is 20%, which sounds awful high, I wouldn't use them myself.

What exact Motherboard do you have? Do you have eSATA on it?

I can't believe all 1TB drives have that high a failure rate.

I talked to seagate and they said they wouldnt have a 5 year wearrenty if they where unsafe, and it could be the shipping. There website said the failure rate was 0.74%. I have never had any problems with HDDs before. I got a Asus P5ND2 SLI deluxe, and it has a esata. but I cant get my rosewill RX358 to work on esata. It will work on USB, wich is odd. that clanking sound conserns me. It can be heard from a foot away, but it dosnt do it once its going.

Your MBoard supports RAID1. Why don't you just setup a RAID 1 storage only array. In case you don't know what that is it is disk mirroring. Anything your write to the array is automatically written to BOTH drives. Should one fail you can replace it and restore the data to the new drive from the original RAID partner.

No reason to use an External unless you need to use the files on another computer.

My mom likes to look at my camera pictures, so thats another reason I got a external one. I manually copy each file to both HDDs, but I guess a RAID would save time. A friend of mine pointed this out. All the people that had drive failures bought abunch and put them in a sever, so they might of overheated. He said the clicking sound is the heads parking incase you drop it. Overall, If I copy each file to both HDDs, the odds of them both failing is very very slim? I would rather not want to pay $300 to get my data recovered lol. I do plan to use blue ray to back them up later, but not for awhile.

Your backup plan ought to insure that no matter what happens to your system you can recover your data. I like nas devices myself. Easy to configure on many OS's.

Things like knoppix and ubcd4win are winners in many cases along with tested backups.

Your data determines how many backups you need. We used to supply banks that handle billions each second. They normally started at 8 way redundancy and went up from there.

"Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

Family pictures, unlike music or movies, is irreplacable. I suggest you burn them to DVDR. If you archive as they are collected it doesn't take much time.

All HDrives will eventually fail. Pictures are a family legusy that future generations will cherish. I also suggest that you caption pictures. I have many old family photos that no living persons knows the identities. Others that are argued over as to when and where they were taken. You grandchildren and beyond will appreciate it.

If you want a more reliable external drive buy a 5 1/4" enclosure. The drive will run much cooler.

I got like 80gbs of pictures, but blu ray does hold 50. I will talk to my dad also and see what he thinks. For now I got like three copies of each file on diffrent hard drives to see if the two 1TBs will fail. I think there ok, but im not taking a chance. Thanks for all your help!

So you have 80GB of pictures. A standard S-Layer DVD holds 4.4GB. That is less than 20 of them. You wouldn't want to place all on two disks anyway.

I buy DVDR media on sale. The last time I bought any I paid $15 for 100 DVD+R Phillips 16x. So burning ALL your pictures to standard DVD will cost you about $3/4 dollars for media. BlueRay drives and decks are expensive. Why bother. Burn to S-Layer and make TWO copies.