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External drive for home shared drive and router download?

I use a simple 2.5" external usb drive connecter to my router as a shared drive on my home network. I also use it to run my router’s torrent download tool and get new content.

The external drive is not new and I worry that with the constant load it might fail one day. It’s also slow sometimes when watching content directly from it with kodi.

What would you suggest I replace it with? Would a 3.5" external usb drive be safer?

TheHolm ,
@TheHolm@aussie.zone avatar

Old saying. If you do not have 3 copies of you data, consider it lost already. Get another drive, in your setup type does not mater what size. And if there any important data on that drive, create a couple of backups in different places.

Leax OP ,

You’re right! I do have another drive for backup

MangoPenguin ,
@MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

2.5" vs 3.5" HDD doesn’t make much difference in speed, you could get an SSD instead maybe.

All drives will fail sometime, I wouldn’t worry about constant load being an issue, that’s generally better for HDDs.

Leax OP ,

I see thank you!

circuitfarmer ,
@circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

A single drive is always going to be a potential point of failure. Definitely make periodic backups to a different device if you don’t want to potentially lose everything on it without warning.

There are more complicated solutions available, such as a RAID array, but it sounds like you want to keep things relatively simple. In that case, I don’t think there will be a whole lot of difference between 2.5 and 3.5 inch drives – except that there are 3.5 inch drives designed for data center applications which may net you some extra reliability. You’d likely need to get such a drive and put it into your own external enclosure, though.

That said, there’s only so much you should expect to get out of a single drive connected via USB (relatively slower transfers, reliance on the bespoke external bay, potentially not getting warned if SMART status changes).

Leax OP ,

You’re right, if I really want to improve things, I should go for a Raid solution, but that invoke a NAS or a desktop pc I suppose, so… Maybe next year! Thank you!

bobsuruncle ,

All drives will ultimately fail, could be 10years, could be 10mins. If you don’t want to lose your data, back it up. Have a storage drive and a backup drive. Don’t both connected them to the router. Use an alternative method to connect , like to a computer and have run a backup protocol on a regular basis. As for 2.5 over 3.5, the 3.5 are usually faster but it probably doesn’t matter reliability wise.

Leax OP ,

Thank you!

SheeEttin ,

Any drive has the possibility of failure. If you value the contents, have a way to recover, either by restoring from backup or by re-downloding your media.

Leax OP ,

Thank you!

scottywh ,

Correction:

Every drive has the certainty of inevitable failure.

It’s only a question of when. Backup everything and backup your backups if you care about the contents.

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