Here's the latest dataset from backblaze on their HD failure rates for Q3 2024 -
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backb...s-for-q3-2024/
Honestly at this point there are 3-4 main brands and they're all pretty much the same as far as quality (assuming you're not going consumer but rather datacenter/black/raid/server models) - Seagate, HGST, WD, Toshiba are the ones who survived the last 8 years of floods, shitty market trends, etc..
I'm a bit anal about my backup workflow.. it's all automated though. The important stuff (i.e. tax info, family photos, my local git instance that has all my personal projects/etc..) all gets backed up to a local backup server with a raid 50 setup (6 drives) at 4am and then also sent off to backblaze via rsync in the form of an encrypted file. That only happens though if there's been a change or addition to the folders/files. That's pretty small though (I pay 6/month on their cheapest plan and can have up to 1TB before it bumps me up to $12/month).
Anything on my media server that's live music (which is flac/shn shows from places like here as well as flac rips from all my old cd sets from back when i'd trade via snail mail) gets backed up recursively as I add stuff once a week on sundays.. that also goes to the same backup server on my home network. Raid 50 is great because it can allow for up to two drives to fail without data loss and rebuilding the drives after being replaced is faster than a Raid 5 setup. Downside - you need a min of 6 drives. It also gets sent out to a minipc running a smaller raid 5 setup (which only needs 3) that's hosted at a friend's house on his home network. In return I have a similar backup server of his on mine that he sends his stuff to on tuesdays at midnight according to my traffic logs. That way if one of our houses burns down we're still good. I don't backup any of the movies/tv shows I have as I know where I can get all those again but some live shows are just straight up hard to find. I have a pretty fast connection here and he's got a fiber connection up at his place in vancouver. We both are former sysadmins and have similar security setups as far as authentication/encryption is concerned so he's got his own little secure line to his box and I have the same to mine (so we can only see that there's been traffic to that vlan but not what the traffic is). Good fences = good neighbors and also it goes without saying he's a good friend who I trust to not be storing anything shady on his box here.
I have a co-worker who has pretty much the same type of setup going but he has an external HD that he manually plugs in once every two weeks to add anything that needs to be backed up and then unplugs it when it's done and pops it in his fireproof safe. He doesn't backup any media though so it's probably a quick process. He follows the old method where you have 3 sets of your backups with one being either cold storage or off-site storage.
Really just if you're going to backup your stuff make sure it's NOT on the same computer or HD array as your main computer...other components can fail too and it defeats the purpose of backing anything up if it's all located on the same motherboard/raid controller/power-source because one big fail = you have nothing.
Like i said, i'm anal about it but already had the hardware/network setup due to accumulating/re-purposing old equipment. The most common backups I hear about that are just fine are an ext HD or cheap synology NAS connected to their router. All the pre-built consumer NAS systems have built-in apps you can use to automate as well as one click turn them into a shared drive. Just make sure to enable auto-updates for security patches. If your collection isn't over 1-2TB you could also just use the first tier of google drive storage or microsoft onedrive (if you have any of the office 365 subscriptions). The options for online storage at 1TB or less are dirt cheap, just scaling anything over 3tb is where online storage gets pricey.
Here's one of the industry standard apps (it's free) to see the health of any of your drives - Crystal Disk Info -
https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/
It'll give you a nice percentage that's color coded as well as show you all the data on # of writes/reads, power on count, etc.. Works well as an early warning indicator that your drives are getting close to the danger zone. Works with all drives, including SSD/NVME. Once it get's down to under 35% it's time to start looking for a replacement. I have hard drives that are over 9 years old and just fine, i've also gotten new hard drives that died after 6 months. It's just a dice-roll.
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