there are also, as always, bugs lurking in file system code, and new and interesting edge cases that trigger them.
i’ve never been happy with usb storage: usb drivers layered on SATA drivers on top of SCSI drivers makes me nervous. shame eSATA didn’t take off though that was only somewhat more reliable.
even on linux i often have issues, and more so with appliances than with up to date distributions on commodity hardware.
i try not to lose too much sleep 
I used eSata years ago and I liked it. It gave me speed and reliability from external drives. Long gone and replaced by said USB drives.
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I like to pull off the USB board and connect directly to SATA. Avoid the middle man. Sometimes getting the plastic shell open can be a challenge though. As an aside, my primary flash array at HQ doesn’t have the SSD controller chip on the flash modules. The OS interfaces directly at kernel. 3 years, zero errors. Pure Storage.
I’ve had zero issues with Windows 10 ReFS with two drives, one SATA on motherboard the other still with its USB interface, otherwise identical Seagate something from 5 years ago.
This is worth reviewing if you’re purchasing spinning disk. Data from a very large pool of drives.
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Thunderbolt solved this, and USB4 is basically Thunderbolt with USB backwards compatibility built in. So we’re close to the point where attaching serious storage with “USB” will not be a foolish thing to do.
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Yes I check the Backblaze reports now and then, can be interesting reading
I’m not doing serious storage in anger any more, and I find my personal storage requirements are growing much more slowly, but it’s still a faff, and worth it, to do it properly…
I have a WD 2-bay NAS in raid 1 configuration. One died a few weeks ago, but because it’s mirrored, popping in a new disk was easy.
I’ve thought about having a backup of the NAS, but i can’t connect a drive to it for a backup—has to be over the network. For 4TB of data, that’s a long time.
But I guess I really should have another backup. Currently I’m just assuming the raid 1 redundancy will save the day.
It is boring, but we all need a backup kept off-site.
It is too easy to rely on a mirrored drive or an on-site backup and have something go wrong.
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If you put another NAS somewhere on your network and back up to it the first time will take a day or so but after that the incremental backups will only take a few minutes or less if nothing has been added to the system. I think WD has some good backup software probably available for no charge. Synology comes with several backup solutions depending on how much redundancy you want or need. SyncbackSE is also really good software for not much money. If you can put the backup device in a different building you add some safety in case of a disaster of one type or another. I do not use cloud storage for backup but many others do.
Thanks @Baldy. Anyone know of cheap cloud storage without bells and whistles and just backup and restore? My “other building” would be the casita which is totally off the grid!
Thanks
I would check with Amazon and Google although a quick search will probably give you more choices than you are ready for.
Backblaze is less $ vs Amazon or Google but check Amazon Glacier. Very inexpensive to store but more to restore. Most work this way. Cheap to upload but costly to download beyond the monthly included %.
Check ISP for data cap and upload bandwidth. TBs will take a long time at 10Mbps for example.
I have been using Backblaze for unlimited offsite backups for many years. All of my music and movies are backed up. If you have a drive that fails, you can have them send you a replacement hard drive with all the data on it. They give you the option of buying the drive or returning it. You can also download files from anywhere when needed. The service is very inexpensive. I think I pay $5 a month, which is cheap insurance.
No raid for me. I have everything backed up and at least 6 full copies on 4 different computers in two different states a d four separate copies on 4 backup drives. When I rip something I make four copies day one. I am not going through the process again. And with Roon and Qobuz and to a lesser extent, Tidal I probably don’t need my l library but I am happy to have it.
My various servers all have internal SSD drives and if they add noise then I guess I have noise. You couldn’t prove it to me though.
Spinning vinyl still wins hands down.
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I certainly like the sound of vinyl in my system. Digital streaming has it’s place. With attached SSD’s with my music, it almost rivals the sound of my PST. No longer will I not have a multitude of backed up music.
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