External Hard Drives - to save my GIMP images and other content

ofnuts · **Joined:** Oct 25, 2010 **Posts:** 4812

Wallace wrote:

2-ton wrote:

I have a Seagate back up 2TB drive that I picked up on a big sale at Cosco. My macbook is quite old, so I felt it would be a good idea for a just in case my dinosaur of a laptop died, but to be honest, I'm not even sure how to use it if I even need to get a new computer...I figure that I can probably find out when the time comes. It's just peace of mind to know that my computer's contents are saved.

It's always a good idea to have some sort of backup.

Having what's called a System Image of your computers data,
is often one of the best ways to backup your data,
as well as your operating system.

Knowing how to create a System Image.
Can be of great benefit and addition to your "peace of mind".

The advantage of having a System Image is,
that it can be used on another computer.

A disk image isn't really a backup, unless it is done at least daily. If you erase a file by mistake you can't recover it unless you restore the image, losing other recent files in the way. And given the size you rarely have more than one and they won't be done often. On servers they take "snapshots", but these are virtual machines and a snapshot can be just a delta with the previous snapshot, usually not that big.

On GF we have the weekly snapshots from the provider, plus a daily backup of the files.

Wallace · **Posted:** Wed Oct 18, 2017 2:38 am **(#22)**

ofnuts wrote:

A disk image isn't really a backup, unless it is done at least daily. If you erase a file by mistake you can't recover it unless you restore the image, losing other recent files in the way. And given the size you rarely have more than one and they won't be done often. On servers they take "snapshots", but these are virtual machines and a snapshot can be just a delta with the previous snapshot, usually not that big.

On GF we have the weekly snapshots from the provider, plus a daily backup of the files.

I agree.
That's why I create a system image about once or twice a week,
depending on what has happened with my system.
As you've pointed out;
there is normally only one such system image or snapshot.

eagertolearn · **Joined:** Feb 26, 2014 **Posts:** 248

Thank you so much or sharing all that.

How can I detect if a WD drive is Blue, Black. Red or Green?

They don't seem to state that on the outside box nor on the specs sheet at Office Depot, Best, Buy or Staples and when I try to email Contact us at WD no matter what Model # I type in it gets rejected.

Thanks again.

Wallace · **Posted:** Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:47 pm **(#24)**

eagertolearn wrote:

Thank you so much or sharing all that.

How can I detect if a WD drive is Blue, Black. Red or Green?

They don't seem to state that on the outside box nor on the specs sheet at Office Depot, Best, Buy or Staples and when I try to email Contact us at WD no matter what Model # I type in it gets rejected.

Thanks again.

There's no need to be concerned with the color of the drive,
when purchasing an external hard drive.
Most will run a 52-7200 rpm.

A WD external drive plugged in to a usb 2 port.
Will theoretically transfer data at 480 megabits per second (mbps),
or 60 megabytes per second (MBps).

A WD external drive,
that supports usb 3,
which is plugged into a usb 2 port.
Can only transfer data at usb 2 speeds.

A WD external drive that supports usb 3,
which is plugged into a usb 3 port.
Will transfer data a ten time that of usb 2.
USB 3 can handle up to 5gbps (640MBps).

eagertolearn · **Joined:** Feb 26, 2014 **Posts:** 248

Someone said they got 2 WD external drives and didn't know what "color" they were. They both died w/i 6 mos and both turned out to be "Green" where they revert into sleep mode to save energy.

How do I avid getting a "Green" WD ext hard drive?

He suggested if it states its compatible with a Mac it probably isn't a Green WD Drive.

Thank you!

Wallace · **Posted:** Wed Oct 18, 2017 2:54 pm **(#26)**

eagertolearn wrote:

Someone said they got 2 WD external drives and didn't know what "color" they were. They both died w/i 6 mos and both turned out to be "Green" where they revert into sleep mode to save energy.

How do I avid getting a "Green" WD ext hard drive?

He suggested if it states its compatible with a Mac it probably isn't a Green WD Drive.

Thank you!

That's another reason I don't use a plug and play external drive.
It's difficult to tell what kind of drive is inside.

Perhaps you might want to take a look at the Samsung external drives.
Samsung is basically at the top of the heap,
when it comes to SSD's.

I've always purchased my drives separately and then get an enclosure for it.
This way I know what kind of drive it is.

There is software you can use,
to show you what the read and write speed of the drive is.
But I don't think the software can tell what color the drive is.
The drive colors that WD uses,
are totally proprietary.

It also no use asking sales people about this,
because most if not all haven't a clue.

ofnuts · **Joined:** Oct 25, 2010 **Posts:** 4812

Wallace wrote:

There's no need to be concerned with the color of the drive,
when purchasing an external hard drive.
Most will run a 52-7200 rpm.

On the contrary... the Green/Blue/Black series have different purposes (power, performance, price...). And there is a huge difference between a 5400 and a 7200rpm drive... In USB2 times the limit was the USB2 bus speed but the USB3 speeds are way better that what a HDD can produce.

Wallace · **Posted:** Wed Oct 18, 2017 4:09 pm **(#28)**

ofnuts wrote:

Wallace wrote:

There's no need to be concerned with the color of the drive,
when purchasing an external hard drive.
Most will run a 52-7200 rpm.

On the contrary... the Green/Blue/Black series have different purposes (power, performance, price...). And there is a huge difference between a 5400 and a 7200rpm drive... In USB2 times the limit was the USB2 bus speed but the USB3 speeds are way better that what a HDD can produce.

There still isn't any way of telling what color drive,
is inside of a WD external drive.

The image below is for WD Support.

eagertolearn · **Joined:** Feb 26, 2014 **Posts:** 248

Ofnuts....have you found some way to detect which color *EXTERNAL* drive you are buying at purchase with WD?

I can find *INTERNAL* drive colors from WD but not external.

Thanks.

ofnuts wrote:

Wallace wrote:

There's no need to be concerned with the color of the drive,
when purchasing an external hard drive.
Most will run a 52-7200 rpm.

On the contrary... the Green/Blue/Black series have different purposes (power, performance, price...). And there is a huge difference between a 5400 and a 7200rpm drive... In USB2 times the limit was the USB2 bus speed but the USB3 speeds are way better that what a HDD can produce.

ofnuts · **Joined:** Oct 25, 2010 **Posts:** 4812

Once you have them you can use S.M.A.R.T. tools to obtain all kind of info from them (health status, but also actual type).

rich2005 · **Joined:** Mar 04, 2011 **Posts:** 2615

eagertolearn wrote:

I always liked WD for internal drives.

There is a WD utility for turning off the head parking issue. (A linux one as well) Do not know if that is applicable to an external drive.

Quote:

I need a 2 TB for all my stuff.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

Alternatives

Same as Ofnuts, I have a 2TB USB3 Samsung. Currently 20 months old so comparatively new. Tell you better in a few years time. Self powered from the USB3 port. Queried that and the drive is Seagate.

A search on Amazon and they now seem to be marketed as Maxtor. Not surprising, Seagate acquired Maxtor, then Samsung acquired Seagate.

Worth a look.

eagertolearn · **Joined:** Feb 26, 2014 **Posts:** 248

Hi Ofnuts,

Can you please share where I can find S.M.A.R.T. tools?

Is that a free utility program?

Thank you!

ofnuts · **Joined:** Oct 25, 2010 **Posts:** 4812

SMART is a standard for disks to report their health status . See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

There are likely free utility programs for all platforms, and paying applications on some.

On my PC, I just did "apt install smartmontools" and got the free, industrial-strength utility that is used on countless web servers.

Code: Select all

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate Samsung SpinPoint M9TU (USB)
Device Model:     ST2000LM005 HN-M201AAD
Serial Number:    F4883HXXXXXXX
LU WWN Device Id: 0 000000 000000000
Firmware Version: 2BC10003
User Capacity:    2,000,398,934,016 bytes [2.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    5400 rpm
Form Factor:      2.5 inches
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 6
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Fri Oct 20 21:21:01 2017 CEST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

On less user-friendly systems, I reckon you have to hunt the web for one, and hope it's not laced with malware.

Of course, you can use the utility on your fixed disks as well. This can tell you you really have to to start thinking about backups...

rich2005 · **Joined:** Mar 04, 2011 **Posts:** 2615

A couple of SMART utilities to try.

smarttools/smartctl
This is often used in linux but there is a windows version: https://www.smartmontools.org/ and
https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/Down ... owspackage

It is commandline but there is an option when installing for a right click context menu entry

CrystalInfo.
A well established freeware application, used to come with adware. Latest version is ok. Just get the portable version and not the full package which is bloated with horrible themes.
https://crystalmark.info/download/index ... alDiskInfo get the simple 13.3 portable zip.

Unzipped in a folder, it will run from your desktop.

I am sure there will be lots who will love the theme, but not me

If you want to lash out $10 or so, there is the Parted Magic live CD/memory stick iso file.

It is of course linux, comes packed with tools, including smarttools, many for rummaging around a broken system, Win or linux. I tend to buy one every other year, a real big spender

2-ton · **Posted:** Sat Oct 21, 2017 1:45 pm **(#35)**

Here is basically what Mac Time Machine does. As far as I can see, I really don't need to even keep an eye on it, it's very automatic. It works very well with my 2TB Seagate external drive.