Be warned: No backup, no mercy! I also use one of those USB HDDs for backing up my whole system weekly. Of course not the movie files as this would be too much.Nick-P wrote: ↑Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:38 pmI bought that drive before I understood redundancy, but even assuming a pessimistic 250,000-hour MTTF (10× worse than spec), dual-drive failure on the same day would statistically take over 22,000 years.
Even RAID5 (1 parity drive in a 3-drive setup) gives ~3,000 years MTTDL. That’s good enough for me. I’m going RAID.
Planning to start with 3×16TB in RAID 5 — giving me 32TB usable (2/3 capacity). Only one drive's worth is used for parity, even in large arrays (e.g., 8/9 usable on 9 drives).
Still researching how easily RAID arrays can be expanded — i.e., can I add drives later without rebuilding?
P.S
If I went with manufacturer spec, I'd be safe for 65,000 years.
RAID reliability calculator:
https://www.servethehome.com/raid-calcu ... tdl-model/
Read this:
https://www.raidisnotabackup.com/