# What type of HD is best for archiving projects? WD Red? Green?



## ChristopherDoucet (Jul 31, 2015)

I'm wondering what type of hard drive is the best or ideal for backing up a large projects.

I most likely would never need to access the projects again just backing up everything....so I'm thinking they don't need to be on a fast drive. is that right? 

Furthermore I know you would never use a Western Digital green label hard drive for samples are projects however for backing up wouldn't they be fine? What is the RED?

Last Time I checked, I was under the impression I should stay away from Seagate. Is this still the case? 


Thanks!!!


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Jul 31, 2015)

2/3 of my Seagate drives have died (~3-4 years old) so I stay away from Seagate. 

The Red drives are meant for NAS. I'm not sure what the difference is. I use 2 of them in my network drive and haven't had issues. I'm fairly certain that if it's just for backups the green should be fine.


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## NYC Composer (Jul 31, 2015)

The best type of hard drive for archiving is two drives from different manufacturers.


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## Vin (Aug 1, 2015)

I use WD blue, works great.


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## kitekrazy (Aug 1, 2015)

I went back to buying WD Blue. Blacks have a 5 year warranty and I've had to RMA two in my lifetime. Blues on the other hand I've never had that problem. 1TBs can be had for $50. Funny thing was I went to an estate sale where the person must have been a PC part supplier and got a WD 500 Blue still in the box for $10. I got a SATA adapter and popped it into the new system for storage.


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## 1982m (Aug 1, 2015)

I've been using WD Blue for years. No issues so far. ( t's crossed)
I'll never use Green, I hear they're problematic.


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## RCsound (Aug 1, 2015)

I use two different manufacturers exactly what it says NYC Composer. You can buy two same HDD model and have the same issue with time.

I recently bought two WD Green and 2 WD Black. Last year i lost 4 Seagate HDD, so i stay away from Seagate in serious work, only to archive. Seagate are strong and durable, even out there I have 40GB hard drives Seagate PATA running smoothly , but latest models have a lot of problems with bios, all my latest Seagate drives failed without warning or notification S.M.A.R.T.


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## rgames (Aug 1, 2015)

I wouldn't archive to HDD - they have moving parts and need to be run every now and then to keep from locking up. The longer a HDD sits without being used (which is what happens with archives), the more likely it is to be dead when you try to use it.

Optical media are a better way to go for archiving - I use Blu-Ray. You can get 50 GB on each disk but I usually use the 25 GB versions - that's usually plenty for several projects.

HDD is great for backup but not archiving.

rgames


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## Mystic (Aug 1, 2015)

I have mostly WD Black drives. I do have a WD Red drive for my media storage and it's worked great.


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## NYC Composer (Aug 3, 2015)

Just fyi- over 30 years of backup and archiving I've seen every form of media fail, from SCSI drives to magneto-optical drives to tape drives to ADATS to DATS to CDs to DVDs. Use multiple formats to archive important stuff (was my initial advice.)


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## 1982m (Aug 3, 2015)

Good point. I just picked up some TY dvd's for my alt bu's.


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## Killiard (Aug 3, 2015)

In my old studio we used to back up everything to DVDs. Seemed fine until you went to get something archived a few years before only to find that the disc was suddenly unreadable :-(

Studio before that we archived on to hard drives. Which was fine until they too failed :-( 

Before that it would be onto DAT. Which was fine until drop outs popped up on the tape. 

Nowadays I try to go the multiple route. Back up the sessions without audio online plus on a separate drive. But all the big PT sessions are on two external drives. It still takes too long for me to back up everything online.


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## Anders Wall (Aug 3, 2015)

This might be a bit of topic but I would use,
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home
Unlimited storage for $59.99 a year.
Let them worry about harddrives that fails :-O

I don't use it, have a couple of different accounts for backup, but I'm really interested in this solution.
One copy on a *insertbrand*-harddrive at home and one on Amazon.

Cheers,
/Anders


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## rgames (Aug 3, 2015)

Killiard said:


> In my old studio we used to back up everything to DVDs. Seemed fine until you went to get something archived a few years before only to find that the disc was suddenly unreadable


I've seen this happen, too, but in nearly every case it was because the disc was not properly closed. If you're backing up to optical media then you need to make sure the disc is closed. I think that's pretty much standard nowadays but it wasn't so back in the day and it caused a lot of people to write discs that couldn't be read at a later date on a different drive.

Make sure you DO NOT use RE/RW media. In my experience that's a recipe for archive disaster.

rgames


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## Vin (Aug 4, 2015)

WallofSound said:


> This might be a bit of topic but I would use,
> https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home
> Unlimited storage for $59.99 a year.
> Let them worry about harddrives that fails :-O



Agreed, it's dirt cheap ($5 a month) and a much safer option. Not a big fan of using DVDs for backup - they are impractical and often unreliable.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Aug 4, 2015)

If the problem with backing up to hard drives is that they can fail if not used in a long time, what about backing up to a NAS? That way the drive would always be working and you could use a raid to be able to swap out a drive if it fails. Of course this could quickly get very expensive depending on how much data you have to backup.


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