Back in 2002, I wrote about the drive manifacturers dropping their warranties to one year, which reflected the price competition at that time. [Link] Now, with fewer drive makers, warranties have once again become a selling point.
Segate led the pack by raising warranties to five years in July this year. By sheer coincidence, I was shopping for some large SATA drives for video and photo storage. I'll be mirroring them for reliability anyway, but my buy decision was easier because of the extended warranty.
I know the warranty won't make it any easier to replace a busted disk, but it makes me certain that Segate will pay attention to quality on their production lines, because too many warranty replacements cost money and reputation.
So I made my purchase of a pair of 200GB SATA drives for $128 each just this week, at Newegg. That's just $0.64 per gigabyte. Naturally, when I checked today, the price had dropped to $125. Not the first time that has happened. :-{
If you read my earlier article on this, you might remember I recommended some older Segate 47 GB full height 5.25" SCSI drives, which I've used in a three drive RAID5 array for years. I would have used the fourth drive in the array, but the tower power supply couldn't quite hack the startup current of the fourth drive. But having a reliable 90GB storage system has been quite valuable.
Two years have changed the storage environment. Today, most motherboards come with serial ATA connections, and many include RAID mirroring or striping, though not RAID5.
I strongly recommend to anyone who values their data to invest in a motherboard, such as the ASUS A7V880, which includes 2 SATA ports with RAID, currently $69 at Newegg. This MB also has dual memory channels, a gigabit capable ethernet, and six channel audio built in.
Then get a pair of SATA drives with at least a three year warranty. For smaller requirements than mine, there are some Hitachi 80GB SATA drives for $65, also at Newegg. Set up a mirrored RAID, called RAID1, with your two drives, and keep your data there.
This does not mean you can ignore other backup, but it will insure your data against most disk failures. However, theft, fire and other external events can trash the whole system, so you still need to store valuable files offsite. Offsite backup options are complex, and that process needs a large article to explain all of the issues and tradeoffs.
While I am recommending SATA RAID for home use, the smallest businesses may also be able to use SATA RAID for data storage in a file server. Companies with more than ten computers may create too much traffic for mirrored SATA, and this would require larger SCSI RAID controllers and drives.
Small business should also invest in backup that can be taken offsite. The cheapest are DVD writable drives. Note that CD drives will also work, but information I have seen says that cheap green CD platters have a high failure rate, especially if not stored carefully. DVD writable platters appear to be less sensitive to storage, but still should be stored in a cool dark place, protected from scratches.
Better than DVDs, but more expensive, are tape drives. Not the cheap floppy drive class tape drives, but quality drives using one of several proven tape formats. Those formats are DAT/DDS, AIT and SAIT, Ultrium, LTO and SDLT. Storage capacities in DAT/DDS range from 12 to 72 GB uncompressed in the $500 to $1200 range, which is plenty for a small business environment. Larger capacities and autochangers can cost up to $6,000.
Good tapes are not cheap, but they are essential. Good tapes will last through thousands of passes and reliably keep their contents for several years. Some tape systems recommend a yearly rewind to retension the tape. Care of tape is similar to DVDs, but includes protecting from strong magnetic fields.
Finally, a warning. No backup system is better than the procedures which run it and include complete coverage of needed files. A fancy tape system is of no use if the tape is never taken offsite. Since backup ultimately depends on people, make sure the person who is assigned to this task is reliable and has an alternate person assigned in case the primary one is absent.
Here's a motivator for making your backup work. British studies show that when companies lose their computers contents, from any cause, 80% of them are out of business in two years or less. Be prepared.