On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 00:37:55 +0000 (UTC), (David
Arnstein) wrote:

I'm planning to use external disk drives for backup. I'm looking at
the nicely packaged enclosures from Maxtor, Western Digital, and Seagate.

I keep one set of backups "offsite," and this is giving me a bit of a
worry. Roughly once a month, I hand-carry backup media from my PC to
the "offsite" location. On the return trip, I hand-carry some media
from the "offsite" locaton back to my PC.

I don't know how wise it is to carry around 3.5 inch disk drives all
the time. These drives are designed for desktop use, after all.

Would it be wiser to use 2.5 inch drives? These are more expensive,
but these are designed for use in notebook computers. Perhaps they are
better able to handle the rigors of transportation?

Thanks for any suggestions. Recommendations for specific products would
also be gratefully accepted.

You have two technical issues, one trivial, one slightly more
important:

1. Environmental. Neither drive type has the edge in this, although
there exist more and better enclosures for 2.5in drives than for 3.5in
drives... but as a general rule either drive type in a ziplock bag
will be pretty safe from any environmental issue!

2. Non-operating shock. The 2.5in drives wins this one, but not by
as much of a margin as you might think! Where the 2.5 inch disks win
is in *operating* shock, where they do very well indeed.

The biggy, though, lies in capacity: since the maximum capacity of a
2.5in disks is less than a quarter of that of a 3.5in disk, the risk
of losing *all* of the data is much less: one 3.5in disk dying can
lose you more than 4 times as much data...

David Arnstein

Malc.