this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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I use a simple 2.5" external usb drive connecter to my router as a shared drive on my home network. I also use it to run my router's torrent download tool and get new content.

The external drive is not new and I worry that with the constant load it might fail one day. It's also slow sometimes when watching content directly from it with kodi.

What would you suggest I replace it with? Would a 3.5" external usb drive be safer?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

A single drive is always going to be a potential point of failure. Definitely make periodic backups to a different device if you don't want to potentially lose everything on it without warning.

There are more complicated solutions available, such as a RAID array, but it sounds like you want to keep things relatively simple. In that case, I don't think there will be a whole lot of difference between 2.5 and 3.5 inch drives -- except that there are 3.5 inch drives designed for data center applications which may net you some extra reliability. You'd likely need to get such a drive and put it into your own external enclosure, though.

That said, there's only so much you should expect to get out of a single drive connected via USB (relatively slower transfers, reliance on the bespoke external bay, potentially not getting warned if SMART status changes).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You're right, if I really want to improve things, I should go for a Raid solution, but that invoke a NAS or a desktop pc I suppose, so... Maybe next year! Thank you!