WD Blue vs Red vs ? - Long Term Video Archive

[CC268]

Since I don’t do a ton of editing and do this simply as a hobby I am thinking I would like to archive my videos/projects by using a SATA dock (aka toaster oven) and some desktop HDs (WD Blue, Red, etc). I’ve been told to stay away from Seagate.

I am trying determine if I should go with WD Blues (4TB drives) or WD Reds (a bit more expensive). I’ve seen a lot of folks using WD Blues (what we’re the WD Greens) for this purpose. Keep in mind this is to simply store old videos/projects. These will sit on the shelf and will only be pulled to archive more videos/projects.

Thanks.

[Ann Bens]

I use Red for backups.

[CC268]

Thanks. Reds seem like the way to go. could always use them if I get an NAS down the road too.

[Ann Bens]

My red is internal: 4T.

I have also access to a NAS which stores the backup for my media.

[Richard M Knight]

I wouldn't trust any single HDD they will fail eventually, I've lost one backup due to failure. I now have an 8 disc Drobo NAS and have had two WD reds fail in that but the redundancy saved the files. For my editing discs I have 8 WD RE enterprise drives in a Raid 5 and have also had 2 failures with those.

[Ann Bens]

I have never lost a hdd. I had 4 running for 10 years (wd black).

[Peru Bob]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Ann+Bens  wrote

I have never lost a hdd. I had 4 running for 10 years (wd black).

You are fortunate, Ann.

In the last 10 years, I have lost about eight HDDs: a combination of internal and external Seagates and Western Digitals, including a couple under warranty. The good news is that I never lost any data because all were well backed up.

[CC268]

For now I would put a copy on two hard drives. I understand your point, and I would love an NAS, but I don’t have the budget for that right now and quite frankly is so overkill for what I need.

[Peru Bob]

I keep three drives:

One on site.

One off site.

A third one to rotate with the off site drive so that there is always a drive on site and off site that is current.

[Richard van den Boogaard]

*Always* have archive disks in pairs. One disk may fail, but the chance of that happening to two at the same time is very remote. Make sure to spin them up every six months or so.