[Discuss] Tired of unreliable external drives... recommendations?

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 8:06 AM, Daniel Barrett
<dbarrett at blazemonger.com> wrote:
> In the past year or two, however, all of the large external HD's I've tried
> (3TB) develop errors or die within the first year.  Every couple months, I
> view a backup log in the morning and see stuff like:
>
>  EXT4-fs error (device sdd1): ext4_find_entry: reading directory #2 offset 0
>  EXT4-fs error (device sdd1): __ext4_get_inode_loc: unable to read inode
>    block - inode=2, block=1057
>  ...etc...
>
> At that point, I either "fsck -f" successfully, or discard the drive.

Do you leave the external drive turned on 24/7?  My (limited)
experience with external drives is that the large ones tend to run
pretty hot when worked hard & long.   Many seem to have no cooling fan
or at best a very tiny one.  You might try leaving them off when not
in use or at least setting up smartd/hddtemp to monitor their
condition.   This would probably be easier if you go with eSATA rather
then USB external drives.

Another possibility (if you have a server with the space) is to go
with one of those removable drive bays and several trays/carriers.
That way you could take advantage of the server's beefier cooling
system.

In either case, I would still suggest setting up temperature
monitoring of all your drives.

Good Luck,
Bill Bogstad