trentbuck@gmail.com (Trent W. Buck) writes:
"Noah O'Donoghue" <noah.odonoghue@gmail.com> writes:
After reading about bitrot and feeling guilty for storing my most valuable data on cheap drives (although with backups!) I've been thinking about moving to something more resilient.
My current setup is a Ubuntu laptop, with 2 external drives.
1X 2TB ext4 for data storage 1X 3TB ext4 for backup (using Crashplan commercial backup software).
IME USB caddies do not pass SMART through to the drive. Get eSATA and run a short self test once a month (and check the results), so you know when a drive is dying.
Derp. I missed that it was a laptop. I guess for SMART your only option is to put the drives into a "real" computer (e.g. a NAS chassis) instead of just a bus adapter. I had a look at them recently and I couldn't find one I liked that could also be reflashed with a real distro, so I gave up.