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Thanks, Griff, I made a note about AOMEI previously, and will carefull consider using that instead of Acronis.
The WD MyBook is available mail-order from the site attempting to become the NewEgg of Thailand, but it was cheaper to buy it direct from a local shop ... and their price was about US $20 cheaper than NewEgg's current price. However, I would have paid up to 10% more to buy locally because ... well, it's a culture in which personal relationships over time really do matter, and, said local shop has done some big favors for me, and serve the expat community here very, very well.
My experience, and that of many others living here in Thailand, is that SeaGate drives, on average, fail with much greater frequency than WD. Such "personal heuristics," are, of course, always suspect 
cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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I'm with OG AOMEI is free and the newer versions of Acronis, 2013-2015 are crap don't know about the newest version. As far as drives I've not had problems with WD or Seagate and I've used them both.
New version: WinHeist Version 2.1.1 new web site.
I know the voices in my head are not real but damn they come up with some good ideas!
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I've got 3TB externals, both Seagate and WD MyBooks - they are unplugged most of the time, only on for transferring files from primaries to archive one, which propagates to the others. When archiving is done, all get powered down.
So 2 years in, I've had a Seagate fail, but no WD drive failures, and I replaced the failed Seagate with a WD MyBook drive.
Less than 200 hours of run time over two years and the Seagate simply wouldn't spin up one day.
Don't use the proprietary software on them; pick your own encryption scheme that can work from any source/device is my suggestion.
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I've stopped buying Seagate drives about a decade ago; all Seagate drives I've purchased are dead. I was given a "dead" PC a year or two ago; even though the machine itself was fine, both of its drives (both Seagates) were FUBARed. One was still under warranty, so even though I wasn't the original owner, I got that one replaced - it's sitting unused in a box.
I wouldn't trust a Seagate these days even as an offline backup drive.
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I have six of them. One in my NAS, one in my VM host, then a backup of each, sitting next to those machines, and another of each as offsite backups. In other words, I took two out of their enclosures and they run 24/7, and the other four only get to run a few hours each week every other month just to sync them (my backup scheme amounts to robocopy and a batch file).
I used to swear by Acronis to do full-drive backups, but the last time I tried their "newer" versions (back in 2012-13 or so) I found their software to be rather invasive - I don't need it integrated into the OS, I just wanted something I could fire up as needed. Full-drive backups aren't my thing anymore, but YMMV. I just ignore Acronis these days - you don't have to use it.
I didn't buy them all at the same time; two of the drives (bought as a pair) are actually from HGST; the other four are WD Green drives. Despite what people say about them (spinning down to save power?), I haven't had any issue with them. I've never heard them either spin down or back up.
I do have one word of warning: If you intend to use something like TrueCrypt to encrypt a drive in one of these enclosures (as I do for my backup drives), then you won't be able to take the drive out of the enclosure and mount it directly in a PC - the enclosure itself has some circuitry that assigns the drive a different ID, so if you take it out, TrueCrypt will see something's different and refuse to mount it. You can always reformat it and use it as a brand new drive - you just won't be able to get data that was encrypted with TrueCrypt while the drive was in the enclosure. I can live with that constraint.
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Thanks, Dandy,dandy72 wrote: I took two out of their enclosures
And you took them out of the enclosures because ? ... then what was the point of buying the drive in an enclosure ?
I appreciate your comments on Acronis and TrueCrypt; wasn't planning to use either.
cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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BillWoodruff wrote: And you took them out of the enclosures because
To use them internally in my NAS and VM host.
BillWoodruff wrote: then what was the point of buying the drive in an enclosure ?
Buying them with the enclosure turned out to be cheaper than just the drives themselves.  And now I have spares. I put older drives in them and use them with some of my older machines.
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Thanks for responding, Dandy,
If the specs/model# on the drives in the enclosures matched the ones sold bare-external, and the price was cheaper, I'd say you got a good deal. Perhaps a lucky bargain ?
I haven't thought about whether anything in the MyBook enclosure has any special hardware features, although my assumption it doesn't, that it's just a drive hooked up to a USB controller. I further assume that ... unless they've done some kind of weird thing, that I can dis-assemble it, upgrade the drive in it to higher capacity. All assumptions that may be ... wrong.
cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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BillWoodruff wrote: If the specs/model# on the drives in the enclosures matched the ones sold bare-external, and the price was cheaper, I'd say you got a good deal. Perhaps a lucky bargain ?
I had bought a few WD Green drives before the USB3 enclosures started becoming popular (though they were smaller in capacity back then). I've never compared the specs side-by-side, but as far as they perform, I really can't tell the difference. The cheapest pair I bought at the same time went for CAD$140 each. They typically hover at around $160. By comparison, right now (I just checked) the same 4TB WD Green drive (without the enclosure) goes for $185. Somebody tell me how that makes any sense.
BillWoodruff wrote: I haven't thought about whether anything in the MyBook enclosure has any special hardware features, although my assumption it doesn't, that it's just a drive hooked up to a USB controller.
There's a small proprietary circuit board that hooks up to the back of the SATA drive with a few chips on it, which provides the USB connector on the side of the enclosure. When hooked up through this circuit board, Device Manager gives the drive a different ID than if hooked up directly through the drive's SATA port. I suspect this is why TrueCrypt thinks this isn't the same drive and refuses to mount it.
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My experience with Western Digital hard drives has been very good. I avoid Seagate drives like the plague; we have a RAID unit populated with Seagate drives that I've replaced 5 drives in it in four years.
Despite others' experience, I've also had good luck with Acronis. It's reasonable quick and I've never had a problem recovering data from a backup. The only caveat is I only do full-image backups with Acronis. My working file and 'incremental' backups go on a thumb drive.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Thanks, Gary,
I share the experience mentioned by many on this thread of having multiple failures using Seagate drives, and only one failure, over the years, with WD.
While I will carefully evaluate the bundled Acronis software included with the MyBook; I plan, now, to use the AOMEI software that OriginalGriff has written about, here.
My goal is to use the MyBook in pretty much the same way you described your use of an archival drive: to do full system-image back-ups (probably monthly), occasional move-to-archive file transfers of accumulated whatever.
How I might want to use the MyBook if I "go on the road" with it ... I haven't thought through yet.
cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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I've had a pair of 1 TB WD MyBook units running for a few years and have had no troubles whatsoever. Being USB drives, they're a bit on the slow side to access, but once connected, the transfers seem fair fast.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Do you accept a shareholding business?
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Me? Provided you don't call me late to dinner I'll accept almost anything.
Cash is always a better idea though.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I accept. Send it to me via telepathy please.
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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I believe there's enough evidence to accept that they exist, yes.
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I have done, yes, but past performance is not predictor of future 
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Accept ... for what ?
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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Movie Quote Of The Day
Every time I bring a girl over, you try to eat her! It's not fair!
Which movie?
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One Slice of Paris?
=========================================================
I'm an optoholic - my glass is always half full of vodka.
=========================================================
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How to Cook Vol 10 : Tennie flanks
Rules for the FOSW ![ ^]
if(this.signature != "")
{
MessageBox.Show("This is my signature: " + Environment.NewLine + signature);
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("404-Signature not found");
}
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Young Dracula - The College Years
veni bibi saltavi
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Should'a been "Little Shop Of Horrors" 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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