Topic: will extended use cause hard drive to overheat?

[JNT]

I'm useing hard drives to back up my music collection.  If I have a fairly large hard drive ,200gb. Is there any danger of the drives overheating if I copy all of the files from one drive to the other at one time?

In the future I'm thinking of seperating files into folders of around 20gb each so I don't wait for the drive to be full before making a copy.

Joe

[JNT]

anyone?

[fozzy]

I've never seen any extended use cause a problem, especially if they are not mouned  directly on top of each other(touching).  I am assuming these are internal.  I do it all the time when building drive mirrors or reparing a raid5 set.  If you are worried about heat bust open the case an point a box/oscillating fan at em.

If they are mouned in a fashion where there is plenty of air flow it should not be a problem.  They will get hot but they are designed to handle a good bit of heat. 

[JNT]

Thanks Fozzy +T.  I figured they would be alright.  The one drive will be mounted in the computer case the second will be in an external HDD enclosure. 

Is there a better system for doing backups?  Right now I have one or more folders each containing several folders of music. I create an md5 for the large folder, copy to the new drive, and verify.

Joe

[rerem]

A hard drive will last 2-6 years and one day just crap out-possibly with no warning. DVD burners are cheap,blanks are cheap. Compressed to lossless FLAC files you can probably get 10hr or more of music on a disc. While a DVD may not last forever,it will last longer than a hard drive

[JNT]

I haven't really broken down the difference in cost but i's close.  Hard drives are pretty cheap these days as well.  I'm planning to use one drive and have the second in storage and never used unless the orginal drive fails.  I do have a dvd drive as well but this seems easier and almost as cheap.

Joe