Freecom ToughDrive

[time]

Anyone used these? They claim to survive a 2m drop.

I'm looking for backup media, and given my well-justified fear and loathing of tape solutions, this seems to be the best alternative.

There's also Lacie, but reviews seemed a little more mixed.

Flash capacity increases seem to be having a breather (locally, 16GB in a decent brand is rare, let alone the elusive 32GB).

I suppose Blu-Ray is a possible answer, but if that's so, what the hell was the question?

 

[Mercutio]

I typically buy Seagate external drives for backup needs. No one likes tape, and in a small shop or a home, it's pretty doubtful that anyone would pay it the attention it needs. I've never tried a Freecom Toughdrive. It looks like it's using a laptop part, so the capacity is rather smaller than I'd like. I generally buy 500GB drive, and I'll probably continue to do so until 750GB units are down around $150.

I *have* tried Lacie, and they're fine.
Actually, they're really good. I bought a 40GB model from Clocker several years ago, and I threw it in my tech bag and carried it all over the place. It got dropped and banged around quite a bit over the years, but it's sitting on my desk here and it does still work.

BluRay is going to have the same issues as any other WORM media - the media isn't going to be stable for long term use, and of course it only takes a single unreadable sector on a disc to hose an entire backup set.

Flash is just not big enough for anything useful; these days most home PCs have many gigabytes of pictures and music and that's just not going to fit on any flash drive that might be called affordable.

 

[timwhit]

BluRay is going to have the same issues as any other WORM media - the media isn't going to be stable for long term use, and of course it only takes a single unreadable sector on a disc to hose an entire backup set.

You could always create RAR sets with parity volumes to get around this. I have burned CDs that have lasted for over 10 years. I have also had CDs/DVDs go bad after a year.