2016 drive cleanup

Over the years I’ve built up a small stack of removable drives, mostly for off site backup rotation, and when one of them (a decade old Maxtor) started to sound like two angle grinders ‘passionately embracing’ I thought it was time to do some data validation and re-planning. Although I’m fully aware that most technology trends towards getting smaller and cheaper it’s been a while since I’ve been drive shopping. My god, the difference a few years makes!

A quick purchase of two host-powered, USB 3, 4TB drives via Amazon Prime and I’ve managed to claw back more physical space in power supply storage alone than the new drives use. I’ve copied everything over to both drives, sent one off to live with relatives, and put the older ones in out of sight storage as a very last ditch option if all other restores fail. It was a slow, painful process, made worse by USB 1 transfer speeds and some bad blocks but most of the data is still safely backed up and my home technology footprint shrinks once more.