External hard drive selection

I’m a data hoarder but I live on a boat so that means a couple of things. 1) space is at a premium and 2) power is 12v and at a premium.

I’ve currently got 20tb on several 2.5 external drives and have been running everything connected to a NUC for the last 3 years without a problem.

I’m started to have one of the drives drop out every few days and it requires a unplug/plug to get it back.

I’m starting to be a bit concerned about the heat as well.

I would really like to buy a large drive and install it in a high quality external enclosure to keep things cool.

I’m looking for some advice on which drive is a good choice for this and what is a high quality enclosure?

I’ll need to double up what I order (backup) since we spend most of our time in very remote locations and I’ve got a couple weeks to get these ordered before we lose an address.

2 comments

Most external single drive HDD enclosures run on 12 volt via a simple barrel jack. You might consider a dock that can take two drives. Then you can use the 2.5" in combination with a 3.5" drive.

To save power I think you want to avoid having the HDDs spinning all the time. Instead use a large SSD with your computer. Less power. And use the HDDs to replace and update contents on the SSD. You can pack away the dock between uses, together with the HDDs in a padded case.

Here is an example of a 2 drive dock that runs on 12 volts, can use both 2.5" and 3.5", can handle >20TB drives, use USB C and seems generally decent: (I have no personal experience with it.)

https://sabrent.com/collections/docking-station/products/ec-ch2b

When it comes to HDDs, I'd go with drives that have 5 years warranty. Exos? The biggest you can afford.

And a nice padded water proof padded box...
2.5inch spinning disks max out at 5Gb, so for anything bigger you'd be looking at spendy SSDs or 3.5inch drives.

3,5inch won't be straightforward, but not impossible, you could use a USB to SATA lead, and feed the drive the 12v it needs from whatever supply you have on the boat.