It's a perfectly good way. I strongly prefer the "buy a good HD, buy a good case, put them together" approach to "buy an unknown HD in an unknown case with software I didn't want".

With some cases, like the ones made by Vantec, it's very easy to remove and replace the HD, so you can store the full HD and swap in an empty one.

Ok, thanks for the confirmation :-)

I tend to go with one HD = one case but always ensure that all cases can use the same connectivity (electricity + eSATA) so I can literally unplug one and plug another on the same cables :-) The trickiest is of course the electrical tranformer, but I've been lucky so far and found compatible cases.

I'm currently using an external 3tb hdisk on Xp without problems (mbr).
You are right about 2.2Tb max size, but many external drives use the "advanced format" trick (4k sectors with 512e emulation).
You couldn't boot Xp from them, though, if you would need to do so. (maybe Win7 x64 with GPT+UEFI can do it, but it's not 4k ready)

From my experience, the mechanical HDDs are very good for long-time storage. If I've had a HDD die on me, it has been in use, usually probably the circuitry getting some electric shock killing the HDD when I've handled it carelessly (the mechanical plates and the data in them, and read/write heads were probably still fine, only the controller circuitry was fried I think). One such case was when I carelessly put one uncovered HDD on top of PC case, I think the bare circuitry touched the metal case, zapping it. In your case that shouldn't matter, if you have the HDD in a case, or keep it in an antistatic bag. And, I've had handled dozens of other HDDs just as carelessly as that fried one, and they are still working fine. So maybe I just had very bad luck with that one.

I guess the other way to kill a HDD is to hit it or drop it hard, but so far I've been unable to kill any HDD that way. They are pretty shock-resistant at least when power is off, and a few months ago I accidentally dropped my years old trusty 300GB LaCie USB hard drive to floor while it was powered on, and it is still working fully fine. Also, my 6 years old work laptop has received lots of abuse when it has traveled with me around the world, and its original internal HDD is still working like a champ.

Last year I found some ancient PATA hard drive from my cupboard, it had been sitting there unused for probably 15 years, if not more. I connected it to my a bit older PC, and it seemed to be fully fine. All the data was still there (all the compressed files I found there uncompressed successfully etc.), so I copied all the ancient data from there to another place.

I do that too, except for USB-powered external HDDs. I think not e.g. all 2.5." HDDs necessarily work with mere USB power. If I buy a case and the HDD together from a vendor, then they are guaranteeing that the HDD works fine with mere USB power.

But for other cases, I much prefer getting the HDD and case separately, especially because in case of problems, I can take out the HDD from the case without voiding the warranty.

If you can afford it, get a HDD that you can use just to store your games and put your installers on there.
If you're paranoid, and you can afford it, put them all on DVDs too! I have my very favourite games on disc and HDD, just in case! Additionally, I seem to recall Valve once saying that if they are ever going to discontinue Steam's servers they would first release a patch allowing people to play their games without having to login (I guess that's the ones that don't need some other form of DRM anyway).
There is a chance that this may apply only to their own games, though. I'll try and find the source to clear up.

But nonetheless, if you run Steam in "offline" mode, you can usually install games that have been saved using the Steam Backup feature. Therefore you can backup a lot of your Steam games to offline discs and such, too.

Yeah, some 2.5 inch HDDs want more power than you can draw from one USB port. (For USB 2.0, you can't draw more than 500 mA at 5V per port.) But that is true of many integrated externals too. That's why they come with the cables that have dual USB connectors.

You want to select low-power HDDs for this usage. The old Samsung Spinpoints were wonderful for it. Samsung selling out to Seagate was tragic.

definitely go for external HDDs (SSDs are way too expensive)

HDDs take very little space and their capacity can be huge, plus you can stack them, and if you use 1 or 2 TB ones you'll probably be alright for another couple of years :D also, if you only use them for backing up (no unnecessary connecting/disconnecting, moving around, throwing them onto a pile of supermagnets) your games should be alright, and also really fast to access, rename folders, add new patches and goodies, update installers etc. etc.

I wouldn't even think about optical discs :)

Optical discs are fine for photos, documents etc small stuff. I backup pretty much everything to an external HDD and in addition burn the small stuff on discs. Of course one has to burn new discs once in a while and not trust that the old ones still work.

I guess it all depends on 2 things:
1) How long do you pretend to keep those backups
2) How much are you willing to spend to have those files stored.
Possible 3) How valuable is the information you want to store.

Regarding 1, there are 3 possible solutions:
a) External HDD
b) DVD/CD/Blueray (optical media)
c) Tape Backup.

There might be others but those 3 would be the most common to use. I don't think you will go for c) since it is too expensive.

Regarding #2:
This is what is going to decide if you are going for a), b), or c).
Mainly, DVD/CD/blueray is the least expensive. Now, I would consider this the best option but you must take care of your media.
Then comes the HDD. HDD are a good option but since they are mechanical, they are destined to die, it is just a matter of when.
You said SSD, but since those drives have way less capacity than HDD, they could be even more expensive than Tape Backups.
Tape Backups are for companies. Those media are not meant to be read like an optical media or HDD, since they store information in a sequential way so it is slower to read them from, however, they offer the best option for storage (since you are not suppose to be reading and writing to them very often).

Anyway, if you ask me, I guess that it would be between an optical media or a HDD. However, remember that optical media tends to last more (if stored properly) than a HDD.

The above is IMHO.

In fact, I personally hesitate on backups. I previously linked some interesting ideas found in the web, and I have already dl every game I own, even those I am not currently playing.

But I intend to make optical backups though, because they won't be the only way to backup, I am still using HDDs and planning to use them in the future. But what does make me think about optical discs is aesthetics! :D
Lightscribe technology is nice but I think it is still a monochrome one, and I think that its durability is better than printable discs. I intend to make backups with printable discs, because they are "fancy" ^^ and fit more with printed manuals and disc cases, but I agree that HDDs are better for backups. So maybe are cases with slots for both optical and flash USB/SD cards a better solution? I don't know.

And concerning the case dimensions, I think that 22 mm-Width is better than the classical 14 mm, especially when there are many printable goodies. But it takes more place on the shelf... Grmbl.

The problem is that isn't so. Optical media are not anywhere as durable as HDD even with the best storage. No recordable optical media with any kind of satisfactory archival performance is to be had. Eastman and Taiyo Yuden made archival CD-R media a long time ago, but these were driven from the market by cheap crap from Taiwan and India, which is all you will find today.

Well consider this. I have no real way to control the temperature the storage device(s) would be in. I have an air conditioner in my bedroom where I would keep them and my home has heating, but obviously those aren't perfect methods for temperature control. I can guarantee that they would stay moisture, smoke, and physical damage free however.

So with that in mind, how long do you all think an HDD would last vs. DVD's?


Hell though, I might just do both.

Both is good. Both + cloud is even better.

DVDs are likely to deteriorate even under good conditions. If you're going to keep an archive of DVDs, you should copy them to new media regularly. HDDs are tolerant of anything short of really bad conditions (like smoke or condensing humidity). You can even get helium-filled hermetically sealed HDDs that will laugh at Martian conditions. (They're expensive.)

Never use "refurbished" HDDs.

"Quite many smaller laptops are nowadays sold without internal DVD-ROM drives. Then again you can still use external USB DVD drives with them. Heck there are still even external USB floppy drives."

Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

To OP:
If you're going the CD/DVD route, be sure to take care of the disk well and burn at the lowest speed. That way, you'll ensure that it's going to last a few years at least.