Community Newsletter: Q&A: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data
- 8/8/08 10:24 AM
It's a Tad More Expensive
by Charliec58 - 8/1/08 8:20 PM In reply to: External Hard Drives are not the best backup! by MarkFlax
Switch to a Mac, run 10.5.X, get an external hard drive and use Time Machine! You can endlessly debate everything else, and waste and incredible amount of time and energy.
Mac? Maybe.
by RippyT - 8/1/08 8:28 PM In reply to: It's a Tad More Expensive by Charliec58I'm one disgruntled Windows user who has seriously considered getting a Mac when it's time for a new computer. A friend of mine has one and really likes the fact that it has an on-line backup feature. Is that "Time Machine" or something else?
Only one thing makes me hesitant in getting a Mac: They don't appear to be expandable like most PCs are.
NOT expensive PLUS Expandable
by Thweed - 8/1/08 9:21 PM In reply to: Mac? Maybe. by RippyTI run an iMac. It is a desktop model, but I have lugged it when necessary. I have both a Maxtor (most of my files) and a backup (using Time Machine) on a Western Digital. Both drives are on Firewire.
I also have a printer, a separate scanner (for slides) and an old Zip drive (100Mg). What is this "Not Expandable"???
I also run my Simply Accounting on this same iMac using Bootcamp and Windows XP.
I have been using Macs for about 20 years and had 1 drive fail on me about 12 years ago.
Bye-the-bye . . . anyone interested in a 1200 baud external modem?? lol
Keep writing!!!
Jake
Internal expandablity?
by RippyT - 8/1/08 9:59 PM In reply to: NOT expensive PLUS Expandable by ThweedExpandable in the sense that I can add new hardware, drives, memory, circuit cards, ports, etc. internally?
For example, I prefer e-SATA to Firewire or USB when it comes to plugging in my external drives. My PC didn't come with an e-SATA port, but I was able to buy and install one myself.
Do the new Macs come with e-SATA ports, and if not, could I install one like I did with my PC?
Oh, and I've got an old 1200 bps Commodore modem if anyone's interested. Heh heh.
Updating and Backup - Mac
by lloyd1981 - 8/2/08 1:54 AM In reply to: Internal expandablity? by RippyTExcluding the MacBook Air, you can add internal cards or external devices. SATA is not built in. With Mac, there is no need to mess with the Motherboard.
Only drive to fail: WD. I always go with Seagate for raw drives and I use LaCie and Newer Technologies for external drives for book and Seagate for tower. I write to different drives on alternate nights and burn a sequential set of DL DVDs about once a month using Toast's "bridge" multi-disc burning.
No sympathy at all for anyone who fails to back up.
A hard drive is a hard drive
by verdeaqua - 8/2/08 4:40 AM In reply to: NOT expensive PLUS Expandable by ThweedIf you are thinking about getting a mac because your windows based hard drive crashed think again. ALL had drives can fail...ANYTIME. It doesn't matter which computer you use. Over the last twenty years I have had 4 or 5 HD's fail in PC's and in the last three I have had 2 fail in macs and macbooks. The only answer is to back and back the back up. Of course you can help by handling laptops with a little more care than I see most people use.
BTW - I think apples onlinie back of service is great, but again, that shouldn't be the reason to switch since there are backup services for PC's as well.
RJ
mac convert
by briegull - 8/2/08 5:46 AM In reply to: Mac? Maybe. by RippyTI'd used macs (and supported them) for years at work but when I retired I upgraded my home PC and kept using it and its successor for ten years, while continuing to do consulting and free-lancing. Finally I decided I'd run that particular game into the ground, needed a new computer, and got a macbook pro last Christmas, hitching it up to the flat-screen monitor and wireless mouse and keyboard I already had. I haven't regretted it.
I use both Time Machine, which is great, on a 250G external hard drive, and another hard drive onto which I back projects, images, etc, as I'm through with them.
I still run Photoshop 7 and Quicken on the PC side, with Fusion, and am perfectly happy with that.
As far as upgrades: I have always operated on the old maxim, you can never have too much storage space or too much ram. You CAN upgrade ram, of course, but a neat thing about Leopard is that you can have a whole bunch of apps open without them taking up much ram at all; it handles the memory well.
That's not the problem
by neutrality_is_bliss - 8/1/08 9:05 PM In reply to: It's a Tad More Expensive by Charliec58This time machine still used the external hard drive which is the main issue in this thread. If that hard drive fails, time machine isn't going to save you.
Would I need 2 external drives to be safe
by Mira Belle - 8/2/08 5:30 AM In reply to: It's a Tad More Expensive by Charliec58I use Time Machine and I love it -- I had a Maxtor One Touch IV Plus 500 GB which was working great for 8 months until one day I heard it making some funny noises -- Well, a day later, it died. I don't know what would be best for a redundant back-up on Leopard other than a second drive and plugging it in every week or so? I am now waiting for Seagate to send a replacement and am thinking I should get another external since right now I've got no backup -- stupid, I know, but I should have time to do something this weekend.
Yes - 2 hard drives is ideal
by husky91 - 8/2/08 9:43 AM In reply to: Would I need 2 external drives to be safe by Mira BelleI think you need two hard drives. I bought two Western Digital Home Edition 1 TB drives. I use one for daily backups using the included software. It's not the greatest. I find it annoying that it instantly backs up a file as soon as I put it there unless I suspend it but it's fine. I mirror that hard drive once a month and keep it at work. It's essentially my "off site" storage. Each month, I bring the offsite drive home, create an updated mirror and bring it offsite again.
It seems like overkill but what do you do in the event of a fire? In that scenario, I only lose, at most, one month of data (unless there's a fire on the day that I have the offsite drive at home!).
As for hard drive brands, I don't think you can go wrong. Obviously people have a bias against any drive that has failed. The bottom line is that they will all fail eventually.
I wondered when the Mac guy would show up...
by bretth69 - 8/2/08 10:08 AM In reply to: It's a Tad More Expensive by Charliec58A simple Linux server running Samba with RAID 1 mirrored drives would be a "tad more expensive" option, (and my own solution) but not very practical for the majority of people who use Windows computers.
You can configure many new computers to use RAID 1 arrays in the BIOS. A combination of RAID 1 and an external drive would probably be more practical than trying to switch to a Mac and an external hard drive. After all, a Mac external hard drive will fail just as surely as a Windows one would!
For the record, I think OS X is an awesome operating system. Too bad it only runs on Mac hardware!
Using external hard drive as primary drive backup
by lt2211 - 8/1/08 10:34 PM In reply to: External Hard Drives are not the best backup! by MarkFlax
I have a Seagate 320 GIG SATA drive as primary and a Cavalry 500 GB ESATA drive as backup. Every two weeks I use the provided Seagate software to completely backup the primary drive. A few weeks back a bad virus really messed up the primary drive. I used the CD I had made with the Seagate software to access the ESATA drive. Then restored the primary drive using a recent saved copy on the external drive. It worked perfectly. I don't buy the notion that you can't safely backup the entire internal drive on the external drive.
Back-ups
by tom-poes - 8/2/08 1:07 AM In reply to: External Hard Drives are not the best backup! by MarkFlax
To my idea it is highly improbable that both the internal hard disk and the external hard disk (with the back-up in it) brake down (bearly) at the same time. So a back-up on an external hard disk is rather dafe. The more as DVD's and CD-ROM's also do not have an eternal life.
Natural catastrophes
by almitchell44 - 8/2/08 1:25 AM In reply to: Back-ups by tom-poesWe should not forget that other things can cause the loss of both the internal and the backup drive, such as a flood, tornado, hurricane, fire, theft, vandalism, etc. Unless you physically relocate your backup device to another safe location after each backup, you still risk loss of everything.
Yes, that's why you need two backups
by husky91 - 8/2/08 10:12 AM In reply to: Natural catastrophes by almitchell44I'd much rather spend $400 on 2 1TB external hard drives than the same amount on some sort of RAID solution.
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