Community Newsletter: Q&A: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data
- 8/8/08 10:24 AM
External hard drives
by Yeoville - 7/25/08 11:33 PM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
There are many USB-connected drives available today and the price is dropping rapidly, now less than $1 per 4Gb and capacities now at 2Tb. The big names are all in the market: Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, LaCie and Samsung (in Australia). LaCie offers the longest warranty here (3 yrs vs 1 year for the others). The drives are easily connected as they are recognised when you plug in on WinXP SP2 and later. As for backup and sync, the drives I have seen do not come with software, but there are lots of products available to do that.
answer for a 300 g
by jingles978 - 7/25/08 11:58 PM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
it may take only 250
300g system on your pc
by jingles978 - 7/26/08 4:49 AM In reply to: answer for a 300 g by jingles978hi"jingles978.you can go to microsoft windows n check your system for what is missing for it to run right,n to dell.com test your machine..and maybe it it's your memory that isn't large enough to handle 300g hard drive..maybe you need a lesser..jingles978
External hard drives to backup data
by Fatboy71 - 7/26/08 12:18 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
For my backing up purposes I purchased a Samsung 500GB hard drive and an enclosure/caddie to house it in, you can buy ready made up external hard drives but in my experience I prefer to make my own, this way you have more control as to what brand/size of drive to use. I choose Samsung as they got excellent reviews. I will provide some links below.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=14
I chose an enclosure/caddie that had both ESATA (this is the same as SATA, but in an external form hence the E, i.e. the connection is on the back of the PC) and also has USB 2, by using the ESATA connection the transfers and backups I do are MUCH FASTER. For example, I used to do a 100 GB backup with my old ready made up USB 2 external hard drive and this would take 38 minutes, I do the same 100 GB backup using the ESATA connection and this takes 13 minutes, so as you can see it is much faster.
With the caddie/enclosure I got you get what is called a ESATA bracket, this basically plugs onto a spare SATA port on the computer's motherboard and the cable is run to the back of the computer and the plate attaches to the back, its basically the same size plate as you get on a graphics card where the connections are.
This a link to the enclosure I got:
http://tinyurl.com/678wvo
These are the other enclosures available:
http://tinyurl.com/62lg6n
external storage
by dcedavid - 7/26/08 12:50 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
DO NOT go for the WD world book networking hd, the software with it has a lot of people infuriated including myself. The password on mine got corrupted and 75% of a terabite hard drive, of information is inaccessible (unless you know otherwise).Basic is Best.
Suggest external hard drive solution
by TJ Bear - 7/26/08 12:55 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Seagate. Period
Warning if you buy a Seagate or Maxtor HD
by mycoachjason - 8/2/08 1:44 AM In reply to: Suggest external hard drive solution by TJ BearSeagate and Maxtor HDs come with a backup program called Memeo. My experience with it was terrible! It claims to work in the background with minimal interference with the speed of other functions on the computer. I believe it even says that it automatically idles when other programs need the computer power. My experience is that when it was running, which was most of the time, it drained up to 80% of the computer's resources. (I am running a Sony 2 Ghz with 2GB of RAM)
It also ads a 2kb file next to every file on the computer which I guess is to track changes. Although that is not a lot of wasted HD space it is a lot of clutter.
Memeo also was directly responsible for corrupting my C drive operating system and I had to do a reinstall of it. Seagate RMA'ed that HD. I didn't use their losey Memeo with the new backup drive and I have not had any problems since.
Jason
external harddrive
by serie3 - 7/26/08 12:58 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi!
I use a Western Digital MyBook with 250G for these purposes. It is connected via USB 2.0. No need for configuration etc., just plugged it in and there it was. Starting and shutting down with XP.
The Backup Software is configurated to use this HD before shutting down the pc.
regards
thomas
External Hard Drive. What I got.
by Tiggersspring - 7/26/08 2:06 AM In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I purchased the "Maxtor" 400gb external hard drive that connects through the USB and comes with it's own power supply, and have fount it to be reliable and fast enough for all my needs, Music, pictures files etc. There are loads of different external drives that are on the market that I can't comment on but I do recommend the Maxtor.
External Hard Drives are not the best backup!
by MarkFlax - 7/26/08 2:47 AM
In reply to: External hard-drive buying advice and backing up data by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Whilst there is plenty of good advice here, I would suggest caution if you intend only to use a hard drive, (external or additional internal), for backing up.
The reason you backup data is two-fold.
1] Loss of data due to a system crash, virus damage, or some other sort of system corruption, and
2] Loss of data because the primary hard disk has failed.
That 2nd one is a killer. All data is lost and all too often irretrievable. If the hard disk is divided into two or more partitions, then it has all gone. The sad fact is that hard drives do break, and when they do, it is usually catastrophic. This applies to any hard drives, whether internal or external, (USB).
So, whilst using an external hard drive to temporarily backup your 'cannot afford to lose' data is perfectly acceptable, please remember that this method should not be your primary backup. You should also look into backing up that data onto Cd and/or DVD.
Mark
CD is the failsafe
by gifro10 - 8/1/08 7:31 PM In reply to: External Hard Drives are not the best backup! by MarkFlax
I couldn't agree more with the post that the external drive shouldn't be your ONLY backup. I bought a Western Digital 500GB external last year and 8 months later.... started my computer up and all of a sudden Windows said it needed to scan my external and there were missing sectors, corrupted sectors, etc. Long story short, lost everything after letting Windows "attempt to fix it." I've had SD cards go randomly corrupt on me as well... learned the very valuable lesson - BACKUP ONTO CD!
That's my two cents. It's great for temporary storage or for files I can "afford to lose" but that's all I'll use it for, even though it came with great "one step" backup functionality.
Hard disc backup, CD/DVD better for critical items
by ricky_d15 - 8/2/08 1:17 AM In reply to: CD is the failsafe by gifro10Couldn't agree more. I too bought a Western Digital 250GB Book external hard drive. It too dies literally on the day the guarantee ran out and I had used it once a month to back up the computer hard disc. Very frustrating and certainly wouldn't intentionally buy WD hard drive again. DVD much more reliable for items such as photos and critical data in my opinion.
i disagree
by abhimanyu.mukherji - 8/2/08 2:08 AM In reply to: Hard disc backup, CD/DVD better for critical items by ricky_d15CD/DVD are the most fragile media of all. They are more prone to dust and scratches. Also using them over n over does leave a few scars which means that over a period of time they would give up. In comparison the flash drives are not at all susceptible to these factors. What you need to make sure is that you are ejecting the drives properly after usage. If not it does put some strain on these.
Yes. Discs are a pain
by Pazzer1 - 8/2/08 2:52 AM In reply to: i disagree by abhimanyu.mukherjiHi Guys. Great to hear all your experiences. I too think discs are vulnerable & have been outgrown by the volumes of data we all want to keep, these days. Hard drives are o.k. 'till cheap reliable high capacity solid state storage becomes available. But, you do need duplicate external drives.
I run a Buffalo RAID NAS with Memeo backup and sync, but I also have weekly offline mirrors Folderclone'd onto older USB'd external drives. One each for Videos, Pictures, Data and Music. It's not quite like the triple diversity of aircraft control systems but I still sleep pretty well.
Extenuating circumstances.
by hung0702 - 8/2/08 10:15 AM In reply to: Yes. Discs are a pain by Pazzer1I can see how discs would be a pain if you have network RAID and several external HDDs already backing up your data. Still, your disks could one day experience mechanical failures, whereas DVDs are only open to chemical degradation (I know, not a great alternative). It's best to have one disk backup solution and one disc backup solution. In your case, since you already have a network backup and external HDD backups (good call, since NAS experiences so much stress), I'd recommend you burn some DVDs. It's cheap and you go a little out of your way, but it's definitely safer.
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