pslewis

Seen them as big as 750Gb - which is MASSIVE!!! and £70 too!

What do I look for?

I want it to back-up photos and music mainly.

Do I have to FORMAT it for any particular file system?

I am running a PC with XP and a partitoned 80Gb Hard Drive ....

Will it simply be seen by XP as a HD - and allow drag'n'drop?

Any drawbacks? Warnings? Good Makes? Bad Makes?

I know not to buy from CURRYS, DIXONS or PCWorld - where is the best/cheapest place?

Do I need/want a 750Gb? Could I live with a much cheaper 120Gb?

All help, tips and hints appreciated

douglasb

Pete - I'm guessing that this HD uses a USB connection. While the storage space is amazing and the price may be low, access times on a USB disk will always be slower than an internal drive. This may not matter to you, but it's something to be aware of.

Dabs.com and ebuyer.com are worth a look for low prices.

Doug

bootsy

i got a hard drive caddy so i can put in what ever size i wont.the caddy was £20 from pc world

T5OLF

iTrader: (4)

You have a choice of 2, a standard drive that is powered or a laptop drive that just plugs into a usb port and needs no external power supply. You just plug them in to your usb and go to my computer and it will be there. You can drag and drop/copy and paste etc.

TrustedReviews Shopping | LaCie Porsche Design External 500GB Hard Drive

pslewis

Doug Thanks for your reply - yes, it will use a USB .. I have now installed a 2.0 Card so its a bit quicker ..... I guess that the first big download will take time, but then the weekly back-up will take a few minutes?

How do others know what they have backed-up and what they haven't? How do you seperate? Move everything backed-up into a backed-up folder? I'm thinking of my music collection, say, how do I know which are new additions that week?

pslewis

Interesting

Vampire

OcUK have a good deal on a 500Gb USB drive at the moment. LaCie Black 500GB USB2.0 External Hard Drive (301285)

Though IMO I'd get one you can connect via Firewire or better yet via a home network. Either are faster than USB. For small files USB is fine, but even trying to transfer say 40Gb in one go takes bloody ages.

pslewis

Nice ............... is 8Mb Cashe good?

Steve vRS

Make sure you format the drive as NTFS as the one I bought a year ago was FAT format (I think) which limited the size of file it could hold. Or something like that. It was all far too GEEK for me so a friend sorted it for me.

Steve

pslewis

Excellent ....... 16MB Cache Buffer better than 8Mb I take it?

pslewis

I read that somewhere .... takes a few minutes to do that, but I don't know how!!

MJW

The one in the post above that is better - 16Mb cache, and its not a bad price.
Most drives come already formatted so its just a case of plugging it in, and dragging and dropping your files onto it. Some come with backup software as well.

T5OLF

iTrader: (4)

What you is a networked attached drive.
Find External Network 2TB Gibagit NAS Hard Drive with RAID on eBay within, Internal External Hard Drives, Drives Storage, Computing (end time 14-Nov-07 19:50:35 GMT)

This should give you enough space.

douglasb

Pete - USB 2.0 is certainly faster than the original USB but it still isn't nearly as fast as an internal disk. If you're just going to use the disk for backups that probably isn't too important.

As you say, an initial backup may take some time but future backups should be quicker. Your backup software should allow you to do "total" backups or "incremental" backups. As the names suggest, a total backup will copy everything. The backup software stores a record of which files it backed up and when so an incremental backup only copies files which either didn't exist at the last backup or where the filename existed but the timestamp on the file says that the file has been modified since the last backup.

To answer your inital questions:-

Agree with the others that formatting as NTFS is best if you can do it.

It will be seen by XP as another hard drive; you don't need to do anything. Therefore you can ignore the fact that it's an external drive - it's just a disk drive as far as XP is concerned.

If you're just going to use it to back up an 80GB drive then 750GB is overkill; you only need a maximum of 80GB to back up 80GB. If you're going to use the other 670GB for "normal" use, please bear in mind my comments about USB speed.

Doug

OllyK

My Computer, right click, format.
Choose NTFS and quick format, it'll take less than a minute.

Go for the biggest you can get your hands on. I have 1.2TB on my desk top and still have to shunt stuff off to the servers at home.

pslewis

Cheers all .... although I have an 80Gb HD Internal I may want to eventually back-up much more in the form of photos and music.

Are these thing reliable? ie. should I also back-up onto CD as I do now? Or is that just overkill?

Good to know that they come with some back-up software.

Is it worth backing everything up on it? Taking a direct copy of my main drive, in case anything goes wrong and I can simply replace the image? Is it called an image? Including the OS?

David Lock

If you are using it as back-up then to state the obvious it really needs to be kept away from your main PC. It's all too easy to have it sitting on top of the case for months and a fire or theft and you have lost all.

They are so cheap now I'd get a couple and keep key stuff like your Vera Lynn tracks on one and store it in Matron's safe dl

pslewis

Good idea ..... maybe get a 500Gb and store away safe somewhere - bring it to the pC when I want the weekly back-up

unclebuck

Interesting..... Nice ............... Excellent ....... Good idea .....

pslewis

Here he comes, crawled out from his stone .....

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

Why do I get the feeling when reading this he already knows most of the answers to his questions

Still, its an interesting topic, and will be of use to other people

1) unless you are using eSATA the speed of your drive is irrelevant. All drives will be faster than the USB 2.0 connection you are going to use. Do make sure you are using USB 2.0 and not USB 1.1. If you only have the original version of USB you need to upgrade. Google the terms if you are uncertain of what they mean.
2) 2.5" drives (laptop size) draw their power from the USB interface, and therefore do not require a bulky power supply. These drives are almost as portable as USB memory sticks.
3) 2.5" drives are available only in small sizes, and cost more. If you can afford it and can get one big enough they are generally the best option
4) NAS drives are great, but they are not an offline backup. Get a nasty virus and anything that is connected can possibly be wiped.
5) Hard drives are better than CDs.
6) Imaging is great, but takes up a lot of space. A good program is Acronis True Image 11
7) Normal backups are well handled by Second Copy.
8) Read the manuals of the backup software and fully understand what they offer. Then play with the settings and test what you have created. The only thing worse than not having a backup, is relying on a backup you think you have created but does not really exist.
9) How much space will you need? Decide what you want to do, and then work it out If you want two copies of your data, it takes twice as much space

David Lock

Are CDs reliable for long term back-up? I need to keep copies of business and some personal files away from my office. Not particularly large files but I do need them safe so I can get to them if needed? Much easier to take away and hide than an actual drive.

How good and reliable are these little plug-in memory things? What storage capacity are they now?

Thanks. This post from someone who remembers trying to use 5 1/4 inch floppies to back-up 240 kb??? What were they? When a floppy was a floppy!! dl

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

No media is 100% reliable. It does not matter what it is, there is always a chance that it is going to fail. Therefore, the best option if something is really important is to keep more than one copy of it. 2 sets of CDs, 2 sets of tapes or whatever (did I just say tapes ). 2.5" Hard drives are not much bigger than a CD with its case. A couple of these can be had for £100. They will be fast and reliable. All the files stored on the drives could be encrypted just in case someone found your stuff.

One way to do the backups would be to alternate which drive you took to work. Therefore one drive would be at home, one with you, and your files at work. Thats three copies of your stuff in existence (although some maybe just slightly out of date). It also means that all your backups of your data are never in the same location (think fire etc).

Those USB pen drives are also good.

Leslie

Its very handy in all those ways and it can also be used to store information that you would prefer to keep secret. You dont have to keep it switched on, only power it up when you need it. Since it would then not run for as long a time as the rest of your computer it should remain reliable for much longer.

Les

GazTheHat

Western Digital 750gb on Amazon for £79.

That should just about store all your p0rn

Vampire

I was planning to get something like this. D-Link DNS-323 2-Bay NAS Enclosure

Basically a NAS 2 bay enclosure, which you can run with 1 or 2 drives fitted, if you have two fitted you can run in RAID0 or 1. I was going to go for 2x 500Gb drives or similar, mirrored with RAID1.

Really it would just be convenience for me though, I can back up all my critical docs on a 2Gb memory stick, and all my photo's on a 40Gb USB HDD (just!).

I'm not sure if one exists, but I'd really like an enclosure like the one above that can be connected with USB/Firewire AND NAS, for maximum flexibility.

G00ner

Mate, did you read those reviews?

I'm gonna bite the bullet at some stage and buy a Blueray burner and back up that way, I've had 3 hardrives fail over the years, don't want to lose it all again.