Back up discs

[malcolm]

I'm looking for another hard drive disc that I can run in an enclosure (rather than one that is built as an external hard drive as there's less that can be done with those when they go wrong).

Any recommendations for disc type or manufacturers? Or enclosures. Not too expensive - It won't be used all that often and data will be duplicated elsewhere. I have another backup disc for every day use, but I've been deleting things from my PC to make space, so that backup is the only copy of some things.

 

[madkayaker]

i got an ide enclosure off ebay for £30 with a 40gig hard drive. As for makes i think they are all the same

 

[Omniata]

You can get HD enclosures from Maplin that take std 3.5" hard disk drives, pretty cheap, there's one that's both USB and SATA compatible...

Think the last one I got was an "Integra" brand and cost about £20, just stuck an old 80GB drive in it and it worked great!!

As far as drives go and if you can afford to spend a little more I'd got for a "Western Digital" branded drive, if you can find one easily you should be able to get a large one for less than £100 these days

 

[GeorgeKelley]

At last, something that I feel qualified to comment on! ( being in the computer support business since 1980 )

IF you are keen to go down the self assembly route make sure that the enclosure you buy has a cooling fan incorporated in it, as hard drives run hot when tightly enclosed, and the bearings for the platters can seize up - with disasterous data consequences. This is less important if the drive is only switched on to back up data to it, or to retrieve data from it, but I can guarantee that you will forget about it sometime and that WILL shorten the life of the HDD. That's the reason that computer servers in most countries are in climate controlled rooms ( air-con etc )

Most hard drives are the product of a couple of far east factories anyway, and are just labelled up with the manufacturers label at the end of the production line - Seagate, Maxtor and Fujitsu would be my choice - steer clear of Western Digital.

Another solution is to buy one ready cased from PCWorld, 750gb is around £80 - quite a bargain IMO
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/st...ProductList&category_oid=-32889&show_all=true
George

 

[shenion]

Seagate, Maxtor and Fujitsu would be my choice - steer clear of Western Digital.

Agreed

Yes, where I used to work, we used WD drives. These were not low-end drives. This was a real-time system that needed reliable disk response times.

They were fast when new but dirt slow after a year. Had to low-level format them and then it lasted a while before getting slow again. This was not file system issues, just 15 seconds to read a few sectors.

Called them for tech support. Their response was the drive has no temp sensor so it did not seek properly as temps changed. WD said adding a temp sensor would add $1 to the drive, not worth it in their opinion.

It became obvious they only cared about price. Performance and reliability be dammed.

Changed to IBM, Seagate, Maxtor drives; no more problems.

I have had 2 PC with WD drives, they both failed within a year.

 

[malcolm]

At last, something that I feel qualified to comment on! ( being in the computer support business since 1980 )

Since 1980? Don't suppose you'd know how to fix my 1984 Genrad - Noisy bearings in the hard drive, no source of new drives, and no way of backing up the disc - funny format with blocks and the like.

Thanks for the advice - I'd wondered about a fan, as my eBay cheapie enclosure doesn't have one.

I've worried about the ready cased hard drives. We had about 6 of them at work and they broke after a year. I think it was the interface that broke rather than the disc, but no way to recover the data. I suppose it doesn't matter so much if I keep 2 of them.

On a similar subject - are there any useful backup functions in XP, or cheap programs? I've been doing mine manually so they aren't as frequent as they might be.

 

[GeorgeKelley]

Hi Malcolm

Short of taking the drive apart and using a hypodermic to inject a little light oil into the bearings, I think you are on your own. I have never even SEEN one of those old General Radio boxes - all too specialised for me

you MAY be able to format a new ( ish ) drive ( maybe 40gb or thereabouts ) with a low level format utility to give you the correct number of data blocks, sectors and heads you need ( you will lose most of the space though as those old machines had maybe 5mb as the maximum size HDD )

G

 

[GeorgeKelley]

Use this - very basic but it works ( after a fashion, it IS Microsoft, after all ) if you are using XP Pro
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320820

If you are using XP Home and you have the Microsoft XP Disc, and not just a recovery disc, the backup utility is not installed, but is in a folder on the disc called valueadd

Apart from that there are loads of cheapo/freeware/shareware proggies out there - Acronis is good, but a bit pricey

G

 

[R Kraft]

So it is a MFM drive,or SCSI ?
Does it give CRC errors, or is the speed not regulating properly ?
I've got some old type working drives, is it 5 1/4 or 8".
Robert

Since 1980? Don't suppose you'd know how to fix my 1984 Genrad - Noisy bearings in the hard drive, no source of new drives, and no way of backing up the disc - funny format with blocks and the like.

Thanks for the advice - I'd wondered about a fan, as my eBay cheapie enclosure doesn't have one.

I've worried about the ready cased hard drives. We had about 6 of them at work and they broke after a year. I think it was the interface that broke rather than the disc, but no way to recover the data. I suppose it doesn't matter so much if I keep 2 of them.

On a similar subject - are there any useful backup functions in XP, or cheap programs? I've been doing mine manually so they aren't as frequent as they might be.

 

[bill_gj]

Hmmm.....I had two Fujitsu drives die on me. Very inconvenient.
Seagate and Maxtor now.

 

[malcolm]

So it is a MFM drive,or SCSI ?
Does it give CRC errors, or is the speed not regulating properly ?
I've got some old type working drives, is it 5 1/4 or 8".
Robert

I've no idea what it is. It's 150mm wide, 85mm high, and 200mm long, so probably 5 1/4 inch. It has IBM written on the front. It generally takes a few tries to boot so there might be errors on there. Here are some pics. I couldn't find a 3/32 allen key so haven't removed it.

 

[Robotstar5]

I use a "Sarotech HardBox" from Morgan computers, they only seem to have this one in at present, got an IBM HDD in it at the moment, been working OK for a couple of years.

 

[chriskelland]

Not wanting to be called a cheapskate, but, got a 160g Maxstore from Tesco for £35 - 40 can't quite remember. Just a usb lead, no setting up. I use it with both the desk top and laptop. I think they do a 300g now, not sure of price.

Chris.

 

[zardoz]

Can someone explain the difference between an external h/d and an enclosure h/d ?

 

[madkayaker]

external is a purpose built unit. enclosure is a box to put normal hard drive in

 

[stucktoweld]

Try these guys
http://www.tekheads.co.uk
good price quick delivery
suggest you keep it simple and stick with maxtor or segate (WD and Fujitsu are crap)
also good back up program is paragon HD (Pm for a link)

 

[chriskelland]

As I understand it an enclosure hard drive is a standard h/d fitted in an enclosure with additional electronice that allow it to be usb compatible.

An external h/d is a complete unit ready to plug & play. These are usually very small, the enclosure h/d can sometimes be quite big by comparison.

Chris.

 

[HasBean]

I've had a couple of enclosures form HERE , just used drives I had lying about.
Agree about WD drives but recently I've had a load of Maxtor ones pop their clogs too

 

[R Kraft]

It looks like an MFM drive, from that era, I can't remember what the cord on an RLL drive looked like, it could be between 10-80mb.
An ST225 was a common size from Seagate (20mb).
If you get it out of the machine , the tag on the other side should give an ID number.
You might find another on ebay.

You may to low level format the new one, .

Can the machine run DOS ?
You may find a program that will give the current settings info.
Take the info I give with a grain of salt,its been a lot of years.
Robert

 

[bill_gj]

Have a look at Display Electronics (http://www.distel.co.uk) - thye stock a lot of old drives.
I put MFM into their Search box and it came up with this: http://www.distel.co.uk/catFrame.htm
and there's more on the 'next' tab on that page.