External hard drive reccomendations?

[chunkolini]

Bump
I confess to having no idea what any of that means.
A simple way of backing up my files that I can forget about will shut me up.

 

[rtbcomp]

Me neither. Goto PC World, buy an external USB drive and download Cobian. Simples.

 

[bump]

Hi Chunk,

A NAS unit is Network Attached Storage so multiple computers can read and write to it at the same time. Handy for backing up multiple machines.

RAID is Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. This has been the de-facto standard for data storage for years in industry. The process for a RAID 1 setup is that the contents of one drive are mirrored onto another drive, these are kept synchronised in case the servos in one of the drives fail or the platters become corrupted. Usually a monitoring program is used to test the disks and notify you of any issues as part of the NAS device.

It's looking at your data in terms of when the drives will fail, rather than if the drives will fail.

If you have an old PC floating about, take a look at Openfiler This can be an inexpensive way of getting a highly flexible backup system in place.

 

[rtbcomp]

All this fancy stuff is OK as long as the mains doesn't fail when it's running.

If you have a drive you can disconnect from the PC and the mains you are much safer. Best to have two in case the mains fails whilst you're doing a backup.

I use a USB Hard drive for routine backups and a USB stick to transfer vital files to my laptop. That way I have three copies of the most important stuff. Furthermore those files run under Portable Apps so if needs be I can plug the USB stick into someone else's computer and carry on from my last backup.

 

[Robotstar5]

If you can, I would suggest going for a NAS unit with multiple drives. This allows you to configure them as a RAID array which covers you in the event of a single drive failure. I use RAID 1 (mirrored) on the drives in my NAS server.

Sounds similar to what I use NAS drive I suppose I'll have to power it from a UPS to cover RTB's mains failure scenario now

 

[mike os]

if you know what you are doing then nas raid is OK, if you dont then a simple USB drive or 2 with almost any backup software will do the job.

Personally I use acronis true image to run multiple backups, one sheduled to a network drive and the other to a USB drive using a "constant backup" or "Mirror" that automatically backs up files to the usb drive as they change

for real world storage, unless you have a lot of files I would not bother going over 1Tb, I have something like 15 years buisiness records, 25k large image files ( about 8Mb each, pre process) and heading for 10k mp3 tracks and still use less than 500gb uncompressed

So decent brand usb drive 500-1000mb, ... many come with some sort of backup software that will do what you want,.

 

[mike os]

I would add that most cheap NAS are really a bit crap, slow and anoying for large files, usb is far faster and simpler for a non techie person.

( decent NAS start at a few hundred without drives)

 

[Robotstar5]

for real world storage, unless you have a lot of files I would not bother going over 1Tb, I have something like 15 years buisiness records, 25k large image files ( about 8Mb each, pre process) and heading for 10k mp3 tracks and still use less than 500gb uncompressed

I'd second that, the only reason I bought 1TB drives was they were not much dearer than smaller ones, certainly don't need anything bigger for home use.

 

[droopsnoot]

Always remember that, like many other things now, drives are made down to a price. As someone mentioned earlier, 1Tb drives are available retail around £30, so out of that there's some profit for the retailer, their distributor / importer, the manufacturer, the cost of shipping from the Far East, so keep that in mind when entrusting your data to them.

Keep copies on more than one drive, make use of internet file hosting sites (MS Skydrive for example gives you 25Gb of on-line storage for free, lots of photo hosting sites are around, your broadband connection probably also has some storage space on a server, Google offers it) so don't skimp on how many copies of important stuff you keep. Just keeping stuff on an external HDD is no safer (in terms of corruption and data loss) than keeping it on the internal drive - it's just easier to make it physically secure by unplugging it and hiding it.

And my preference is to go for a portable drive as it will be USB-powered (as long as your PC can power it) rather than needing a separate brick PSU. It's a real pain in the neck once you've had to carry it to work and back a few times. Only advantage of the powered ones is that you tend to get larger capacities earlier than with portables, as the capacity increases start at 3.5" (which needs external power) then move down to 2.5" (which does not) as the technique is refined.

 

[graffian]

Thats cheap !! Is it a stand alone unit ? Where from ?

It was actually £36 with vat, but delivery was free.
It's a spinpoint F3 drive, they don't list it anymore, however it was a few
pence more expensive than a WD10EARS 1TB caviar green drive, which is £71.87 today!

Hard drives have obviously gone up since September.

 

[Robotstar5]

Hard drives have obviously gone up since September.

Your right, I just checked the ones I bought, they've nearly doubled in price

 

[mike os]

result of manufacturing issues in the far east last autumn

flooding in thailand iirc

 

[dannyp]

i got a 1Tb external usb drive from maplin because it was on offer.

plugged it into the wifi router and use it as a NAS works well for me that dose. if i need to shunt LOADS of data i can just pick it up and plug it straight into the laptop but most of the time its optimal as nas

 

[alanrob]

worth considering is a wireless external hard drive, the nice thinkg about them is you can stick them out of the way somewhere.

That way if someone nicks your pc you have still got your data.

A lot of drives come with backup software, some of them give you realtime backups so everytime you save your data it goes to the hard drive too.

some bundles of antivirus software such as norton or kaspersky pure also come with some online space for you to backup your important data to.

 

[chunkolini]

Robotstar and Tigler
You have made me sad.
I just shelled out of my own pocket for hard drive thingy.
RTB compo you have cheered me up, your bit was free.
I have been riding uncovered by back up for about three years.
Not clever.

many thanks, Chunko'.

 

[pete3000]

Don't overlook the good old muti-DVD writer. The benefits, cheap external storage. Once you have saved and finalised the disks you can write the date and contents on with a marker pen and be safe in the knowledge the cd/dvd can't get any more viruses or be deleted. If you are worried about losing it or damaging it write a second copy for another 20p for 4.7gb.

Good for archiving work or data for occasional use.
No good for lots of changes or massive storage or transfer speeds.

Working in IT have learned from experience always have two copies of everything, but never in the same place. Hard drives and flash disks have their place in day to day use, but have you investigated the price of proper data recovery, ie paying for relying on technology. You'd be surprised how often disks fail without warning especially usb drives.

Pete

 

[chunkolini]

Hmm
Just tried backing it up using Windows backup.
No idea what it did so I am going to download the Cobian thingy.
Just tried that and no idea what it is doing.

 

[tigler]

If you click my computer from the windows start menu, then look for expansion drive, that is your external HD, click that and the files that have been added to the drive will be listed.

 

[chunkolini]

Update
Tried to set it up this morning and it is not showing up on 'My Computer' and I am getting a message saying 'USB device has malfunctioned Windows does not recognise it'
Called the suppliers and they have said send it back.