External hard drive reccomendations?

[chunkolini]

For far too long I have not had any back up on my PC.
Just been looking at external hard drives on Amazon. The variety has left me baffled.
I am after a simple thing that I can plug in via USB and have automatically backup my data, eg photo's, documents etc etc. nothing fancy or pants, just something I can forget about.
Any reccomendations. Cheapish is preferred.
Our PC runs windows 7, and I would like it to do the backup thingy automatically.

 

[tigler]

Not sure how you would configure it to back-up automatically, I just save all my files regardless to my external HD now, keep almost nothing on the laptop HD. If I need a file or files on it when I take it anywhere I just click and drag them from the external, then delete them when I've finished.
I use a Seagate 1TB unit that was on an ebay special deal for £59.95 about a year ago. Even now it's difficult to get 1TB for that. It's been faultless.

 

[rtbcomp]

I use a USB drive and Cobian backup for my data. This can be scheduled, you can define which file/folders you want to save. It will do a like for like copy so the files & folders you save are backed up exactly as they appear on your working drive, no compression no massive backup files. This means all you have to do to restore is a simple drag & drop.

Cobian will backup to a drive's label rather than its logical drive letter, this is particularly useful with USB drives as you don't always know what drive letter they're going to appear as when you plug it in.

I'm not keen on using an external drive as my main drive, the whole purpose of backing up is to have a copy of your data.

 

[chunkolini]

I am just looking for something to have sat at ome, dont need it to be protable.
I would expect it to live plugged into the main PC and just quietly keep a copy of everything.

 

[rtbcomp]

Then just set Cobian up to backup at a specific time and day, specific time every day, every x minutes and so on.

 

[chunkolini]

Cobian?
What dat den? is it a device or an online service?

 

[rtbcomp]

It's a FREE download that you install & run on your PC

http://www.cobiansoft.com/

 

[markjabber]

Any Western Digital My Book will back up whatever you select automatically

I have this one
http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/7318104/art/western-digital/my-book-essential-externa.html

 

[Drains]

Chunko, you can select "backup and restore" through the control panel, and set it to do it's thing as you wish (like, say, at midnight on every Saturday night for instance).

As for what hard drive, not easy to choose, but get one which will be ample, so probably as big as your computer hard drive, or more if you're near filling that, as you need to allow extra space for old backups. Old ones can be deleted as you go, to save space. Extra memory is pretty cheap, so worth getting 1.5/2Tb if you think you only need 1.

I use LaCie hard drives which have been reliable so far (mainly cos my computer runs Win7 and Mac, and there are good Lacie ones for that), but there are so many, all sorts of makes...

 

[graffian]

You can get a caddy to take the drive for a few quid, or just stick it in the computer. I bought a new 1tb Samsung drive a few months ago, among the best drives in the benchmarks and it was only £29!

 

[rtbcomp]

One thing to watch with backups is compatibilty of the backups with other operating systems, that's one reason why I use Cobian in its non-compressed mode.

Years ago I upgraded a customer from DOS4 to DOS5, I did the backup only to find that the DOS5 restore couldn't read DOS4 backups!

If you need to save space or password protect your files Cobian will compress using the common ZIP formats.

 

[langy]

I just use 2 caddys with Seagate sata drives in them, this backs up to both drives so i have a copy just incase a drive fails like they can do, one of the drives is underneath the desk and the other is screwed under the bed in the next room, If i got burgled its unlikly the would take the pc and both drives.

 

[tigler]

You can get a caddy to take the drive for a few quid, or just stick it in the computer. I bought a new 1tb Samsung drive a few months ago, among the best drives in the benchmarks and it was only £29!

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

 

[Robotstar5]

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

I read it as the HDD cost £29 then you need a caddy to put it in?

 

[Robotstar5]

I've always rated Seagate drives, been using them since early 90's with no problems. Running a pair of 1TB in my NAS drive at present.

 

[tigler]

Thats the one I have too. Might get another to back up everything.

 

[grim_d]

Buying computer storage is a bit like buying a welder. Don't be tempted by cheap drives from lesser manufacturers, western digital & Seagate are the cream of the crop in my opinion, reliability is the most important factor for backup data.

 

[chunkolini]

Tried the cheapo option all ended in tears, luckily a mate was able to retrieve all my photos.
I have to make my mind up then.
Looks like the seagate thing. Then worst of all I have to dig into my pocket.

 

[bump]

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.

 

[grim_d]

WD mybook 2tb for only £18 more than 1tb Seagate. USB 3.0 aswell so a bit more futureproofed.

http://www.dabs.com/products/wester...-desktop-hard-drive-7YQD.html?q=mybook&src=16

Agree with above though, go NAS if you can, it has other benefits like network access too.