Recommendations for External Hard Drives?


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Old 01-08-06, 02:13 PM
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Recommendations for External Hard Drives?

After the disastrous incident with Spyaxe on my computer and now yesterday I got a blue screen stating that there was an error on my computer, its high time for me to start backing up my important documents.

I am searching for a good quality hard drive, so what's good? I heard Seagate and Maxtor are good brands. I am searching tigerdirect and techbargain websites for some good deals.

Thanks
 
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Old 01-08-06, 05:21 PM
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Originally Posted by 1sttime_owner
After the disastrous incident with Spyaxe on my computer and now yesterday I got a blue screen stating that there was an error on my computer, its high time for me to start backing up my important documents.

I am searching for a good quality hard drive, so what's good? I heard Seagate and Maxtor are good brands. I am searching tigerdirect and techbargain websites for some good deals.

Thanks
I just provided a backup solution for one of my computer customers. (yes, I fix computers) I got him a Z-disk USB 2.0 harddrive enclosure and an 80GB Maxtor from TigerDirect. The cost was around $100.00 for the hardware. There are bunches of backup programs out there but I recommend Casper XP.

It's a great backup program and has disk managment tools such as formatting and partitioning as well.

Good Luck,
Joe Michel
 
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Old 01-09-06, 12:22 PM
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Mach1,

Thank you for your help. I didn't know that the drive and the enclosure are sold seperately (I'm a bit of a novice). Is the type of enclosure important? My intial thought is to just backup 3 folders which are important to me, besides that I don't have much on my computer.

Thanks again.
 
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Old 01-09-06, 01:52 PM
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Joneq has this one. need to buy it, but much more than just a backup

http://www.superwin.com/rescuexp.htm

they have versions for all windows.

This is also on my computer and I use it all the time

http://www.2brightsparks.com/index.html.

I have the free version and it works great. The paid version is great if you need or want it.

What you are talkingabout is ok if you want to backup your whole drive,but a little expensive for 3 folders.

I like Newegg.com over those 2 they have a lot of reviews for all the cases. Most important is does the case remain cool or at least not get hot.Is it plastic or metal. does it have a fan or not does it come with a power supply they give you a lot of mumbo jumbo about chipsets too.,but as a novice you can't tell if it is good or bad.I don't either so ask here.

I think you may be over reacting a little. Winrescue is good enough. It has revovery stuff and there is a trial you can get while you are deciding what to get. Casper XP sounds exellent,but a little pricey

You could also backup the files on a cd once a week for free.
 
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Old 01-09-06, 05:00 PM
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why do you want an external one?
 
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Old 01-09-06, 08:56 PM
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You can buy the drive (standard internal type drive) and case separately.

You can buy them as a prepared set, either from a mass manufacterer/OEM such as Maxtor, or a smaller computer shop ( as I myself did).

You would want an external drive to
A: easily disconnect ( a virus cannot get it when it is disconnected) You can save a bit of power also, turning it off when needed.

B: You can take the drive elsewhere, for offsite safekeeping, or to use elsewhere.

FWIW, I use no specific backup software, I just copy over the folders as needed, and further back up to CD or DVD with Nero. I don't only use the drive for my system backup, but use it to hold a lot of my multimedia, and as a go-between across my computers.
 
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Old 01-10-06, 06:35 AM
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You really don't need a specific backup software except for 'ease of use'.
A small batch file (remember those?) will do that job nicely.
Here's mine, very small, very simple.. runs every day and copies these files to another (usb) drive, in this case, K drive.
This backs up an important application and it's databases, my documents and all sub folders. I save everything under my documents, even my favorites (using tweakui, makes it easy), that way I don't have to go hunting for saved data.

The FOR makes a day of the week (DOTW) tag, so each backup goes into it's own DOTW folder. I can go back a few days if need be, and the backups use about 7gb of space to store an entire weeks worth of *complete* backups.

FOR /F "tokens=1" %%A in ('date /T') do set today=%%A

xcopy "c:\Program Files\thisapp" "k:\thisapp\%today%" /I /E /C /H /R /Y /EXCLUDE:c:\Progra~1\thisapp\excludes.txt
xcopy c:\docume~1\admini~1\mydocu~1\*.* k:\backup\admin\mydocu~1 /m /e /i /h /y /c

And yes, I've needed to use the saved data on a few occasions.
 
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Old 01-10-06, 02:47 PM
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Thanks to all for the feedback.

>> why do you want an external one?

After that Spyaxe fiasco, I simply want to store my important files off my computer, and I assumed an external hard drive was the solution. Am I wrong? I am a novice.

>> FWIW, I use no specific backup software, I just copy over the folders as needed, and further back up to CD or DVD with Nero

I have over 3GB of data, so I didn't think I needed software either.

Thanks.
 
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Old 01-10-06, 06:05 PM
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My personal preference is to partition my drive, and store all my drivers,executables,docs,music, etc. on the seperate partition. Then, the only reason to back that up would be in case of total hard drive failure. I don't really use much security on that partition, and have never had any problems. You could back up a ghost image to it, made from the operating system partition. I usually keep a fresh install image, and 2 weekly images. Sometimes a virus can take a few days to show up, so i keep 2 weeks worth.
 
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Old 01-11-06, 03:22 PM
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Hi Tae,

I'm not really computer-savvy, so could you break that down in simple terms?

My understanding of you post is there is a "partition" functionality which I could you to partition my drives and store all my valuable stuff a seperate partition.

And yes, I am concerned of a total hard drive failure. Lets take my Spyaxe fiasco for example (thanks again for your help on that), if reformatting my hard drive was the only option left, would this "new seperate partition with all my valuable stuff" been safe?

Thanks again.
 
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Old 01-11-06, 04:28 PM
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yes, you can break your drive into partitions( as many as you like). you could then have a c drive, and a d drive, and any cd or dvd drives would become e or f etc. if i wanted to reformat c drive, it won't affect d drive (unless i screw up) , even though it's on the same drive. Any more, most virus and trojans require an operating system, and my d drive partition doesnt have one. It's basically blank storage space. I make one backup of it, and only when i add something i really dont want to lose, i make a new backup. Maybe once a month, if that. The only reason i should lose any info there would be a total drive failure, but hey, i got backup so reinstalling it on a new drive is a snap. using the partition as storage eliminates the need for me to keep pulling out cd's or dvd's everytime i want to do something. I also just use shortcuts on the desktop to it, so my music,video's,docs, etc. are still accessable easily from there.
 
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Old 01-12-06, 10:07 AM
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If you really value your data, you'd move it off your computer. Partitioning reduces the risk somewhat, but not totaly, as the next virus could destroy your whole system.

Under normal circumstances, I think you can redo your system from scratch without risking other partitions.
 
 

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