| Author | Message | ||
     Mikej |
What is the current consensus on portable hard drives, are they all basically the same to the end user? Do they all hold up about the same? Anything else to consider instead? Looks like the local Best Buy store carries Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. I want to do a full backup of our computers (desktop and laptop) before I start to load up some CAD and other new software just in case I overtax one of them or fry the processor or lock one up and have to do a full restore or disk format. I have to check current storage size but I'm thinking a 500GB external drive should do. And to keep this at least a little Buell related, how much do a 1995 S2 and a 2000 M2 weigh each? I'm guessing around 450Lbs wet and fully gassed up for each, close enough? I'm starting to look a little at towing capacity and trailer loading should things get to that point. Thanks for any input(s). | ||
| Bartimus |
500GB isn't very much nowadays. I use a 2 Terabyte network drive which, in my opinion is huge. I am able to store all my photo's, music, movies, and back ups, from any computer in the house via the Local network. The brand is a Western Digital, although I've always had good luck with Seagate hard drives also. | ||
| Bluzm2 |
Mike, they have 1 TB drives available for less than $100, check out Newegg as they have specials all the time. Seagate or WD, about a horse apiece these days. Doing a full backup to a USB drive can take a while depending on who much stuff you have on your original drive. Lots of different backup or imaging software out there. Not sure what is the hot one these days.. Brad | ||
| Twobuells |
I don't like backups but I do copy all of my pictures, docs, etc to many backup drives that I have. | ||
| Andymnelson |
if it's just backups you want, crashplan.com is the winner in my book- unlimited, redundant storage for multiple computers. Automatic back ups as well. | ||
| Mikej |
I pretty much just want to do a copy C: for each computer to their respective folders on the portable drive. Price at the store was $149 for the 1TB drive. I'll check newegg (I keep forgetting about them). It would be nice to do be able to do a full restore without having to reload and resetup programs and drivers. I guess I'll have to do a little surfing to see what's around for that these days. Ps, we've got an older laptop with a bunch of music on it that I want to save. A relative brought over his portable drive and the old laptop wouldn'd read it (too fast or something for the computer). I might be stuck thumb-driving the files on that. (Message edited by mikej on July 11, 2010) | ||
| Pwnzor |
If you're going to manually backup your c: drive, "copy c:" won't do it. You want "xcopy c:\*.* e:\backup\ /h /e /y /c" The red "e" is your destination drive of choice. If you want to copy to a network drive using this command set, you must map it first. That little statement will copy everything including all hidden files, system files, folders, subfolders, yada yada yada. To answer your question, I have always had great luck with Maxtor brand drives... HOWEVER: I have tons of drives going at any one time, Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor and Hitachi... I believe they are all constructed under similar conditions and to similar tolerances. My drives all tend to last between 5 to 10 years. I have a couple that are 15 years old... hell, the one on my Atari is at least 20 years old... 10 megabyte Seagate full size drive, still spins up no problems. Chatters like an epileptic squirrel and serves up data like a champ. | ||
| Gentleman_jon |
As mentioned above, one terabyte is pretty much the standard back up hard drive today, you won't save much with a 500 gig. Backing up is something one should really do everyday, but who does? Me.  I course, I have no more self discipline than anyone else, but I do have "An app for that" ! Actually it is an automatic back up program that does the work whilst I am sleeping. It's Prosoft Data Back up. Here is the PC version, also available for Mac. http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_backup_pc. php | ||
| Glitch |
It would be nice to do be able to do a full restore without having to reload and resetup programs and drivers. A simple back up will not do this for you. It'll back up all your data, but when you reinstall Windows, you'll have to reinstall all your programs as well. What you need to do is image your drive. It's like taking a snap shot of your drive the way it is, then if needed, you just reimage your drive, and it's back the way it was exactly like it was when you imaged it. I recommend http://www.macrium.com/ReflectFree.asp The price is right too! WRT the backup device, get the biggest you can afford, you can never have enough free space. | ||
| Oldog |
why not do raid 1 and make the drive system internal to the desktop machine, raid one is 2 identical mirrored drives back up your machines to the mirrored drives in the desktop I presume that they will be networked. | ||
| Greg_e |
I think win7 has made some progress in this area and has a utility to make drive images, but I would suggest Clonezilla. I would also suggest that you clean out as many files as you can before making a disk or partition image so that you can keep the time down. There are lots of temp files scattered through several temp folders, plus all the updates leave behind the old files. A regular fully patched XP sp3 will have about 4GB of old stuff that you can delete. Clean up old restore points too. If you computer has a restore partition then you may want to only make an image of the working partition to same time and space. If it does have a restore partition there might be enough room to put the working image on that partition so that an external drive is not needed. To make an image of a fresh 9GB install takes about 15 minutes total to a USB2 drive. To restore that image takes about 5 minutes. BTW I've been using Clonezilla for the last couple of months rolling out new computers at work, so far zero issues and way cheaper than Ghost. It's great when you are building new machines because you can make an image just before you get to the difficult part of an install so that when it gets mucked up you can go back to a working point without losing much time. Did this about 6 time last Thursday and one more time on Friday to get a new computer properly working for our radio station (crappy sound card drivers that do not uninstall properly). Works on Macs and Linux too. | ||
| Bluzm2 |
Mike Best Buy has a number of under $100 drives in their flier today. | ||
| Chadhargis |
RAID 1 is fine if you have two things: 1) A RAID controller with an audible alarm or software which will toss alerts on the screen. 2) You never plan on having a fire, flood, theft, virus, or file corruption. My current data protection plan is as such: 1) Four 1TB drives in a RAID5 array 2) RAID array duplicated nightly to a 1.5TB Seagate Extreme USB drive. 3) iDrive online backup of critical, non-replaceable data nightly. Backups are CRITICAL!! CRITICAL!! CRITICAL!! It's not a matter of IF you will need them, but WHEN you will need them. | ||
| Theshue |
i dont know much about the samsung hard drives, but this price is almost to good to pass up. http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=HD-HD103SJ&tit le=Samsung-SpinPoint-F3-HD103SJ-1TB-SATA2-7200rpm- 32MB-Hard-Drive&c=CJ Apply coupon code SUNSHINE15 total price shipped $59.49 (UPS ground) on a side note, i have never purchased from this company, this was posted on another forum i am a member of. | ||
| Teeps |
Pwnzor Posted on Sunday, July 11, 2010 - If you're going to manually backup your c: drive, "copy c:" won't do it. You want "xcopy c:\*.* e:\backup\ /h /e /y /c" Is this a DOS command line statement? If so; how does a person make go the other way? Glitch Posted on Sunday, July 11, 2010 } It would be nice to do be able to do a full restore without having to reload and resetup programs and drivers. A simple back up will not do this for you. True enough, but I like to think of it like cleaning out the garage... out with the old crap; in with the new. | ||
| Mikej |
Foolish question: is there a difference between a "portable" and a "desktop" external hard drive? I'll make a guess that the portable might be a little more ruggedized. And I guess I want to really do two things: Thing 1: straight copy files from the computer to an external drive like I currently do with some files on a thumb drive (pics, docs, things I want access to but don't want resident on a work computer). Thing 2: the full system restorable backup type thing for both computers. With Thing 1 I could then just take the portable drive to a relative's place and copy the weekend soccer pics to their computer instead of sorting and burning a CD for them. Looks like I've got to fire up the computer and do some reading and note taking tonight. This afternoon I need to track down a battery charger for a camera battery. I picked up a used Canon SD400 which is fairly useless unless I can find a charger. Can't even just buy a battery unless I get a charger first (I could but don't want to). Too many projects at times. Thanks for all the good info, it helps. | ||
| Pwnzor |
Is this a DOS command line statement? If so; how does a person make go the other way? Yes it is a "DOS" command line. If I understand your question correctly, to restore the files you would have to connect your backup drive and a newly formatted drive to a working computer and just change the drive letters in the argument string. Same process in reverse. It has the same effect as imaging the drive, without having to use any software. However, I generally like to reinstall my software after doing a system restoration. You cannot use this to put your existing software onto another machine with a different chipset. Typically, I make this command into a batch file, link it to an icon on my customer's desktop and set it to run as a scheduled task at midnight or the time of their choosing. I change the arguments to copy only the items in the folders where they store their databases, personal files, etc. Then when they kill their computer, I can come in and set up the new one and once the software is reinstalled, I can easily restore their data to the correct folders and when they run their programs all the data is there... good as new. When the customer is standing behind me looking over my shoulder, they generally get a glassy look in their eye when I open the DOS shell, and start typing stuff like that... then they see all the file names go flying by as they get copied... to them, it's a scene right out of War Games. Far from it, I just remember having to do all this stuff manually when I was a kid. Today's graphical user interfaces have created monsters out of users who have no idea how the damn computer works... at all. | ||
| D_adams |
I use Acronis True Image for the windoze pc's I have to maintain. I prefer the workstation version just for the ease of use. I dump the images across a gigabit network to a Gentoo linux file server and burn them at my convenience. http://www.acronis.com/ for their main site. http://www.acronis.com/backup-recovery/advanced-wo rkstation/ this is the one I use, but an older version. Excellent for imaging a drive on a dead machine too, provided the drive still works. Boot up off the backup software cd, image the drive. Even if the rest of the box is dead or the drive is failing, I can get the entire OS with all it's software off the drive, then build or repair the box and dump an image back to the new machine. Doesn't matter what the size of the old drive was, or even what the new one is. | ||
| Nextcorner |
Put bluntly: If you shop at BestBuy, you are a sucker. OVERPRICED NONSENSE! I had a sales associate try and tell me how their $65 Monster HDMI cable had a better digital signal than the $7 cable I have from Amazon.com. So I said that if it was a digital signal, you either get information or you get no information, right? He said yes, but it's a better signal.... ?? Places to shop for an external hard drive: Newegg.com, TigerDirect.com. | ||
| Delta_one |
I trust the toshiba drives above most others, we used them at "high" altitude and they were the only ones that didn't fail if the pressure were to fall off. (unpressurized cabin) | ||
| Reepicheep |
I put cygwin on my windows machines, and open up a *proper* command line  I have Acronis, and like it for drive upgrades on machines that are working well. That almost never seems to be the case though, windows has always had some sort of partial meltdown by the time something goes far enough wrong for a restore to be needed, so I end up reinstalling windows from scratch anyway. So I just backup my data. That xcopy command is nice, but you can just drag and drop folders also, or use "tar" in cygwin (which also lets you compress and encrypt if you want, all in the same step). | ||
| Froggy |
Typically a portable drive has a laptop drive inside, while the bigger units have desktop drives inside. The portable ones are designed to be more convenient, so you can stuff it in your suitcase and load your presentations and stuff. They will cost more than a desktop based unit of the same capacity. Many portable drives will get power from the USB port, so no power brick is needed. Desktop units require more power, so they will need a brick. | ||
| Preybird1 |
If cost is only your motivation than build your own external drive. All you need is the external hard drive cover/kit. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16812816095 | ||
| Preybird1 |
I also use a Western digital external hard drive and an internal backup drive. so i use 4 drives total. |
