Posted: 9/18/2012 8:31:21 AM EDT
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Just need something very basic to backup a bunch of photos, some data, etc. Are there certain brands (or features) that I should look for, or stay away from? What do you recommend 
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I've had a Seagate for a while without any problems but that's just a sample of one. Check out whats popular on Amazon. Features wise: basically it's a hard drive in a box. They aren't a lot different. I like Seagate also. I would recommend Looking at SyncBack software for performing your backups. |
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I've had a Seagate for a while without any problems but that's just a sample of one. Check out whats popular on Amazon. Features wise: basically it's a hard drive in a box. They aren't a lot different. I like Seagate also. I would recommend Looking at SyncBack software for performing your backups. Interesting ... what is the advantage of using that software? |
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I have a western digital MyBook 2TB and have been happy with it, it sees daily use as I store my media on it (video music) and it handles that job well no issues during playback, except one tiny thing that isn't really a problem, the drive goes to sleep if it isn't accessed after about 15 minutes, so say I pause whatever it is for an extended times there will be a little hiccup when starting up again. Not really a big deal IMO. It comes with some backup software as well, but I don't use it, anything I need backed up I copy manually Oh and it has a tiny light on it that I hate, it bugs they hell outta me when I am trying to sleep and leave the computer on for some reason. For such a small light it is crazy bright, and it also shines through the back of the case so I can't just cover it with tape  |
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I ordered one of these back in March and have been happy with it: Silicon Power |
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Seagate FreeAgent
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I've had a Seagate for a while without any problems but that's just a sample of one. Check out whats popular on Amazon. Features wise: basically it's a hard drive in a box. They aren't a lot different. I like Seagate also. I would recommend Looking at SyncBack software for performing your backups. 
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The WD and Seagate externals suck. Slow as shit and unreliable. I've had both fail on me in no time.
Get a Thermaltake BlacX dock and use a 7200 rpm internal drive in the dock. More capacity and speed for the same price, and the dock allows hot swapping and eSATA. |
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The WD and Seagate externals suck. Slow as shit and unreliable. I've had both fail on me in no time. Get a Thermaltake BlacX dock and use a 7200 rpm internal drive in the dock. More capacity and speed for the same price, and the dock allows hot swapping and eSATA. What's that? |
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Quoted: Just need something very basic to backup a bunch of photos, some data, etc. Are there certain brands (or features) that I should look for, or stay away from? What do you recommend How aggressive do you want to be with your backup plan? I've used a mirrored WD to back up most of our stuff, and it's been running for 3 years with not a single problem. However, for more robust protection, I'm backing up the backups with an IOsafe solopro |
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Just need something very basic to backup a bunch of photos, some data, etc. Are there certain brands (or features) that I should look for, or stay away from? What do you recommend
How aggressive do you want to be with your backup plan? I've used a mirrored WD to back up most of our stuff, and it's been running for 3 years with not a single problem. However, for more robust protection, I'm backing up the backups with an IOsafe solopro Pretty basic. As much anything, I don't want to spend $100 on something and then have it crap out in short order. |
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Just need something very basic to backup a bunch of photos, some data, etc. Are there certain brands (or features) that I should look for, or stay away from? What do you recommend
How aggressive do you want to be with your backup plan? I've used a mirrored WD to back up most of our stuff, and it's been running for 3 years with not a single problem. However, for more robust protection, I'm backing up the backups with an IOsafe solopro Pretty basic. As much anything, I don't want to spend $100 on something and then have it crap out in short order. eSata is an interface standard. The Thermaltake also comes in USB 2.0 and 3.0 flavors that also have eSata. The Thermaltake is about $30 and a 1.5tb drive is about $70. Screw the WD external drives especially. I had two fail on me in six months. |
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I have to chime in for the Western Digital personal cloud storage drive. I can access it from anywhere, access it from my tablet, Galaxy Nexus, or laptop. It does all of the snazzy backup things a USB drive does.
amazon! Definitely worth it. |
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The WD and Seagate externals suck. Slow as shit and unreliable. I've had both fail on me in no time. Get a Thermaltake BlacX dock and use a 7200 rpm internal drive in the dock. More capacity and speed for the same price, and the dock allows hot swapping and eSATA. I agree with this recommedation and use it personally and rotate with 2 drives. I recommend SyncBack because I find it easy to understand and I can setup different backup locations. Whatever software you use be sure to understand how files are backed up and how to manually restore the backup files if needed. |
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The WD and Seagate externals suck. Slow as shit and unreliable. I've had both fail on me in no time. Get a Thermaltake BlacX dock and use a 7200 rpm internal drive in the dock. More capacity and speed for the same price, and the dock allows hot swapping and eSATA. I agree with this recommedation and use it personally and rotate with 2 drives. I recommend SyncBack because I find it easy to understand and I can setup different backup locations. Whatever software you use be sure to understand how files are backed up and how to manually restore the backup files if needed. Honestly, my original plan was to simply buy an external hard drive, plug it in and then copy and paste the files and folders that I want backed up. Is that not really an option / do I need special software
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The WD and Seagate externals suck. Slow as shit and unreliable. I've had both fail on me in no time. Get a Thermaltake BlacX dock and use a 7200 rpm internal drive in the dock. More capacity and speed for the same price, and the dock allows hot swapping and eSATA. I agree with this recommedation and use it personally and rotate with 2 drives. I recommend SyncBack because I find it easy to understand and I can setup different backup locations. Whatever software you use be sure to understand how files are backed up and how to manually restore the backup files if needed. Honestly, my original plan was to simply buy an external hard drive, plug it in and then copy and paste the files and folders that I want backed up. Is that not really an option / do I need special software
No that would work there are just a lot fancier and/or better ways of doing it. |
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The WD and Seagate externals suck. Slow as shit and unreliable. I've had both fail on me in no time. Get a Thermaltake BlacX dock and use a 7200 rpm internal drive in the dock. More capacity and speed for the same price, and the dock allows hot swapping and eSATA. I agree with this recommedation and use it personally and rotate with 2 drives. I recommend SyncBack because I find it easy to understand and I can setup different backup locations. Whatever software you use be sure to understand how files are backed up and how to manually restore the backup files if needed. Honestly, my original plan was to simply buy an external hard drive, plug it in and then copy and paste the files and folders that I want backed up. Is that not really an option / do I need special software
Syncback will do that for you and save you the hassle. You just bite the bullet and go through setup once to set C:Pictures to get copied to E:Pictures, C:Documents to E:Documents, etc. After that you just let the software do its thing. You can decide to leave the external HDD plugged in all the time and tell syncback to copy pictures over at the interval of your choosing. If you want to keep the external HDD in the safe then you can plug it in and run syncback manually then put the external back in the safe when done. Remember to leave gaps in backup times so large files will have time to finish before the next process is set to begin. Syncback will also synchronize the contents of folders, so if you delete a file from the computer you can have the software delete it from the external drive rather than you manually doing it. Personally, I think storage is cheap and just have syncback set to add whatever is new on the internal drive to go to the external drive and not remove anything from the external. My wife does bookkeeping for two companies so her work computer has 2 internal HDDs that mirror each other then syncback runs folder content backups nightly, weekly, and monthly to an external drive. The multiple time points are done so if a file on the internal drives and nightly folder gets messed up she can recall the file from the weekly folder and spend a lot less time fixing things instead of having to start fresh. The mirrored internal drives are done to reduce downtime, it's not a true backup solution. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Are you on a LAN, does your router have a shareport? What about a NAS drive? I don't think that my router has a shareport, and I have no idea what a NAS drive is ... A shareport is a USB port on a router that lets you share the resource across the network instead of having to do it through the computer it's attached to. And a NAS is basically a hard drive with a network connector that lets you plug it into the router with a network cable.  |
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Are you on a LAN, does your router have a shareport? What about a NAS drive? I don't think that my router has a shareport, and I have no idea what a NAS drive is ...
A shareport is a USB port on a router that lets you share the resource across the network instead of having to do it through the computer it's attached to. And a NAS is basically a hard drive with a network connector that lets you plug it into the router with a network cable.  http://youtu.be/UyKnikfyZSM
Thanks very much; that's good to know. 
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The WD and Seagate externals suck. Slow as shit and unreliable. I've had both fail on me in no time. Get a Thermaltake BlacX dock and use a 7200 rpm internal drive in the dock. More capacity and speed for the same price, and the dock allows hot swapping and eSATA. I agree with this recommedation and use it personally and rotate with 2 drives. I recommend SyncBack because I find it easy to understand and I can setup different backup locations. Whatever software you use be sure to understand how files are backed up and how to manually restore the backup files if needed. Curious to know more about this setup ... and it's probably obvious that I'm pretty low tech
So you get the dock, and then purchase separately an internal drive to use in the dock. I'm guessing that before using it, it would be necessary to install an operating system on the new HDD - is that right? |
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The WD and Seagate externals suck. Slow as shit and unreliable. I've had both fail on me in no time. Get a Thermaltake BlacX dock and use a 7200 rpm internal drive in the dock. More capacity and speed for the same price, and the dock allows hot swapping and eSATA. I agree with this recommedation and use it personally and rotate with 2 drives. I recommend SyncBack because I find it easy to understand and I can setup different backup locations. Whatever software you use be sure to understand how files are backed up and how to manually restore the backup files if needed. Curious to know more about this setup ... and it's probably obvious that I'm pretty low tech
So you get the dock, and then purchase separately an internal drive to use in the dock. I'm guessing that before using it, it would be necessary to install an operating system on the new HDD - is that right? The dock allows you to easily attach and detach a bare hard drive. It also has the advantage that you know the drive isn't soldered to the data controller. If the soldered controller in an external hard drive fails it's tough to get your data off the drive even though the drive itself is still working fine. The external dock also has an advantage in that the drive tends to run cooler since it's not enclosed by plastic or aluminum. It's not necessary to put an operating system on the backup hard drive. You have two basic options for backup. You could pick and choose which files to copy from the computer to the drive or you could image the computer's hard drive. If you choose to image the computer's hard drive you need to buy a bare drive that is at least the same size as what's in the computer. Imaging provides a quick way to restore your system to the point it was at when you took the image before the computer's hard drive failed. Depending on your persistence there could be days, weeks, or months, of data lost. From an image restoration you'll have software, movies, pictures, documents, everything available after restoration. If you're only copying pictures, movies, etc then after you fix what's wrong with the computer you'd still have to install software to get you back to where you could interpret your data files. It's not possible to simply copy MS Word to the backup drive and expect MS Word to transfer since software is different from data. Windows 7 makes restoration pretty simple. Running a backup from the operating system will save your data and a system image to the backup drive. You'll also need to burn a system restore disc and keep it in a safe place. You only need one system restore disc, you don't have to make a new one each time you perform a backup. Taking a system image won't make things as easy as removing the dead hard drive and installing the backup drive then powering on the system. You have to run the system restore disc and use the backup drive to populate a replacement hard drive for the computer. To really be in a good position you should backup and image your computer at least monthly. If you buy 2 bare drives you could use one to hold the backups and images. The second drive could be left in the dock and you could setup syncback to backup your documents, movies, pictures, etc folders nightly. That way you won't lose data between the points images are taken. An alternative to two drives would be to buy a 2-3TB drive and partition it. One partition would hold the backup and image, the other partition is where syncback backups would go. |
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link
That's actually on sale right now. I have two of them. They are very nice. The neatest feature is the base comes off so you can plug any SATA 2.5 or 3.5" hard drive into it. So it basically is a USB 3.0/ FireWire /thunderbolt hard drive dock too. Plus I get read write speeds both around 120- 2290MB/s. Its so fast that I record ours of uncompressed videos to it via FRAPS and edit the 1080p files straight from the drive FYI its a 7200rpm Barricuda inside it |
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A month or two ago I got a Western Digital Passport 1TB.
It's a pile of shit. If I leave it plugged in all the time, after a few days it will stop working and start beeping. No idea what is going on. Sometimes it does it right away, but if I stand the drive up on its side it stops. Lost the receipt so I'm stuck with it. I was going to use it as a backup drive, but I don't trust it at all. I'm afraid its going to crap out at any time. Google tells me this is a common thing with these drives. |
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Things I know about HDD's from experience and from additonal readings on the subject:
1. HHD's fail, all brands, all models. You have to accept this as the fact that it is. The HDD is probably the least reliable component in your PC. 2. When an HDD dies and takes your data with it, IT SUCKS! The least reliable component is the one that hurts the most when it goes because you lose your data. 3. HDD's should be configured in a self-redundant RAID array configuration, so that when one dies you can recover your data from the other drive. I have done this. It works really well. You will be unhappy when you get the message a drive has failed. You will be really happy when you replace the drive and there's no data loss. 4. You must back up your HDD regularly. Just do it. |
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A month or two ago I got a Western Digital Passport 1TB. It's a pile of shit. If I leave it plugged in all the time, after a few days it will stop working and start beeping. No idea what is going on. Sometimes it does it right away, but if I stand the drive up on its side it stops. Lost the receipt so I'm stuck with it. I was going to use it as a backup drive, but I don't trust it at all. I'm afraid its going to crap out at any time. Google tells me this is a common thing with these drives. You just cant remove it from the case. Theres a chip on the controllerthat looks for the backup software. If its not there it wont read the drive. there is a part of the drive that has the software backed up so if you format it the reboot it reinstalls and may or may not read what was put on the drive after the format, I got around it by ditching the enclosure and putting theng them in a generic one. Then formating with HP USB flash drive format software. Its the only thing that get rid of the part with the software. |