Posted: 2/7/2008 7:58:47 AM EDT
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Man, my laptop hard drive took a crap a couple of days ago and its killing me. I had some of the stuff on it backed up on our network and then on CDs but there was still a ton of stuff I needed to backup and I didn't. So, to prevent future failures from me I want to purchase a portable hard drive. Any recommendations on manufactures and software that I can use? |
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My backup scheme: - I have a 160 gig Seagate at work partioned into two drives. I use Synctoy to sync these two drives up about twice a month. - I have my work laptop with a special file on it's hard drive that I call a "mirror". About once a month, I'll use Synctoy to mirror the main drive from the Seagate. - I have a 200 gig HD at home, partitioned into two drives just like the ones at work. About twice a month, I'll use Synctoy to sync those two drives up. - About once a month, I'll sync up the work drives and the laptop, then take the laptop home and sync those HD's with the laptop mirror folder. I'll then take the laptop back to work and resync the two HDs with the laptop mirror folder. 3 different hard drives, with two partitioned so a total of 5 harddrives all with the same data about twice a month or so. Synctoy is available as a free download from Microsoft.com Merlin |
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The best deal on an external hard drive is a standard 3.5" drive and a USB/Firewire enclosure. Mine is the same brand, different model. Easy as pie to install. You then have the option later to remove the drive to install as a slave in a desktop (as I did). ETA: sometimes hard drives can be made to work for data rescue by freezing them. Google it, I've never actually had to try it. |
I like my seagate drives. One goes with me everywhere, takes loads of abuse, and is still running great! |
Well, you really have 3 drives. Partitions != drives. The PRIMARY concern when backing up is redundancy, but not in case of data corruption. You want redundancy in case of drive failure. I have a couple of Seagate external drives, as well as a NAS configured as RAID 1. I recommend a NAS (or equivalent) configured as RAID 1 as a minimum backup strategy. |
Yea, I know. Someone, sometime told me that partioning up a drive into two would be good but I forget the specifics why, I just did it and I still do it. Apparently there are some failure mechanisms where having two or more partitions on one drive is good. BTW, this is for my personal stuff, not work. Work stuff is kept on the company terrabyte servers and they're backed up at least once per day. |
This is excellent advice. If you use a laptop get a NAS for it. (or a cheap desktop with a couple of big SATA drives that are mirrored) I have just got myself one of these with a couple of 1Tb drives. Overall a good solution. [I need the size for video the wife shoots] |
| Acronis True Image home has saved my bacon once. It is very easy to use and does total or partial backups whenever you want, to whatever destination you want. I use an external SATA drive that I can plug in for a quick backup and then put back into the fire safe. |
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Most of the small portable USB external hard drives are just 2.5" laptop drives in an enclosure. I just had one crap out on me. I utilize a laptop and swap out hard drives because my laptop is provided by my employer and it blocks most sites plus you can't install any applications on it (Skype, etc). Personally, I have a Maxtor 300gb hard drive (3.5") at home and a WD Elements 160gb portable hard drive and back up to both of them. Hard drives spin constantly while powered up. Eventually they are gonna crap out. Make sure you make double copies of anything you want to save. When one craps out, get another and immediately back up what you had on the good one. The small ones do not have any kind of fan or cooling system and are more susceptible to damage because they give off alot of heat and are banged around alot in your computer bag. |