donutsweeper | External hard drives?

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External hard drives?

Appealing to my flist for information here :)

I know next to nothing about computers. I would like to get an external hard drive or a zip drive or something that I can back up my files with. I would be backing up word docs, photos and a bunch of .avi files (tv shows and movies). Anyone have any suggestions as to what device would work best for this? Any info- like what brands are good or which ones should be avoided or what storage size is ideal would be appreciated.

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I use LaCie external HDs. I have two that I use. One is for all my media files and the other strictly backup. I've never had issues with them, but I have had issues with Western Digital ones in the past.

How it's going to work is partially going to depend on what type of computer you have. Most externals are set up for PCs so using them with Macs can be a little more problematic.

Storage size is really going to depend on how much media you have that you want to back up. I have one that's 500GB and the other is a Terabyte. I have a LOT of media though.

Hmm, I was hoping the whole family could use the same one. Three of us have PCs, but one has a Mac. Hmm, I don't think I have all that much media, probably well less than 100GB, so I suppose the 500 would work fine.

I'll look into the LaCies, thanks.

Both of mine are Western Digital. They're a little pricier but I think they're worth it because they're easy to set up, have no problems and last a long time. My oldest is six years old and I only got the second one because I had too much stuff for the first one.

Your ideal storage size is the same or more than your computer can hold because you should be able to fit your entire hard drive on your external hard drive for an easy transfer whenever you get a new laptop or desktop.

Western Digital also this great feature where I just keep it connected to my PC and it runs in the background, automatically saving all my changes so I always have an up to date backup and never have to do anything.

I mostly use a laptop, so keeping it attached all the time wouldn't work, but I hadn't thought about storage size, that's a very good point, thanks!

I second all this about Western Digital. I have two, because I filled the 500G with just extra files (not back-up -- I have so many photos) and I wanted another for more extra files plus an actual back-up of my computer. The WDs work with Mac or PC, but I think you'd have to format it for one or the other when you start.

I love the auto-save backup feature too.

I saved a mint by getting a big replacement hard-drive, and buying the case seperately, it cost me probably half as much for a 500gb generic hard-drive and empty case as it would have for a complete smaller unit. Just get advice on the right types to buy from someone in the know.

Depending on how much stuff you want to backup and how much space it takes up, I highly recommend an external hard drive. Nowadays, you can get a flash drive that's got enough gigabytes to handle a complete systems backup and they're a wee bit cheaper but much easier to misplace. I would suggest getting an external drive that's a terrabyte big at least. The one I have is 120gigs and I got it ages ago. It still works. :)

Western Digital is one of the bigwigs in the external harddrive world. Mine's a Seagate which is another big name in the external harddrive world.

Good to know, thanks.

Don't you have a laptop though? How does the autosave work with a laptop?

I'd never thought of doing that, I'll look into it, thanks.

Oh, I've heard of Seagate. And that's a good point about the flash drive.

I have a lovely seagate 1 terabyte external usb drive and an older seagate 250Gb external usb drive (currently empty as I lent it to someone after I got the bigger drive) but then I'm a bit of a hard drive junkie - I have 2 currently in my computer (1 is for boot and system/program files only, the other has the 'my documents' folder, the games and pretty much all my stored files (bar my music as that won't fit). I have another ready to be fitted when I feel like it.

I like seagate drives though I know some people have had bad luck with them - both my externals have been great and of my internals 1 is a seagate and the other is a western digital.

I use a backup program with my big external drive that was written by my ex rather than a commercial one and it works like a dream.

I've heard good things about seagate too, and there seems to be sales semi-regularily for them which is a plus. Thanks for the info

I have a 500g seagate that I've had for a few years and love it. I've used to to back up my laptop and transfer contents from old computer to new one. I'll admit it took me about 30 minutes or so of playing with it when I first got it but I haven't had an problems.

Oh, excellent, that's good to know. I really want to be able to use it .or more than one computer,

I have a Seagate Freeagent drive. I like it because it's small and easy to travel with and use it to backup my laptop. I also have two Western Digital MyBook drives, one that I use for my desktop and one that I got from a friend that only works on a Mac and I've been trying to give back ever since. If you want it, I'd be happy to mail it to you.

Yeah I store media and old papers and research on it instead of backing up my whole computer and I can access that material from multiple computers and load files from multiple computers. It depends on how you set it up. You can set them to 'sync' so that when you hook it up it looks for any aditions or just use it as a storage device.

That "great feature" is just really hard to kill bloatware if you don't want it, though. Took me forever to actually remove (not disable) it, and I'm still not sure if it worked because the drive with it has slightly less space :/.

My MyPassport also refuses to spin down properly unless I mess with it in a drive manager thing or do it manually via the command line. Having a hard drive that I have to hold in my hand and make sure is not still spinning before I unplug it = not fun!

My older Western Digital's worked nicely, though. No complaint, no failure ever other than a minor filesystem wobble when it lost power (easily fixed with the Linux answer to checkdisky tools). And it has a pretty blue light.

I'd check reviews for any individual drive you're looking at, every so often a good brand will have a batch of total lemons. I can vouch for Western Digital's RMA service, though, when the first MyPassport I got turned out to be screwy they replaced it quickly.

If you like Newegg, they're always flinging coupon codes at me in their sale e-mails. Might be good to watch those?

I also back up my really important stuff on USB sticks separately, juuust in case. They're prone to dying, but weirdly enough I've managed to not kill any of mine. Kingston seems to have some good ones!

oh that's an awesome offer! At the moment daughter's laptop is in the shop and I'm not sure if it will need to be replaced or not, but if she continues with the Mac we'd definitely love to have it. Thanks!

Yeah, that's a good plan. I will be looking online further once I've narrowed things down, I just wanted to get a sense of opinions of real people's experiences and thoughts on the matter first.

I will look into newegg. At the moment I've a bunch of rewards at Staples from back to school shopping I that was thinking of using, but it can't hurt to compare to Newegg's sale/coupons too

My main computer is a desktop (iMac) so I just leave it hooked up all the time. With a laptop, I would just schedule a daily (or weekly, whatever you want) backup for 4am or somesuch, then plug it in to the laptop when I go to bed.

oh, that might work, thanks!

I've been using a LaCie with my Mac without any problems at all. I have the 500 GB drive partitioned into 177 GB for backup and 323 GB for external media storage (no, I don't remember how I came up with those numbers). The hard drive on my laptop is 120 GB. I wish I'd allocated a little more space for backup but it's been running fine for over three years now. I use Time Machine (which is disgustingly easy to use) and my oldest backup is from July of this year.

PS: I know this is from back in September but I have taken that long to make a decision on a tech purchase myself. ;P

Edited 2011-12-28 03:54 (UTC)

We still haven't gotten one. I did a bunch of research and then we decided we should go over it all and... yeah. It's still on our 'To Do' list.

Thanks for the input though, and by responding you made me remember we needed to get one, it had kind of fallen off our radar.

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External hard drives?

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