Hi

Not sure what I need! I don't have much luck with computers where I live. Hard drives usually last about 2 years and I am sick of losing all my hunting and family photos, vids, docs etc.

What I want is something to use as a back up that is transportable. Something to put a copy of this stuff onto for safe keeping and carry it around with me if I want. So is the external hard drive the thing to buy or is there something else more suitable?

Cheers.

GG

GG

I have all kinds of back-up gear but this little device is the most powerful/compact one I've found that is reliable and comes with it's own software.

500 GB Back-Up

You can grab it and run out the door with it too if ever there's a plague of Roo's on approach to your Chateau...

Paid about $100 at Amazon.

Thanks Macifej - I'll check it out - sounds like what I need tho.

Cheers.

GG

set up a free account on photobucket.com and your pictures will stay in cyberspace.

External hard drives are a good way to go. I think they are roughly $80 around here.

Western Digital is a decent name brand.

With anything precious, I'd say back it up on 2 good quality DVD discs.
You can get 4 gig discs now.

If you really don't want to loose something back it up in 2 separate ways, then it's pretty safe.

For just carrying files around, get a Flash drive.
They are cheap and easy, but not really a safety back up, I'd say.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3...=flash+drive&x=0&y=0

The 11th Commandment is: "Thou shalt do regular backups."

How you choose to do them is up to you. An external hard drive is often easiest as one can make an image copy of the internal which can be used to recreate the internal if it fails. A not quite so good but practical approach is to use an external to backup working files. DVDs are great to do backups of files you want pretty permanent copies of like your photo store.

I use a combination of these and ... knock on wood ... haven't lost a file in a very long time even though I have lost internal disk drives.

To this I would add make a copy of your Favorites. I am having a hell of a time with the latest Firefox update. It has screwed up my system to no end. I managed to get it back to a state that I could create a new folder named Firefux Bookmarks, then export my bookmarked sites to it. I have a secondary hard-drive in my computer for backing up precious files, and to that drive a copy of the above folder went. As soon as I can figure out how to totally get rid of Firefox in all its forms, I'm going to IE7 and never lookin' back!

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=EN391-S2HC&cpc=RECOM

My biggest concern regarding the external disks is that they seem to suffer somewhat lower reliability than even internal drives. The larger capacity units are often RAID-0 (stripe)arrays built around two cheapie IDE or SATA drives, and reliability on these is half that of any single drive itself.

I'd look instead for a pair of "enterprise" class internal drives for my primary storage and set up a RAID-1 (mirror) array over them. Then I would also use an external unit to back that up.

You need defense in depth if the data is really important, and don't "cheap out" on your drives if you can possibly afford to get better units.

I just got a terrabite external drive for $119

I don't know how long the sale will last, but I just bought four 16GB Toshiba flash drives at Office Max in New York . Each costing $40 USD. I can put every Photo, Video and Song I own on one of these, there's no moving parts, no drivers and they fit in my wallet.
regular price is about $100.

http://www.toshiba-memory.com/en/usb_drives.html

best of luck

Then put the external drive in the gun safe!

I have been considering www.carbonite.com to back-up my stuff, but have had a question as to whether my computer needed to be on (and stay on) to do the back-up. I am away from my machine for long periods of time (days and days). I wondered if to turn the machine off would make carbonite start all over form the beginning. I have about 1 Tb on five drives to save. It could take months. I emailed them yesterday and got a message back tonight. If you wondered: Your computer can be turned off. The back-up will resume from where it left off the last time. To safeguard your precious stuff for just $55 a year is cheap...

I'm almost psychotic regarding data loss because of the number of times that I've had drives crap out on me.

My suggestion is to do three things:

1. Set up a server running BackupPC on Linux. Make sure the server has at least a RAID-1 (mirror) array of disks.
2. Make sure the server backs up all the PCs you have daily, or whenever you can ensure a network connection at least overnight.
3. Back the server up on a big removable HDD regularly.

what the Maz said plus one!! Mine backs up every six hours.

Rich

homebrewer,

looks good, but it would make me crazy (ier?) to know some computer somewhere has all of my files on file.
One Terrabye external HD's at Costco for $89.95.

Rich

Any brand of external hard drive better than the others?

Saw a 2TB at Fry's for 129.00 last week, in the paper.

Seagate and Western Digital are good names. 1 TB is a pretty standard size. Find the drive you like on amazon.com and check the reviews... popular stuff has hundreds of reviews and should give you a pretty good idea of what you're getting into.

Amazon has 1.5TB 7200 RPM Seagates for $89. get a $15 USB2 enclosure and you're on your way...