Question for those smarter than me

My 60G harddrive is full (mainly pictures, wrestling videos of son, holiday videos, etc) need to back up..suggestions? Looking at external harddrives..r they reliable?

Any opinion is valued

Yes… external hard drive are reliable as long as you take care of them. Many people don’t understand that there is moving parts in them. They can cease to work if you bump them around. I have one that I have had for 3 or 4 years. It is 80 gigs. After 2 years of sitting dormant… I plugged it in the other day and it still had everything that I left on it.

IF your computer is newer… you may also want to consider adding an additional hard drive to your computer. Can be done for fairly cheap (see me) or can do it yourself. Not too hard to do if your computer has the room in it.

I’m using a Dell Inspiron Laptop, so probably no room….my plan would be to empty pics and video onto the HD, delete from computer, put in closet, and update 1x a year….reliable?

if it is mainly pics and videos then i would put them on cd and go from there. it is easier to share that way and you dont have to worry as much as a hard drive.

Why not just burn the pics to a CD and then you can keep them preserved in the case until later on. Not sure about the videos though

Thought about that…but we are talking probably 30G of materials, or about 50+ cd’s.

Also, I have things broken into folders…mine, my son, my daughter. I looked at my daughters and it was 11.2G, sons has to be close to 2x that. Cd’s would make me break up the folders, guessing how many pics/vids to fill the cd, etc…

Here is my thought. If you may need quick access to the photos (need to print some off… or show relatives in from out of town)… Go with an external hard drive. EITHER way… It would be a good idea to go ahead and burn ALL to a disc… and store at a family members house… or better yet, in a safe deposit box. God forbid a fire breaks out and hits your computer and closet… you will have lost everything. Years ago when it was the wedding album, there wasn’t much you could do about it. But in todays digital age… there is not much excuse when there is an easy solution such as that.

Whether you go with an extra drive or not, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have all of this on backup CD stored somewhere safe. Just like Dave said.

Would you be able to zip the files so they wouldn’t take up so much space on a cd? Would it really save that much space? Dave can probably chime in on this.

Yep

But personally.. and this is only an old opinion… I would almost rather not compress anything that important. I am not 100% sure what happens in the compression… so I prefer to have 100% data integrity.

I used to have a mad dog 80G external hard drive for my dell, it worked really well, just had to plug it in throught he usb, and then do the safe removal or if you have a tower, just leave it plugged in and then when you boot up, you will ahve that extra storage there as well.

shane

I do not have one, but I believe a DVD recorder might be an option. A DVD holds quite a bit more than a CD.

cant say Im really smarter than anyone… (except maybe the pup?)… but in a photography seminar I had western digital external drives recomended to me as “tough” drives that can take a beating and keep on cheating.. (or something like that)…..
anyway.. I bought a 250Gb drive before I went on my trip to the SW.. everyday I took shots I loaded them to my laptop and copied them to my hard drive… just after a particularly big shoot while I was writing to the drive the dogs knocked it to the floor (about a 2 foot drop!) WHILE it was writing!.. a sure recipe for hard drive failure.. the drive didnt skip a beat.. just kept right on writing.. no problems what so ever…
well if THAT wasnt enough… later in the tip my WHOLE PC bag fell out of the back of the vehicle and landed RIGHT on that hard drive… (strangely enough it happened in Tombstone Az).. my laptop went to boot hill (or is that NO boot hill?)… the hard drive hit so hard it cracked the case and I was just sick.. figured I lost EVERYTHING… but when I got back.. the hard drive booted right up and I had not lost ANYTHING!. so yeah.. Id RECOMMEND a western digital external drive to ANYONE…..

and yeah.. if your going to backup to other storage.. by all means use DVDs.. or it will take forever and use LOTS and LOTS of them… and also get really high quality DVDs.. the shelf life on the cheap ones is MAYBE months… Ive known a LOT of people who relied on them for backups and they failed them… I would not even trust the DVDs past a couple of years myself.. so basically ALL I use is external hardrives right now… you can shut them down and they hold the data for YEARS… no problem….. and all things considered they are CHEAP compared to the cost of losing all your data…..

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I do not have one, but I believe a DVD recorder might be an option. A DVD holds quite a bit more than a CD.

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This is what I was going to suggest as well. Find an external Dual Layer DVD drive. That will give you the ability to back up over 8 GBs of data… A little more cost at first…

An external HDD is a great option, however if your house burns you have likely lost both. I’m sure your pics aren’t the most important thing in the house, you must have some rods and guns , but the pics will likely mean more to you down the road.

I’m using this site for backups:

Home Backups

The cool thing is the data can be encrypted, which is what I want. I would recommend you use the vendor’s encryption key if you go that route. If you ever lose your personal encryption key, your data is basically toast.

All great info so far…as for backup to disk, I do plan on doing that as well, but at my leisure…looking now for a quicker backup, then will start burning disks when I get a chance, then deleting from laptop…..where is the best place to get a new say 250G external at a reasonable price?

I usually buy any of my computer goods form newegg.com 9 out of 10 times it’s cheaper than going to the big box stores, and most of the time the description of the product give me just as much if not more info. than what I would get out of the 12 year old working the depratment. Oh and you get a much wider selection too.

I don’t know what your looking to spend but Tiger Direct has this one at a good price and it’s the Western hard drive like Rivereyes recommended. External Hard Drive Hope this helps.

Ed

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I usually buy any of my computer goods form newegg.com 9 out of 10 times it’s cheaper than going to the big box stores, and most of the time the description of the product give me just as much if not more info. than what I would get out of the 12 year old working the depratment. Oh and you get a much wider selection too.

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Good advice!! Newegg has never done me wrong……
Last puter I put together I saved 200+ dollars on the parts compared to the others!
I have used Tiger also..but not as often.

I use a 40G FireLite. Size of a radar detector. Its 2 years old so they are probably cheaper and pack more space. It has served me well.

You take a lot of pics!!

DEFFINATELY no expert here but you might want to look into a thumb drive. They come in different capacities and are “relatively” inexpensive. My girlfriend uses one for an advanced Excel course she’s taking. She pops it in the school comp,does all her at school work on it then comes home,pops it in our comp then does her homework on it. ALL her work is saved on it and nothing is left on the comp unless you want to. Best Buy has them and certain ones go on sale every other week or so.
I’ve been thinking about getting one for my pics too.

Best thing IMO is like the name says,they are about the size of your thumb.

F.Y.I.

Before you purchase, check your connections, if you have Firewire, I’d recommoned getting a firewire, way faster. If you only have USB, get the USB or Firewire compatible one to make sure it will fit your laptop now and new comp in the future. Don’t do what my brother did, order the wrong one online (firewire only Ex.harddrive) and notice that he can’t use it when it came in the mail. The ones that are usually on sale are the older versions of external harddrives, which will do the job, but there’s lots better stuff out now too. I usually always get 2, always have backing up the information, electronics, never know when they will fail, only when they do will you realize how much you lost.

Good point…how do I know if I have firewire? i believe I only have 4 usp ports, but have never seen what a firewire port looks like

Firewire ports are similar to the USB port but are noticeably different when viewing them side-by-side. The firewire is a little shorter and fatter than the USB. If you can’t find a port on your computer that is a little different than the others, you probably don’t have firewire capabilities.

JD

I have six 500 gig externals here at work, used primarily for project delivery. We run the Maxors but there are many on the market. Basically you can’t go wrong with an external. We ship them all over the country and I have yet to have one fail. USB 2 is plenty fast for transfering information, even across our network I can still get about 6 gigs a hour. If your computer is land locked, meaning it doesn’t travel, you can leave it plugged in the whole time. Save all new stuff to the drive, and you will definitely notice some increased performance on your machine by not bogging it down with all the information.

Started transferring tonight to my work laptop (home one is acting funky)..moved 2.8 gig with my 512M jump drive…think tomorrow I will go find a western digi HDD and perhaps a 2G jumpdrive for moving files to work computer, where I will burn to DVD (again, home dvd burner acting funky)

Thanx for the advise…

I’ve heard Seagates are good and come with a 5 year warranty (I think).

Circuit City has some ‘Web only’ deals. They also have customer reviews on the their web site.

I heard some bad things about seagate myself.. one guy bought a brand new one transfered all his stuff and the drive crashed within a month… there isnt much price difference between seagate and western digital.. so from what ive heard and seen Im sticking to western digital until other proof comes by.. with electronics you never know how long the top dog will sit on the mountain top.. but WD is there right now as far as Im concerned…
I bought the 250gb one (wdg1u2500) that walmart sells for 110… the smaller ones are such a small difference cheaper it was compelling for me to get the 250… but then I use a LOT of storage in a year… for most people 250 might be too much?