Which external Hard Drive

[Lord Snooty]

I need to buy an external hard drive for back up purposes. Can anybody on here recommend one at all.

 

[unshift]

depends on various things - you will have to give a full decription of your needs and wants

else have a look at lacie

http://www.lacie.com/uk/

 

[Wizard]

Buy the best internal drive you can afford, and spend £20 on a USB drive caddy. There isn't a great range of externals, so this'll give you plenty of options.

 

[Rob Farmer]

I picked up a caddy for £24 from Maplins. It even came with a USB lead.

 

[Telford]

Aldi

Aldi had some 250Gb USB/Firewire units for just under £100 last time I visited (couple of weeks ago)

 

[Lord Snooty]

Sorry guys, what does a caddy do?

With regard to my needs, I'm conscious that I have none of my data backed up and as I am now in business for myself a hard drive failure would be catastrophic so I want to plug an external drive in to back up the contents of My Documents to on a daily basis.

 

[unshift]

the chaps are talking about buying the bits and putting it together yourself - the caddy is just the case with either a usb or firewire (or both) connector and then in addition, you buy the hard drive - you install the hard drive in the case and bobs your uncle - it is a cost effective solution.

However for under £100 you can get 250GB (just had a peek at amazon) external hard drive and no bother

 

[xpi0t0s]

If it's for backup get a DVD writer and write stuff out to DVD+R disks, or DVD+RW disks if you don't want to keep throwing out old backups. Also consider off-site backups, and use of some backup software that will backup just the changes each day, with a full backup say every 2-4 weeks.

The other thing about backups is to make sure they work, which means testing a restore from time to time. A restore will usually constitute restoring from a full backup then applying the interim partial backups.

The reason for suggesting DVDs is that they're more resilient than an external hard drive. Also you can't exactly have an offsite backup if your only backup is a hard drive.

 

[GSmonkey]

I bought one direct from Lacie.....a quality bit of kit.

Whatever you go for, make sure you get a 2.5" based drive that doesn't require an external power supply.

 

[redcastle]

I agree with wizard, if your not confident to do it yourself take the machine to a local shop (not the stamping feet variety) If it was my place with a decent size hard drive it would be about £125+vat to give you a guide.

the advantages
removable
age of machine (within reason) or operating system dont matter so no restriction
i.e. usb2 or firewire.
no clutter on your desk
no external power source
all in the one box

the only caviat is if you already have two hard drives and two CD/DVD drives

for cheap user friendly reliable scheduled backups do a google for handybackup
easy to set up and configure and will backup to any drive or over a network

hope this helps you little

 

[Banjaxed]

Snooty old chap

I don't normally recommend PC World, 'cos their staff are idiots, but they do have a couple of nice external drives at present. There's a 160gb for £70 and a 320gb for £115. To get those prices, you order online, but pick up at your local store.
For most people the 160 is fine - if you get the 320, you'll NEVER run out of space...

 

[Britishbeefy]

Hard drive

I too am contemplating the ext. HD v DVD RW option. My father-in-law wants to back up his stuff as well and we were wondering what would be the best solution to allow us to share our hardware? If I get an ext. HD and he's running W98, with me on XP, how would that work? Could I partition the drive and format one half for his OS and one for mine?
Or would it be easier to just go the ext. DVD RW option and pop it around to him when he wants to back up?

Thoughts please?

Cheers,

Beefy

 

[exeter_lad]

I've got an external Freecom. Works perefectly with Windows 98 (mine) or XP (wife's laptop).

Came in really handy when laptop had to go in for repairs. Copied all the data from laptop and my wife could carry on working while it was away. Plus, they had to reformat the hard disk on the laptop, so was able to put everything back as it was.

And yes, I am a dinosaur using 98. But ----- it does what I want and isn't much of a target for virus -- so why change it? (I use XP at work and don't see any benefits).

 

[judge]

I picked up a caddy for £24 from Maplins. It even came with a USB lead.

I went to Maplins too but mine cost £49.99

Mind you it is Firewire & USB 2.0 and a natty little blue neon light - £50 fekkin quid and it looks like a Chav's 'Max Power Edition' Nova at night

 

[Fanum]

I went to Maplins too but mine cost £49.99

Mind you it is Firewire & USB 2.0 and a natty little blue neon light - £50 fekkin quid and it looks like a Chav's 'Max Power Edition' Nova at night

Yabbut you're a Mac whore so you deserve it

 

[gavinbell]

www.usbtech.co.uk excellent prices and ordered at 4pm here by 9:30 next day!! got a nice little ext. notebook 100gb drive...

very pleased by the service and the product

 

[Cheesy Mike]

www.usbtech.co.uk

Nice! I just ordered a USB enclosure for less than £20 inc. P&P.

I might even forgive you for taking the last pair of TKC80s from F&B!

Thanks.

Mike