external HD

B

breezer

i am wondering about an external HD

are they any good? as in slow / fast?

reason i wonder this bit is they are USB2 connected, i have a variety of memory stick and some are really slow, so i wondered are external HD like this.

or if you have one, which one, and what size?

ionly really want to use it as back up, if the OS crahes / goes wrong i have the CD, its the pictures and other bits i want to keep, so not looking for that much storage, must be 20GB

i was also wondering is ther a solid state version? most seem to have a moving hard drive
 
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Mine is a 320gb(not sure of make no markings on casing, bought in Thailand) but is excellent for storing & retreiving files but was a bit slow accepting a full image off norton ghost though.
 
Solid state drives are a relatively new technology, and are extremely pricey (£100's). You can get flash drives up to about 32GB, but as you noticed, aren't anywhere as quick as hard drives. (You'll be paying at least £80 for one of these though)
Your best bet is a standard external USB2 hard drive, smaller portable ones are available, containing laptop hard disks, but the performance is slightly slower than the desktop equivalent.
The advantage is that they are bus powered, ie: they get all their power from the USB cable, so don't need plugging into the mains....plus they will slip into a pocket.

A 250 or 320GB model should cost about £45

If this seems too large, get a smaller drive and the bare caddy, and make your own one. Aria.co.uk are selling 80, 160 and 250GB drives for under £25, you'll pay about £15 for the enclosure.

(If your drive is SATA make sure you get a SATA compatible enclosure. Vice versa for IDE)

More stuff here (scroll halfway down)
 
As you want it for backup, consider getting two :confused: cheapish ones. Ultra-fast data transfer is not all that important.

I have two IDEs in caddies, and swap them over about once a month, keep the removed one in a different part of the house (though offsite is better).

That way, even if my PC was stolen or badly damaged e.g. in a small fire, I would still have the other disk not more than a month old.

Anything really vital (like your photos, accounts or that book you're writing) put on CD or DVD and store outside the house, e.g. in the garden shed in case of a bad fire. Cut up old versions before disposal.

Keeping your backup disc in or beside your PC is fast and easy to backup to, but not very secure.
 
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What you need is a High speed external HDD. I will post a few for you tomorrow in the meantime look at whats here www.ebuyer.com look for Seagate/WD/ Dont buy a cheap one, I will give you more advice later :eek:
 
I already have a large, separate internal disk I use for back up but wanted an external drive I could duplicate & stash in a separate location to keep my very large music & photo library safe. I got a 500GB USB Maxator as a chrissy present; I don’t normally use PC world but they were knocking them out for around £70 at the time. Great unit just, plug it in & away it goes. Speed is not really an issue in my case but I haven’t noticed any problems with accessing speed; probably not ideal to run applications from though.
 
Thanks for that. But maplin currently have it cheaper.

Thing is i dont need 750GB (I do appreciate your coments in this case though)

I shall explain:

dont laugh, but my two hd's are only 60gb between them, so 750 gb is way too much.

i have 4 partitions, so formatting c is not a problem as all the other sytuff will remain.

As i understand it, its pointless backing up say MS office as it wont work when coppied back (is that right?) its only the data i really need a back up of which i currently have on a few memory sticks

so i was thinking if anything put all the memory stick syuff on an external HD and if they made a 20gb one i would buy that. (but they dont, do they?)
 
I find hard-drives start at about £20 - £30

although as prices come dowmn you get a bigger disk for your money.

My local supplier is selling Maxtor DiamondMax 40Gb 2Mb Cache ATA100 Hard Disk Drive <11.0ms 7200rpm - OEM for £20 today :eek: and a Western Digital Caviar 80Gb 8Mb Cache Hard Drive SATA 300MB/s <8.9ms 7200rpm - OEM at £26

A removable bay or "drive caddy" to put it in is about £15 - £20
 
As i understand it, its pointless backing up say MS office as it wont work when coppied back (is that right?) its only the data i really need a back up of which i currently have on a few memory sticks
You are correct you cannot just back up office from your hard drive as during a proper install many entries are made in the registry which will not be correct when you try to copy back. You may find however that the extra disk space could be used to copy the whole installation CD which could then be used to reinstall software if required

so i was thinking if anything put all the memory stick syuff on an external HD and if they made a 20gb one i would buy that. (but they dont, do they?)
I am not aware of anything of that size (i.e.USB type)- suspect that cost of producing would make it uneconomical and of limited interest in the market compared to 120 -250GB (Try dividing the cost by capacity to get an idea on value - smaller drives generally cost much more per GB).

I still think that a USB HD would suit your purpose. Personally I would go for one powered by USB bus rather than having to find a spare socket for yet another mains adaptor
 
TonyWarrington
thankyou, i am looking towards an external usb, i never gave it a thought about putting the cds (office) on there.

next question then.

have you got one? (external hd) if so is it fast?

i am just thinking, canyou partition an external hd?

progs on one bit data on another

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JohnD thanks for your thoughts, but a caddy will only mean i can use it, i could not for example see a mate and show him if he has no cady. i also knew sonme one who had one (caddy) and he changed it so much he wore out the connections
 
TonyWarrington
thankyou, i am looking towards an external usb, i never gave it a thought about putting the cds (office) on there.
Be aware that disks which have copy protection (rather than those that just require licence number) may copy but not install correctly when trying to run from HD

next question then.
have you got one? (external hd) if so is it fast?
Yes I have a Western DIgital Passport 250GB. Selection of sizes HERE The USB interface is the bottleneck for speed. Therefore the transfer rates are much lower than a good modern SATA HD, however for backup purposes for me at least I feel the speed is more than adequate. Also be aware that to get the maximum speed you should have USB2 capable card in your PC - if not most will run with USB1 but at a reduced speed. If you only have USB1 then check that drive is backward compatible or budget to add a PCI usb2 card to your system
i am just thinking, canyou partition an external hd?
progs on one bit data on another
Yes most come with software to allow this and also change file system to either Fat or NTFS - have to say have not bothered to partition mine though, just organised into folders
EDIT: If you really want to it is possible (MS says not!!) to run WIndows from an external USB drive
http://searchwincomputing.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid68_gci1254169,00.html

EDIT2: Think I was wrong about partitioning software supplied with USB HD :oops: . However you should be able to use either FDISK or other partitioning software if required. You might find This Link useful as it deals with partitioning USB drives
 
Hi, if you have a spare HDD you can now get external cases to fit them in, it is a cheeper option and the one I got a few days ago has a thumb screw lid so it is ideal for changing drives quickly, so if you loose your operating system you can dump you corupt drive into the caddy set as a slave and have a spare drive with a known good operating system on to put into your PC to retrieve any lost files before having to reload the operating system... works a treet....Al.
 
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