External Hard Drive?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Oct 2, 2006
Messages
90
Location
MO
My laptop is beginning to act funny at times, and am leery that it could be hard drive related. Is is best to back things up to an external hard drive, or maybe one of those cloud services I've heard about? Maybe some other option?

Thanks in advance,
Ryan
 
External is the easier. Depending on how much data you have to back up, cloud services get expensive quickly.

I use Cobian Backup software. It's free and does the job. You don't need software if you just want to do a big back up of everything and then do it manually every now and then.
 
After losing a ton of data (including photos) about a decade ago, I use both an external HD for periodic backups and also use Drop Box to automatically back up my files.

Cloud based is not 100% and their servers can (and do) crash and lose data so both is best IME.
 
It wouldn't hurt to pack up everything you can get a Seagate 500GB USB 3.0 for roughly $50 its a good price. Iv had mine for a year and a half with no problems.

I would avoid the cloud tho. Its limited to the speed of your internet and you never know if its been compromised. You can always encrypt a portable/external had drive

Might want to make a bootable CD in case it does fail.
 
Last edited:
Ideally get an external hard drive as big as your hard drive, and do a full image back up occassionally. That way if you computer crashes, you wont need years of updates and firmware updates.

I have a DEll desktop, and its been through 4 firmware updates in a little over a year. That doesn't include all the windows update.

Course if you already have issues, you only want full image backup when everything is perfect.
 
Last edited:
I bought a solid state 2T USB drive. Slow but big enough to hold everything.

The problem with backing up all the old stuff is it drags along all the malware and whatnot with it too.
 
I use Onedrive. I have 40GB for free. The best thing you can do for a laptop is to replace your hard drive with a Solid State Drive
 
Originally Posted By: SHOZ
I bought a solid state 2T USB drive. Slow but big enough to hold everything.

The problem with backing up all the old stuff is it drags along all the malware and whatnot with it too.


You have a 2T SSD drive and it's slow? Jeez, for over a $1000 I thought it would be fast.
 
Originally Posted By: Leo99
Originally Posted By: SHOZ
I bought a solid state 2T USB drive. Slow but big enough to hold everything.

The problem with backing up all the old stuff is it drags along all the malware and whatnot with it too.


You have a 2T SSD drive and it's slow? Jeez, for over a $1000 I thought it would be fast.


He has a 2TB USB drive. They are kind of slow.
 
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Originally Posted By: Leo99
Originally Posted By: SHOZ
I bought a solid state 2T USB drive. Slow but big enough to hold everything.

The problem with backing up all the old stuff is it drags along all the malware and whatnot with it too.


You have a 2T SSD drive and it's slow? Jeez, for over a $1000 I thought it would be fast.


He has a 2TB USB drive. They are kind of slow.

But he specifically wrote "solid state". I'm guessing he did not really mean that.
 
Yeah, when I saw solid state, I didn't even know they made SSDs that large. Newegg has them for $1200 to over $2000.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Originally Posted By: Leo99
Originally Posted By: SHOZ
I bought a solid state 2T USB drive. Slow but big enough to hold everything.

The problem with backing up all the old stuff is it drags along all the malware and whatnot with it too.


You have a 2T SSD drive and it's slow? Jeez, for over a $1000 I thought it would be fast.


He has a 2TB USB drive. They are kind of slow.

But he specifically wrote "solid state". I'm guessing he did not really mean that.


I thought he meant a 2 TB USB external HDD. I see what you mean though.
 
Use an external USB drive. If you have blue port USB port use that one as transfer rate is much faster.

Cloud backup while it works is quite slow to upload and download compared to an external USB.
 
FWIW I have a couple of WD Elements external hard drives that have worked well. Both 1TB. The earlier version is a USB 2.0. The newer version has a sleeker case and is USB 3.0 (blue connector).
 
Thanks for the great responses everyone! I'm leaning toward a 1 TB WD Elements or 1 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim, both around $60.00. Both look to have good reviews; just flip a coin?

Thanks again,
Ryan
 
Originally Posted By: reemoe2
Thanks for the great responses everyone! I'm leaning toward a 1 TB WD Elements or 1 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim, both around $60.00. Both look to have good reviews; just flip a coin?

Thanks again,
Ryan


I'd pass on Seagate. I have both and the WD IMO is a better product.
 
Slightly different suggestion. Grab an enclosure, and a separate hard drive to use with it. Sometimes you don't quite know the quality of the hard drive included with an external drive. One of my setups: (I have the "VT" version of the hard drive). WD Blues have been very reliable.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JQTO8TU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C9TE...NZ0Y7SWV1K1YAD2

Some of the new external drives don't have actual SATA hard drives. They use a hard drive with a proprietary interface so if your enclosure flames out your recovery options are limited.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top