External HD as Backup

Discussion about software such as GSAK, OziExplorer etc, as well as all things hardware, GPSrs, laptops, PDAs, paperless caching, cables etc
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Aushiker
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External HD as Backup

Post by Aushiker » 11 October 06 5:31 pm

Hi

Facing et another data loss, I am facing up to having to get a second HD to use as a backup for my laptop (only need to backup one drive, the other is automated via work).

Have seen a Seagate 200GB drive on eBay at http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Portable-Seagate ... dZViewItem Does this sound reasonable? Better options?

Thanks in advance
Andrew

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Mr Router
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Post by Mr Router » 11 October 06 5:38 pm

We have been looking at options for storing data & came to the best conclusion to get a laptop harddrive & case connected by usb around $160 with local warranty seems all good! Much the same as the one on ebay, but when i looked they wanted $20 for 200gb?? What the!

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Post by Aushiker » 11 October 06 6:05 pm

Hi

The one I was looking at was $135.00 + postage for 200 GB. You getting a better deal?

Andrew

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Post by CraigRat » 11 October 06 7:22 pm

Whatever you get, don't place TOO much faith in it.... I had a 2" external backup drive die on me today.....40Gb of backups down the drain......... :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

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Re: External HD as Backup

Post by EcoTeam » 11 October 06 7:40 pm

Aushiker wrote:Hi

Facing et another data loss, I am facing up to having to get a second HD to use as a backup for my laptop (only need to backup one drive, the other is automated via work).

Have seen a Seagate 200GB drive on eBay at http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Portable-Seagate ... dZViewItem Does this sound reasonable? Better options?

Thanks in advance
Andrew
Yep, external hard drives are a great way to go.
Keep your most valuable data on as many hard drives and CD-ROMs as possible.
I just back up my actual data like photos, video, source code, project files, documents etc I don't bother backing up my appicatons etc so youdon't need that much space. If a hard drive does die (never happened to me actually) then I'd use it as an excuse to clean up my system and re-install everything from scratch rather than reinstall the whole thing from a mirrored backup.

Whatever you do though, don't keep the hard drive connected, put it away in a cupboard and bring it out periodically to backup new stuff. Hard drive life is proportional to use (and heat).

3.5" drives are more reliable than 2" drives.

EcoDave :)

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Post by Cached » 11 October 06 8:08 pm

adacache uses a laptop hard drive that he bought a case for.

Seems to work a treat.

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Post by Horus » 11 October 06 11:25 pm

I'd go for the 3.5" solution, nothing is 100% safe, but I feel more secure with my larger (Vantec NexStar) enclosure. That eBay price is not much more expensive than the price of just the Seagate 200 gig HDD, so not sure of the quality of the enclosure.

The 2.5" laptop drive I have doesn't fill me with confidence, but it is usefull for moving files around from place to place, but I certainly wouldn't trust it for back ups. Here's my set up -

Image

The smaller enclosure is powered through the USB port (double USB plugs are for laptops that can't provide enough power), whereas the larger one has a power brick and is connected to the mains.

hm, I just typed all that and I think all I did was agree with the majority of posters so far. . . . . . scratches head, farts and retires back to the corner. . . . . . .

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Post by Team Piggy » 11 October 06 11:30 pm

Aushiker wrote:Hi

The one I was looking at was $135.00 + postage for 200 GB. You getting a better deal?

Andrew
Looks OK except its a Seagate.

In the past 6 months I have replaced 22 Seagate HD's... 3 of them were less than a week old.
Personally I use Western Digital Caviar's and as of yet have not had one fail.

I have a 320 Gig WD Caviar in a LAN case out in the shed on a wireless Access point, that way even if the house burns down I still have my data backup.
The difference is that its got USB & LAN access, whereas most have USB only. LAN allows you to backup from any PC's on the network.
Think it was about $210 wholesale.

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Post by Zytheran » 12 October 06 1:16 am

Agree with Piggy, big LAN drive is the way to go. Then all computers on your home network can access it..As easy as drag and drop.
After playing around with Micro$ofts Breifcase and offline backup thing I gave up with the snazzy automated solution for now.(it was that or get divorced after the stupid software failed/partially worked, loosing some of Mrs Z's photos)

The drive appears on the network as drive N: on all computers. I use Nero's backup to make a copy of the data from MyDocs and the data directories where the important Geocaching data is kept. Backup is not compressed. Reason for using Nero is that it remembers which directories to back up, which bits to forget. Anything else is dragged and dropped as required.

If you don't have a network :shock: use the USB2.

Lan case was about $100 with network and USB2 ports. Put any size IDE drive into it. It just hangs off the secure side of the ADSL modem/switch/firewall via network port.

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Post by vk7hch » 12 October 06 8:40 am

I also agree on LAN backup. After recently losing 2 hard drives, both 120Gb WD's, (both out of manufacturers replacement warrenty by 1 month!!) and one of them my backup drive, I decided that the redundancy of RAID 0 looked like an attractive solution. <br><br>I purchased 2 x 250GB Seagates, at around $140 each from a local supplier. I put together a FreeNAS server from surplus hardware that I had, now every machine on the local network can access the m: drive to backup to. <br><br>FreeNAS is a small (<32Mb) version of FreeBSD that will run from CF, USB, small HDD etc. I have saved off the configuration so that if I need to rebuild the server, I don't lose all the data for the soft raid config, and in the process my backups!<br><br>
I have tried several backup ideas, the current one is SyncBack from 2Bright Sparks. It does everything I want. <br><br>
Apart from the hardware costs, the rest of the setup is either GPL or freeware.<br><br>Google the respective brand names for more info.

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Post by Udderchaos » 12 October 06 1:36 pm

depends on how much backup you need

for my important stuff i use a radi 5 array in the local machine.
have a norton ghosted image of the machine on DR DVD's (2 sets, 1 is kept offsite)
ghost image on a removable HDD
the application's saved files i am running on a USB stick in my office
Datalogging is stored to our main server via LAN as well

otherwise if you backed up to a portable HDD & burnt DVD's you would be fairly safe IMO

All depends how important the data is

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Post by EcoTeam » 12 October 06 7:51 pm

Team Piggy wrote:
Aushiker wrote:Hi

The one I was looking at was $135.00 + postage for 200 GB. You getting a better deal?

Andrew
Looks OK except its a Seagate.

In the past 6 months I have replaced 22 Seagate HD's... 3 of them were less than a week old.
Nothing wrong with seagates, you must have had a bad batch.
At work we have used seagates (among other brands) for many years on mobile industrial PC's that see contsant vibration, shock, temperature extremes, and are constantly powered up and down dozens of times a day. It is not uncommon for drives to survive 5+ years in this harsh environment.

I have also temperature endurance cycled them for use 2km down on the ocean floor - they work just fine :D

Basically, I have never seen a significant enough perceptible difference to recommend one brand over another.

EcoDave :)

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Post by Team Piggy » 12 October 06 11:37 pm

22 was enough for me to say never again.

In total it ended up with labour to change /repair reload etc over $20,000 to the various clients!

We checked batches as we suspected a bad batch but it was from 7 different production dates and different plants apparently (according to the local rep).

Bottom line they didnt suit the scenario they were being used in.

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Post by The Garner Family » 13 October 06 12:25 am

http://www.carbonite.com - $5 per month - unlimited data. Just click the buttons in Windows Explorer and it keeps at unlimited amount of data backed up offline for you. This solution will likely work out cheaper than external hard drives in the long run & is certainly far easier to maintain.

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Post by Aushiker » 13 October 06 10:01 am

The Garner Family wrote:http://www.carbonite.com - $5 per month - unlimited data. Just click the buttons in Windows Explorer and it keeps at unlimited amount of data backed up offline for you. This solution will likely work out cheaper than external hard drives in the long run & is certainly far easier to maintain.
Are you actually using them? BTW it is around $6.00+ per month Australian :-)

Andrew

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