Happy backed-up New Year!!!

Gadgetman

Gadgetman

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Happy New Year to everyone! :thumbs:

External Hard Drive Recommendations and other Back-up Solutions???

I know this subject matter has been covered a number of times, and I've spent the best part of the last two hours reading previous threads and related articles on other websites.

This thread is to help us all to have a happy backed-up new year.......as I (within the last 6 months) and I know that many more of you have had hard drives fail. (Have you managed to recover your photos yet kelack?)

Since this subject matter was last raised on here we have had many more people join this wonderful forum (.......and I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank all those involved in creating and running such a wonderful forum :thumbs:). Therefore the purpose of this thread is two-fold........

1) To seek your advice (as I believe many members work in the field of IT) and learn from your own experiences both good and bad, and
2) To raise awareness amongst everyone that we should all back-up our digital images (and other electronic data) before it's too late!

I'm certainly guilty of being a little complacent in the past.....and since my back-up external HDD failed recently I now back-up my back-up!!! We shouldn't be thinking "if the hard drive fails" but "when"!!!

:thinking:

Now I know that there is no single manufacturer that makes the 'perfect' hard drive that will never fail! The one that failed on me was a Maxtor OneTouch 200 GB. Since then I'm now using two Western Digital 2.5" 320GB
Passport Essentials....one for Time Machine and the other for a manual back-up (and yes, I know that it was a WD that failed on kelack!)

I'm also storing some of my digital images online with Photobox (although I have had quality issues with some of their prints recently, as you may or may not have read about in other threads). I also use MobileMe (on the Mac) and Picasa Web Albums.

So.....any recommendations, thoughts, advice, horror stories to share?

:)
 
I've got a few WD drives but to be honest the build quality has always seemed a bit suspect, I have now moved over to this Lacie which appears to be a much better product and I will be buying a couple more in the next few weeks - probably from Dabs.
 
If you feel like summarising your findings at the end of this research project it might make a useful addition to the tutorials section ;)

I'm bound to forget to check back so if you do get it done drop me a PM and I'll move it to a new thread in tutorials.

I've had 2 hard drive failures in the last 6 months. A WD 500Gb network drive and a Seagate 500Gb in my PC. Fortunately both were ill for a while before death so I had no loss of data.

Anyone who keeps their pictures on one hard drive without a backup should expect to lose them sometime.
 
RobertP said:
If you feel like summarising your findings at the end of this research project it might make a useful addition to the tutorials section ;)

I'm bound to forget to check back so if you do get it done drop me a PM and I'll move it to a new thread in tutorials.

I've had 2 hard drive failures in the last 6 months. A WD 500Gb network drive and a Seagate 500Gb in my PC. Fortunately both were ill for a while before death so I had no loss of data.

Anyone who keeps their pictures on one hard drive without a backup should expect to lose them sometime.
Click to expand...


Good idea Robert........will do :thumbs:
 
I use Carbonite online backup which is $49.95 a year, I think, for any size backup.

The main disadvantage is that it will not backup external hard drives.

It can be rather slow to upload new files, it only does so during the time that the computer is switched on but inactive.

The speed may depend on your broadband connection. With a slow connection, it's best to leave it on overnight for as many nights as it takes.

I recently realised that I'd forgotten to do this, and that there was a serious build-up of image files waiting to be backed up.

At one stage I was experiencing slow running and regular crashes. I uninstalled Carbonite and hey presto - running perfectly again! It still runs fine after re-installing. But other people have had this problem so its worth bearing in mind.:)
 
Not sure if this is a suggestions thread or *what you got* thread but I use Time machine on mac OSX leopard, works a treat I have a 500GB USB WD mybook that takes care of both my macs :) and then a 2TB USB ICY dock that i back up the WD to after a while which also holds my other crap.
 
I wrote a bit on this a while back, the link is still in my sig for my views and opinions :)
 
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