what back up hdd

  • Thread starter Thread starter NJG
  • Start date Start date
NJG

NJG

Messages
160
Name
Nick
Edit My Images
Yes
I'm about to start looking for a suitable hdd external for back up of pictures. Can anybody reccomend any and good place to purchase?
 
I've Western Digital MyBook 250GB, and also a 1TB Elements, both have worked well for the last few years, can't remeber where I bought the first, the the Elements I got from PC World. Shop about.
 
Hard drive prices have risen of late due to flooding abroad. I put an existing HD in an enclosure i bought. Great backup too!
 
I have a few, i have a WD desktop 1td hdd that requires power. Thats my main drive and has been good since i got it 2 years ago.

I have 2 1tb wd square shape portable HDDs one is great, the other is broken, it fell 3 feet off the table to the floor and has never worked properly again. The cable that plugs into it aint the best.

I also have a new shape 500gb HDD but this has the usb3 connection so the weight of the drive plus the connection means it cant fall out easily which is good for me.

Over all if you look after them they should be fine.
 
I've got a 750Gb usb hard drive that was about £50 off ebay that hardly ever gets used apart from updating the photos, I've also got a 1Tb partition on my hard drive on the computer and I also back up to Blu Ray discs. And I keep the really good photos on my laptop and netbook so I can pretty much cover all bases. The discs are kept locked in a fireproof case as well as you can never be too sure.
 
Bought 2 Seagate Goflexi 320gb portable drives just over a year ago and one failed on me 2 nights ago. One minute worked next didn't..... And the other drive playing up.... Just be aware that what ever you get, buy 2 just in case one crashes, unfortunately, these backup drives don't seem as reliable as you computer hard disks.

Western Digital seems to have a good name, but then again, Seagate were the daddie when I bought mine. At the end of the day, its pot luck, but the USB portable drives do seem very prone to failing after a short period of time, 1-2 years from the reading I've done, but would recommend buying two devices, one to back up the other.
 
Last edited:
Biggest problem with every electrical device is cheap, rubbish power supplies.

If it has a "power brick" or even if its a built in PSU in a cheapo RAID enclosure, the power supply is the weak link by a long way.

However, as you are talking about a backup device (which of course just has a copy of whatever is on your main system) then failure of either the original or the backup isn't an issue because you still have one copy...

If you are talking about archiving.... well, thats a different matter entirely.
 
Synology all the way.

I've got the DSJ411 with 4x2TB running raid 5.

You can do so much with them.
 
Lots of possible answers, but I suppose it really depends on ...
- What system you currently have.
- How secure you want your backups to be.
- How much you can afford to spend.
 
If you have an unused hard disk get a USB caddy for it. If you know anyone who works in IT see if they can get you a disk for a nominal cost (we all have loads kicking around).

Ideally you want a 2.5" (laptop) SATA drive with a USB powered caddy, they may be slower but they are so convenient and need no external power supply. Multiple small disks will give higher resilience than one large disk and you can swap them in/out of the caddy as required.

Just remember these disks are for backup (i.e. you still have a copy on your primary computer). If you want to archive (remove from your computer) then you really need to take two separate backups to different drives or media.

Solid state drives can't be recommended for backup or archive yet as they have a write limit. Have you considered using an online backup? Your ISP or computer manufacturer may already be offering you free cloud storage and for a small fee you could increase the available space considerably.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top