Recommened good back up storage?

Evening Herald

Hello all. I have been getting worried about drives failing, for some unknown reason! So I was looking for some good reliable back up system? I am not looking to cut corners here money wise but it is just for flicks and photos etc. Personal data. I have about 1T of stuff.

Anyone got some good suggestions? I would be a bit of a seagate fan too

Thanks in Advance.

Ronan H

By "1T" I assume you mean 1 Terabyte (TB) of information?

If so I wasn't able to find much Seagate stuff over 1TB but here are some:

http://www.dabs.ie/ProductList.aspx?&NavigationKey=11157&NavigationKey=50410&NavigationKey=50620000&CategorySelectedId=11157

There may be more but this was just a quick search...

HTH.

Head

EKRIUQ

An external HD with the Acronis back up package should do the trick

Dinarius

Interesting thread......as I was just about to start something similar myself!

Everywhere I look on the web, tests of external HD storage deal mostly with speed, NOT with reliability.

I run three computers, but only one of them (used for editing large photo files) is really backed up regularly.

Since there is always something to be doing on the others, speed is of no real interest to me, only reliability. I won't ever be sitting there twiddling my thumbs.

I copy everything onto two external HDs. When they fill up, I buy two more.

So far, I have never had a failure. I've been using Maxtor, LaCie and Western Digital.

a. Can anyone point me to charts/tests of external HD reliability?

b. Alternatively, can you recommend a make AND model that you would be happy with? 500Gb to 1Tb is plenty.

Thanks.

D.

Anti

Samsung spinpoints are known for their reliability. But afaik there is no such thing as a marketed "reliable" hard drive.

Orion

Either an external hard disk or a NAS is your easiest solution. I bought this this week. Takes two hard disks and you can RAID them for added protection.
Another solution (if your motherboard supports it) is to get another internal disk and set up RAID1 mirroring. That's my main protection at home - I have 2*750Gb in RAID1 on my main system. The NAS will take copies of my photos just in case but it's main function is for media streaming to my HTPC.

Lazarus2.0

+1 for internal backup . Visit any computer help forum and there'll be a multitude of failed external drive threads . There'll also be quite a few for 'normal' HD failure so Macros42's RAID1 suggestion is best , IMO .

Dinarius

Cheers guys,

On balance, I think that dual external HDs is probably my best bet. I always preserve the two copies of RAW photo files until they have been edited and saved to the external HDs.

The choice of HD is mind boggling!

WD drives pop up a lot on photography forums. Thinking maybe I'll get 2 x 1Tb drives which should last me for about a year.

Of these, which would you choose..........

http://www.dabs.ie/productlist.aspx?&NavigationKey=11157&NavigationKey=4294955056&NavigationKey=47210000&NavigationKey=50473&NavigationKey=50620000&CategorySelectedId=11157&PageMode=1

.....apart from size (1Tb or 2Tb) I can't see any difference.

Thanks.

D.

pullandbang

Being a bit of a luddite...how do you do a back up?
I reckon I'm overdue one but have never done one and wouldn't even know where to start!

I'm running XP Service Pack 2 and also have an external hard drive which is where I want to send my back up. My main hard drive is sounding very dodgy on startup (so I don't start up any more - just leave it running 24/7)