External hard drive: any recommendations?

Dionysus

We got broken into last week and two laptops were stolen so now there's a single laptop with that information so we need to get an external hard drive asap.

I have the laptop in question and I'm guarding it with my life as years of digital photographs are on it, among much else.

Anyway, I was over on the Amazon website and there's a huge range of external hard drives. I was thinking we need something small but with plenty of space so that we can store it safely and, hopefully, keep for life like other people would store their memories on a photo album. Is there much difference between external hard drives? What would you recommend?

Thanks a million.

Dionysus

Also, will USB 3 be compatible with Windows Vista, or is USB 2 better?

cookie1977

No hard drive will last forever. I can tell you what my set up is. I have 2 Western Digital Elements drives which are copies of each other. I use syncback free to sync the two devices with my laptop. Both are encrypted with Truecrypt.

The WD Elements drives are budget. No fancy gimics of one button back up or lights to indicate how full they are. They're just 1TB, 7200rpm drives with a power source and are USB2. I bought them off Komplett for 75 euro each. They aren't selling them at the moment although they do have 500GB version for 59.50:
http://goo.gl/XErm3
They're 2 years old now and are performing perfectly. They came with a 2 year warranty. Having used this for another western digital drive before I've found them good to deal with.
You can get them from amazon.co.uk for good prices. Hope this helps.
http://goo.gl/OFhjB

tman

Dionysus wrote: »

Also, will USB 3 be compatible with Windows Vista, or is USB 2 better?

If you've got a motherboard that is USB3 compatible, you should really have Windows 7...

USB3 is backwards compatible with USB2 ports, and if by some chance your motherboard does have USB3 ports, they should work under vista (depending on driver availability)
I'd say go for USB3 if it's available for a little bit more (may as well futureproof), but I wouldn't spend a fortune on it...

And yeah, +1 for Western Digital

MarkR

Go to pc world now and get this http://www.pcworld.ie/Product/WESTERN-DIGITAL-My-Passport-Essential-Portbl-Hard-Drive-500GB-Midnight-Black/304369/326

Depending on the amount of data, you can get reasonably priced 16 or 32 gb usb flash drives.

I'd go for the usb hard drive from pcworld. Get two of them if you are really paranoid.

Easons also had a seagate one on offer as well I believe. Mentioned in bargain alerts.

bonzodog2

Don't rely on one backup to an external drive, burn some DVDR's and use on online option like Dropbox.

Dionysus

tman wrote: »

If you've got a motherboard that is USB3 compatible, you should really have Windows 7...

USB3 is backwards compatible with USB2 ports, and if by some chance your motherboard does have USB3 ports, they should work under vista (depending on driver availability)
I'd say go for USB3 if it's available for a little bit more (may as well futureproof), but I wouldn't spend a fortune on it...

And yeah, +1 for Western Digital

I'm not sure what constitutes the 'motherboard' but this laptop is a Sony Vaio VGN-FW21L and the operating system is Windows Vista. Would you know if the USB 3.0 is compatible with it? If I bought the USB 3.0 and it were not compatible, is there a way I could make it compatible? Is the 3.0 a much better improvement on the 2.0?

Dionysus

MarkR wrote: »

Go to pc world now and get this http://www.pcworld.ie/Product/WESTERN-DIGITAL-My-Passport-Essential-Portbl-Hard-Drive-500GB-Midnight-Black/304369/326

Depending on the amount of data, you can get reasonably priced 16 or 32 gb usb flash drives.

I'd go for the usb hard drive from pcworld. Get two of them if you are really paranoid.

Easons also had a seagate one on offer as well I believe. Mentioned in bargain alerts.

Thanks. I have slightly over 100GB of stuff on my laptop at present, and expect to have much more by the end of the year, so I think I'd need something more substantial than the flash drives.

Dionysus

bonzodog2 wrote: »

Don't rely on one backup to an external drive, burn some DVDR's and use on online option like Dropbox.

I have the photos up on Picasa already. In the event of losing all those photos from my own laptop, how would I transfer them back from Picasa to my laptop?

MarkR

The USB hard drives are handy, you can get a padded case for them and move them with you (or one of them anyway) as required. You can get bigger ones, but I think 500 is a good size for most.

Irish_Elect_Eng

+1 for WD (I use a pair of their NAS drives)

The hard drive is as only as good as your back-up strategies

There are many back-up strategies out there but all have vulnerabilities.

Having two copies of the information is a good first step, but if the back-up is in the same location as the original then it is no protection against simple theft, fire or water damage.

The safest back-up strategy at present would seem to be to store a local copy of your data and a remote copy of that valuable data in the cloud using a paid back-up service.

Alternatively using a pair of NAS drives one in your home and another remotely at a friends house, that way you can store each others data securely.

cookie1977

Yes good point. I keep one of my drives in work locked away and one at home just in case (not that Im storing state secrets or anything but they valuble to me )
I use sugarsync as a backup for docs and files other than movies and music
I also use flickr Pro to back up all my pics.

dasdog

Per the subject as I've gone through 3 disks so far on a SATA RAID 1 mirror. I nearly threw up after the last experience (got away without any loss) and my current .5Tb isn't large enough for ~650G of data. I'm looking for something in the 1Tb+ mid price range (USB 2.0) with a view to future backup requirements. Thanks.

cookie1977

In a raid format or simple external hard drives? Do you know how you're burning through so many hard drives? It might be good to figure that out before buying another one.

dasdog

Standard external drive. Other machine components are fine so I reckon the SATA controller may be acting up...possibly the PSU but the machine runs relatively cool so not heating. I'd just like to ensure I've got another independent copy of everything before I look at setting up a new RAID solution (on a new mboard).

cookie1977

Well I like western digital elements:
http://komplett.ie/Komplett/product/ZKB_01COM/11_HDD/05_EXTHDD/productdetails/20000076/WD_Elements_Desktop_2_TB_WDBAAU0020HBK/WDBAAU0020HBK_EESN/default.aspx
2TB for 97euro
or
http://komplett.ie/Komplett/product/ZKB_01COM/11_HDD/05_EXTHDD/productdetails/20001409/WD_Elements_Desktop_1TB_WDBAAU0010HBK/WDBAAU0010HBK_EESN/default.aspx
1TB for 70 euro

2 year warranty. They do exactly what they say on the tin. No flashy stuff just backup to USB 2.0 7200rpm drive. With your setup I cant see why you'd need expensive external backup devices. Although to be honest a raid set up should be enough.

dasdog

cookie1977 wrote: »

Well I like western digital elements:
http://komplett.ie/Komplett/product/ZKB_01COM/11_HDD/05_EXTHDD/productdetails/20000076/WD_Elements_Desktop_2_TB_WDBAAU0020HBK/WDBAAU0020HBK_EESN/default.aspx
2TB for 97euro
or
http://komplett.ie/Komplett/product/ZKB_01COM/11_HDD/05_EXTHDD/productdetails/20001409/WD_Elements_Desktop_1TB_WDBAAU0010HBK/WDBAAU0010HBK_EESN/default.aspx
1TB for 70 euro

2 year warranty. They do exactly what they say on the tin. No flashy stuff just backup to USB 2.0 7200rpm drive. With your setup I cant see why you'd need expensive external backup devices. Although to be honest a raid set up should be enough.

Actually that 2Tb was the one I was eyeing up before I posted. I'll be looking at an upgrade/RAID implementation again once I'm sure I've got two good data copies. Thanks for the recommendation.

cookie1977

You're welcome. Good luck.

Tomo87

cookie1977 wrote: »

No hard drive will last forever. I can tell you what my set up is. I have 2 Western Digital Elements drives which are copies of each other. I use syncback free to sync the two devices with my laptop. Both are encrypted with Truecrypt.

The WD Elements drives are budget. No fancy gimics of one button back up or lights to indicate how full they are. They're just 1TB, 7200rpm drives with a power source and are USB2. I bought them off Komplett for 75 euro each. They aren't selling them at the moment although they do have 500GB version for 59.50:
http://goo.gl/XErm3
They're 2 years old now and are performing perfectly. They came with a 2 year warranty. Having used this for another western digital drive before I've found them good to deal with.
You can get them from amazon.co.uk for good prices. Hope this helps.
http://goo.gl/OFhjB

No hd will last forever but it there any advntage in getting some thing like this and then hd for it?

http://cgi.ebay.ie/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280362038254&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT#ht_3160wt_1033

seeing how heats a common killer would a fan be the answer? I had a medion drive n go die on me and am looking for replacment thats more reliable!

thanks