External Hard Drive Recommendations
By
Bluemeanie,
Posted on: 2009-10-03 06:14 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
How fortuitous of this topic. I just bought a Western Digital 640 gig MyBook drive for use as a back-up HD (and for some extra space). Any recommendations for back-up software?
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I don't recommend anything but Acronis True Image. Personally, I find it to be the absolute best. But I'd also love to hear from others as to what they use |
Originally Posted by Weatherby Goode
How fortuitous of this topic. I just bought a Western Digital 640 gig MyBook drive for use as a back-up HD (and for some extra space). Any recommendations for back-up software?
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We'll see....
When I back up, I use Copy & Paste. >.>
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Biggest Troll on the forums? I'll give you a hint:
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Are you just looking to back up files? Or get system images?|
Originally Posted by Weatherby Goode
How fortuitous of this topic. I just bought a Western Digital 640 gig MyBook drive for use as a back-up HD (and for some extra space). Any recommendations for back-up software?
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If you're just looking to get file backup, I'd recommend SyncBack SE.
It's a VERY nice little package that allows you to set up multiple backup profiles, times, types of backups (including to FTP sites). And it's a "bank busting" $30.
If you're looking for System Imaging, you'll want to look to Ghost or Acronis (currently I prefer Acronis).
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Blue, was this USB1.1 or USB2.0? And I'm not talking about the port on the back of your computer. I'm talking about the enclosure you used.|
Originally Posted by Bluemeanie
How much patience do you have? lol. I used to use an external case that was USB only. Took over an hour to clone my internal drive over. Went to an esata case (the actual one in a previous post) and it now takes less than 20 mins (granted it's only my system drive and is only a 500g one at that).
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If it's 1.1, yeah, I could see it taking an hour.
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If you're chucking the thing around like a softball, yeah, it's going to die fast.|
Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
Good to know! I have a large collection of music and pictures, along with a few movies, that are hogging all the space. So, back to the beginning! I have my eyes on an a few different external Western Digital drives. The comments repeatedly mention, "Too bad you have to back it up so often" and other similar things.
Is this just in case the drive dies? How likely is that? Half these comments read like I'm buying something with a terminal illness. |
If you're keeping it stationary on a desk someplace, with adequate ventilation (this means no burying it in pizza boxes, books, wrappers, and assorted other desk-cruft), you're fine.
One thing to keep in mind with ANY electronic device is the concept of the "bathtub curve".
Again, as I said, I've had excellent luck with WD drives. I have one of their NAS products that's been going strong on a 320GB drive for about 4 years now, with nearly 99.99% uptime.
My last system drive failure was a Maxtor 750GB drive. After about a year. The WD Raptor 74GB drive in the same machine is still running fine today, after 3-ish years.
I have two WD 750 GB drives in my current system with approximately 8 months of near-continuous uptime.
I have two WD Essentials 1GB externals (like the ones you're looking at) that've been problem free for about a year now.
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It was 2.0. And no, there was no overhead, I use a bootable cd of Acronis True Image for the operation. All this talk tho got me to thinking, and just ordered another external enclosure and drive for all my miscellaneous stuff.
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Blue, was this USB1.1 or USB2.0? And I'm not talking about the port on the back of your computer. I'm talking about the enclosure you used.
If it's 1.1, yeah, I could see it taking an hour. |
Durrr...so now I'm back to figuring out which SATA PCI card to get, as well as making sure whatever external enclosure I grab accommodates the hard drive I get.
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I'm curious, why exactly are you getting a SATA PCI card? It's not necessary for a USB enclosure. The USB enclosure itself will have either IDE, SATA or the ability for both inside it. Then from that enclosure, it connects to your PC through USB.
We'll see....
I was understanding, from this thread, that a USB connection would offer mind-numbingly slow transfer speeds?
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If it's USB 1.1 (11 MBits/sec), yeah. Bad. Painful. Go out and have a full three-course meal and maybe it'll be done before the heat death of the universe.|
Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
I was understanding, from this thread, that a USB connection would offer mind-numbingly slow transfer speeds?
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USB 2.0 (480 Mbits/Sec), no. There's a SMALL amount of latency introduced by the USB. And the overhead limits throughput to about 2/3rds of maximum bandwidth, but no hard drive you buy is going to have the sustained throughput to saturate that. Even the fastest solid-state disks (SSDs) top out around 200 MBits/sec.
The only time it might be sub-optimal is if you want to try to do video editing off files on a USB drive. Again, for just dumping files, or even VIEWING video files off of, it's perfectly acceptable.
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Hyper is correct. That's if you connect using USB 1.1. Which hasn't been the standard for quite a while. Just simply make sure the enclosure/cable/your computer is capable of utilizing USB 2.0 and you won't have any issues.|
Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
I was understanding, from this thread, that a USB connection would offer mind-numbingly slow transfer speeds?
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Just to put things into perspective...
I stream all of my media (Music, Videos, Pictures etc) off of my external drive without so much as even a hiccup. That's including hi definition files. A few days ago I had to drop my music collection (Which is approximately 16gigs) on a laptop, and the transfer ran at around 26MB/second. A 50MB file takes approximately 2 seconds.
I hope that puts things into perspective for you
We'll see....
And as I pointed out earlier, his system has two USB 2.0 ports.
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$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
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Yes, I know. This is why I was pointing out the actual differences in speed between USB 1.1 and USB 2.0. So that Dumple could understand that there wasn't going to be any realistic "horrible speed" on an external USB 2.0 device.
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Originally Posted by Father Xmas
And as I pointed out earlier, his system has two USB 2.0 ports.
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I know Hyper, just pointing out again after Flame's comment.
Well is USB 2.0 slower than a native internal interface, yes.
Is it slow enough to be annoying, not for your audio/video/picture files. Not for data. Not even for infrequently run software. 25-35 MB/s (megabytes per second) is about 1/3 to 1/4 of the speed of a brand new, 500MB per platter, 7200RPM internal SATA drive but compared to what came with a Dimension 8250 from 6-7 years ago, it really isn't all that slow.
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Thanks, all of you, for all this help. Last question--I thought all USB porst were born equal? Am I to interpret from the previous post(s) that I may have a mix of 1.0 and 2.0s?
Thanks!
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No but you can plug USB 1.1 devices into a USB 2.0 port and have it work and vice versa (a USB 2.0 device in a USB 1.1 port but it will only run at the slower speed).
When USB first arrived (1996) it was slow and was meant for devices that didn't need a lot of speed, mice, keyboards, printers, etc. What it wasn't good for was transferring a lot of data quickly, like off of digital camcorders, video capture devices or external optical and hard drives (even thumb drives).
In 2001 USB 2.0 came around and was 40 times faster than USB 1.1 and 320 times faster than USB 1.0. When USB 3.0 hits, around now, it will increase the maximum speed by another 10x.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
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Duh, I should've just looked at my tech specs sheet again. It says all eight of them are USB 2.0. So, looks like I'm going with my original plan of a WD 1-2TB USB drive. I learned an awful lot in here, thanks very, very much.
EDIT: WTF? The 2 TB drive I was looking at is gone, now. D:
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I Highly recommend www.scan.co.uk, probably UK based however but their delivery charges arent alot, the items come next day or free delivery and i've never had any problems. (Ordered an entire unit in separate pieces from them excellent quality and safely arrived)
If your willing to wait they do "To day offers" Which essentially is dirt cheep goods. a friend got a Samsung 1TB external for £30 from there. A steal if you ask me regardless if it costs a bit more to ship to the US
>_<
And therein, we return to my original concern. I want a large hard drive, not a paper weight.
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.