Your External HDD recommendations?

[Stretchman]

Hello,

I'd like to begin implementing a data backup program for our family PC using an external HDD.
I'm relatively new to this realm, and was hoping to get your recommendations for Brands and Size.

This PC's internal HDD is only 80gb, and the data i'd like to back up is mostly business related, i.e. photos, documents, email contact settings etc. I would however, like to leave some room to grow in case the external drive gets networked for additional media storage purposes.

[Cricket]

Buy a external HDD housing like this Apricorn and put the IDE hard drive of your choice in it. A 500GB Seagate IDE HDD costs only $120 now.

Cricket

[Stretchman]

That's a slick find, Cricket. Very cost effective too. Is there any advantage/disadvantage to going this route over an external HDD like the WD mybooks?

[Kuch]

You'll get longer warranty coverage going Cricket's route.

[LeftyAce]

The only 'disadvantage' is that you have to put the drive in the enclosure yourself. That's a small price to pay for a 5 year warranty on the drive and a cheaper system to boot though.

[Stretchman]

Is there any appreciable difference in the amount of noise generated by an IDE drive housed inside an external HDD case and an external HDD that comes ready-made?

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by Stretchman Is there any appreciable difference in the amount of noise generated by an IDE drive housed inside an external HDD case and an external HDD that comes ready-made?

I've never owned a pre-made external hard drive so I can't really compare them...but I think it really depends on the hard drive in the housing. I have 8 external hard drive housings with hard drives from various manufacturers in them and some are fairly loud and some are fairly quiet. All my housings are from Bytecc except for 1 Vantec (awful housing...won't use them again). The 2 with the 7200 RPM Seagate hard drives are virtually silent. The 2 with the 5400 RPM IBM hard drives are really noisy...you can here them working from outside the room...LOL. The 1 with the 7200 RPM Maxtor has a constant high pitched whine when it's on. The 1 with the 7200 RPM Western Digital isn't too noisy. The 2 with the 5400 RPM Fujitsus are about the same as the Western Digital.

Cricket

[Stretchman]

Thanks guys. On that note, are there any software programs you'd recommend for backup duty?

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by Stretchman Thanks guys. On that note, are there any software programs you'd recommend for backup duty?

Acronis True Image.

Cricket

[LeftyAce]

Apricorn enclosures come with acronis, if you go that route.

[not important]

Originally Posted by Stretchman Is there any appreciable difference in the amount of noise generated by an IDE drive housed inside an external HDD case and an external HDD that comes ready-made?

I have an external WD (pre-made) and 2 externals w/Seagates SATA's (Home-made) and all are very quiet.

[Stretchman]

I picked up a copy of Acronis 9 today from a colleague - it seems very full featured. I was a little disappointed however to see that updated version, Acronis 10, actually allows you to automate specific tasks like Outlook Express backup, which Acronis 9 doesn't seem to offer. This MS document shows me how to backup my email (have LOTS of address settings to save):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/270670

But it looks like you have to make a new .csv file each time you update address data. A bit of a hassle. Not a lot, but it'd be nice to automate it. Perhaps i'll upgrade to Acronis 10. Are there any good programs, such as Roxio Media or Nero, that automate this for me?

[not important]

Stretchman...According to an email that I recently received from Acronis........registered users can get Acronis 10 for about $30 and that includes a free upgrade to Acronis 11 when it is officially released.

[glc]

The Acronis that comes with Apricorn housings is an OEM version of True Image 8 called EZ-Gig II. It cannot do incremental images or image to network drives. The Apricorn housings are aluminum with an internal fan.

[Cranvac]

You can at times get a better price for a manufacturers external drive than getting a drive and case separate. I got one of those Seagate 500 external usb for 129 from best buy with the 5 year warrenty. with no mail in rebate.

BUT.. always a but. there are no fans in the new drives from Seagate and western digital.. I don't have any external maxtors. These drives shut down after 10 minutes of no use and you have no control over that since its built into the controller in the enclosure. And I could hear the drive power up now and then from normal windows operations and not me accessing the drive. That alone tends to kill drives early in there life along with heat. Most of my computers are on all the time. Those drives have lasted longer than my systems that are turned on every other day or so. Just keep them cool.

Also.. If you want to use S.M.A.R.T. features. Most usb/firewire drives dont support that through the controller.

Also knowing which chip set is used for usb/firewire enclose can be important since some are faster or more reliable than others.

I never use any of the included software so I can not comment on that.

Those little fans used in lots of encloses (that have fans) tend to go bad after awhile and make lots of noise. They never seem to use ball bearing fans. The sleeve bearing ones never last.

I am looking into using external sata for my future drives since you get pretty much full speed like its an internal drive. I cant wait till laptops have esata connectors.

Hope that some of the info will be helpful.

[glc]

Apricorn has a eSATA housing that also has USB 2.0. Their fans are not little and they turn fairly slow.

[Stretchman]

On the software side of things.....

Originally Posted by not important Stretchman...According to an email that I recently received from Acronis........registered users can get Acronis 10 for about $30 and that includes a free upgrade to Acronis 11 when it is officially released.

Thanks for the heads up. I've been taking a look at all the many backup utilities out there, and Acronis 10 seems like it might fit my needs. Looking at the .pdf manual for True Image Home 10, it looks like I can specify "file level" backups of my email settings, pictures and documents, and schedule them at different times.

One question I have about this though....A friend of mine purchased a Maxtor One Touch II External HDD (around 100gb in size) several months ago and was using the included Retrospect backup software. He chose to do a full system backup each night, and soon thereafter he quickly began to run out of space on his external HDD. He told me he had to delete old backup images every few weeks. Eventually however life got busy and he forgot to do this for a period of several weeks, and one day, when he went to check on things, the Maxtor HDD died on him. It was "inaccessible or corrupted" according to windows.

Was this b/c the external HDD ran out of space and Retrospect software kept on writing new system backup images? When Acronis does this, say with a scheduled backup, does it just write over the old backup? Does this cause any problems, or do you actually need to purge old backups? Do programs like Acronis do this for you?

Also, I had another thought: I already have Nero 6 SE on our family computer. Since my backup needs are rather light, could I use the Backitup feature in Nero, and combine it with an Outlook Express backup program like Outlook Express Backup 6.5?

http://www.download.com/Outlook-Expr...ml?tag=lst-0-1

On the hardware side of things....

I think I may end up trying both routes, using an external WD My Book HDD (my local Best Buy has some nice prices on the Essential Editions right now) for our downstairs computer and an external HDD enclosure and regular IDE drive for my own PC, to see which I like better.

[Cricket]

Although I have Acronis True Image 8 at home I never use it to back up my personal data so I don't know how it handles old files.

I do manual backups and just delete older versions of the same file. I don't have too many data files or such, most of my backups are my digital photos. My wife backs up her own computer manually too...she has lots of work files and thousands of recipes and such, but these are mostly word documents and don't take up much space. Guess we've always done manual backups instead of relying on software...it taught my wife how to keep her hard drives organized .

Trying both a pre-built and a build-it-yourself external hard drive would be nice to do if you can afford it. The drives themselves will perform pretty much the same though, only the backup software would make any kind of difference.

Cricket

[Stretchman]

That's cool, cricket. My initial approach was to find software that would automate the whole process, and I completely forgot about simply dragging and dropping my files from the internal HDD to my external HDD.

From what I've been able to gather, these different backup programs, like Nero BackitUp and Acronis, save data in their own proprietary formats. There's one called Genie Backup Manager that stores stuff in .zip, I think.

Also, I spoke to my friend who had the Maxtor OneTouch External HDD crash. He confirmed that the Retrospect software was making new images for each backup, so at least now I know how the Retrospect software works in that regards.

[glc]

The only problem with using backup software is you need to use the software to restore files.

[Stretchman]

Originally Posted by glc The only problem with using backup software is you need to use the software to restore files.

I hear ya. So, to keep things simple, I decided to simply do manual drag 'n drop backups from the internal HDD to the external HDD with my picture and document files, since they don't change all to often.

With my outlook express settings, address book, emails, etc, I've decided to try out a program called Outlook Express Backup 6.5:

http://www.download.com/Outlook-Expr...ml?tag=lst-0-1

It essentially helps to simplify the whole process. What I like about it so far is that it helps me back up everything about my OE. I can even save the backup into a .exe file if I'd like. Two things though: The scheduling options for automatic backup are not as flexible as i'd hoped for. They only give you options for once a day, week, month, etc, and i'd like to have something more akin to backup once every 3-4 days or so. The other part, which I may have to learn a little bit more about, is the idea of what type of backup to make.

I'm pretty sure I chose "incremental", i.e. simply choose to have the program monitor what changes daily and add that to the existing original backup. However, lately i've noticed OE Backup 6.5 making fresh copies of my entire Outlook Express each and every day. So i've gone back to once weekly backups.