Marsh

My laptop hard drive is almost full and I had planned to buy an external hard drive to store my photos. Now, I keep reading of various problems that can occur with these drives. Are they more prone to failure than internal hard drives? I don't know what to do.

Jack

Each time I buy a new computer for home use (office is taken care of by IT people) I buy a new back up hard drive. I've never had a problem with any of them. I did have a computer hard drive failure once and I am certainly glad I had a backup. The one I am currently using is a Maxtor.

Andrew

I work on computers mostly not for profit but I have many years of experience working on them. If you'd have replaced as many bad hard drives as I have - in laptops and desktops - you'd be as paranoid as I am about backing up. Hard drives are mechanical devices that can fail at any time, sometimes with warning (slow response on your computer, error messages, noises, etc.) and sometimes with no warning. Sometimes you can still get files off the drives when the fail. Sometimes you get nothing because they have failed completely.

I've had more than one person cry because they had no backup and lost vitally important info. One woman lost her years worth of business contacts because her only copy was on the drive that was failing. I told her to at least print a copy out when her drive was giving her problems. She ignored me, the drive failed, and she lost it all and had to start over.

That's why you need a backup system.

External drives aren't more prone to fail than internal drives, unless you get a cheap one that doesn't have good ventilation. They can all fail, all brands. Don't trust one brand over another. I would probably stick with a name-brand like Seagate (who owns Maxtor) or Western Digital. Costco has some decent Western Digital portable drives now, 250GB for $139.99 which isn't a terrible price.

The golden rule is: have at least two copies of any important file. So be careful if you use an external drive as "extra storage" and not as a backup. If the only copy of your cherished vacation pictures is on that brand new external hard drive you are sure won't fail now because you just bought it...you're really taking a bad risk.

Robespierre

...and store the backups in different buildings.

Nothing more disconcerting than having a small office fire take out your primary and both backups.

For really, really important stuff, consider an external HDD (next to the computer) for a primary backup, and an on-line archiving service for the secondary.

Andrew

I've got two copies of my photo archive (150GB+) on hard drives here and a third copy at my parents' house across the country. I use internal drives with USB hard drive enclosures and those internal desktop drives can be had on special for dirt cheap.

travelingmad

I use an external drive and for the most important stuff I copy on a re-writable DVD. Better safe than sorry.

steviegene

external is easier to drop - cost me quite a bit to send it to drivesavers to get the information off of it.

But otherwise they are convenient and work really well.

mellifluous

I have a Maxtor that I've been using for a year. I use it to store my pictures and music. I have never had any problems at all. My husband, who has worked in the industry for thirty years, feels the biggest problem comes from people who unplug the drive from the computer at inappropriate times. For example, in the middle of downloading pictures. And, there are a multitude of ways of backing up your information, such as some that were was mentioned above.

I would go for it.

trafaelwyr

I have a Maxtor external 250gb hdd as well. I bought it a few months ago after I bought a new Dell computer (which also has a 250gb hdd). The main reason I bought it was to dump all my music, videos, pictures on there. I bought mine at Fry's for $89 (it was on sale). They have locations in California, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, Oregon & Washington. Their website is www.outpost.com. So far, I haven't had a problem with my external hdd.

DebitNM

I just went through this and decided I had taken chances long enough [way too much critical info on internal drive and sentimental stuff too].

I had a simliar thread on here just a couple of weeks ago:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=35099204

I ended up buying a Maxtor One Touch4 for $149 at WalMart [only store within 60 miles of my home].

Project to back up everything is scheduled for Sunday. Wish me luck.

Deb

DebitNM

Meant to add that the OneTouch 4 has 500GB

MaureenB

Can anyone recommend an easy-to-use software program for backing up to a hard drive? I use a Mac, and my external hard drive is a Western Digital, but I hate the software it comes with. It's too confusing, with poor instructions. Someone said there's freeware for backing up a Mac that's good.
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MaureenB

I think I found it by Googling. It's called SuperDuper. I'm trying it now. Looks much easier to use. Anyone have any experience with it?
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Andrew

Can't help you with a Mac, MaureenB. Maybe you can be the pioneer and try it out?

In Windows, I use some great software called True Image from Acronis (similar to Ghost). It makes a full copy of your hard drive not just your photos and documents. If your hard drive dies, you can install a new one, restore your backup, and that's it. No need to re-install Windows or any of your programs.

True Image can also make incremental backups. The first time you backup your hard drive, it will take some time to make the backup. Subsequent backups will save only the changes to your hard drive since the previous backup so will be much quicker.

You can download a demo version of True Image from Acronis.com . I think the cheapest place to buy it (download version) is at NewEgg.com though.

You need to make backup a regular habit, not something you do only once in a blue moon.

There are also online backups but they are practical only for saving your documents, not many GB of data. You could do a combo of image backups to get the whole hard drive every once in a while but online backups (automatic, schedule every day) to grab only the documents that change regularly.

willit

I second the recomendation for Acronis. I have used version 9 for some time, and will now upgrade to version 11 so I can backup Vista.

Bizarrely (To me) the download version at Newegg is more expensive than the retail version on disc.