External Hard Drive For Backup

10past6

Deleted_User wrote: »

Dependant on how much you have to backup

It's around 10 folders each contain letter type documents.

Deleted_User wrote: »

and how much you want to spend

Not that much if I can help it

Deleted_User wrote: »

the second nothing more than being plugged into your computer.

That will do me.

I've no intention of taking it outside my home, it's just in case my desktop fails, I want to be certain I have the documents without losing them.

And thanks for your advice

[Deleted User]

It's much of a muchness really, HDD are better in my opinion as they're easily accessible i.e. no need to keep finding or inserting your DVDs and they're intrinsically larger in capacity.

For letter type documents to be honest, if you don't fancy spending 50 odd quid and you don't think you'll be using the drive for much else other than backing up your data, then DVDs will do the trick. Just make sure it's a decent brand of DVD e.g. Verbatim, Sony, Imation, Memorex.

To "burn" to your DVD you'll more than likely already have a program pre-installed with your computer which will do the trick and I'm sure there's a very nice Help section or just hit the F1 key once you've opened it for a How-To, where to start guide.

If you did want an external hard disk drive as I say go for a decent brand like Western Digital or Seagate then just pick the one you can afford

10past6

Deleted_User wrote: »

For letter type documents to be honest, if you don't fancy spending 50 odd quid and you don't think you'll be using the drive for much else other than backing up your data, then DVDs will do the trick

OK, I only want to back up my documents so I guess DVD's will do the trick :j

Deleted_User wrote: »

To "burn" to your DVD you'll more than likely already have a program pre-installed with your computer which will do the trick and I'm sure there's a very nice Help section or just hit the F1 key once you've opened it for a How-To, where to start guide.

Oh, F1, right, I'll try that, I bought some CDs although they could be DVDs from Poundland as they were cheap, maybe there no the best ones for what I want to do

Oh, how do I know if the amount of all the folders will fit into a DVD?

[Deleted User]

Of course if you only had say 50 documents that you wanted to make sure were backed up then you could back them up the real MSE way, for free, and just email them yourself using hotmail.com or gmail.com or any other free online generic web-based email service

[Deleted User]

10past6 wrote: »

Oh, F1, right, I'll try that, I bought some CDs although they could be DVDs from Poundland as they were cheap, maybe there no the best ones for what I want to do

Oh, how do I know if the amount of all the folders will fit into a DVD?

I'm sure the ones from Poundland will be fine today, tomorrow, even in a few months time. How they fare the test of time however is another question

A CD can store 700MB, or megabytes. A DVD can store 4.7 GB, or gigabytes. Where 1 GB = 1024MB.

Or, to put it simply a DVD can store over 6 CDs.

Let's say you had some big chunky word documents at 2MB each then you could fit 350 of them on a CD or lots and lots and lots (2406 to be precise) on a DVD.

10past6

How do I know how much GB / MB is in each folder, will it tell me if I hover the mouse pointer over the folder?

10past6

Deleted_User wrote: »

Of course if you only had say 50 documents that you wanted to make sure were backed up then you could back them up the real MSE way, for free, and just email them yourself using hotmail.com or gmail.com or any other free online generic web-based email service

Do I right click on the folder and > send to my hotmail a/c?

[Deleted User]

10past6 wrote: »

How do I know how much GB / MB is in each folder, will it tell me if I hover the mouse pointer over the folder?

Double click on My Computer, either on your desktop or after clicking the Start button
Double click on the drive where the files are e.g. C: or
Double click the appropriate folder then again until you get to the files
You should see a size column which is specified in KB.

The conversion is:

1024KB = 1MB
1024MB = 1GB
and 1024GB = lots and lots!

Alternatively right click the folder with your data in, select Properties and look for the Size there.

Do I right click on the folder and > send to my hotmail a/c

Easiest way to do this would be to log into your hotmail / gmail account, create a new email, type your email address in the To field and attach the the file(s).

Instead of attaching two dozen files manually however, you could create a "zipped" file which is basically a copy of the files you select placed into one file. To create this hightlight the files (after navigating to them in My Computer) right click and select Send To then Compressed (zipped) Folder

Double clicking this newly created .zip file will show you all your previous documents. It's like a wrapper if you will.

10past6

David, the above part I'm OK with.

Deleted_User wrote: »

Easiest way to do this would be to log into your hotmail account, create a new email, type your email address in the To field and attach the the file(s)

Humm, OK, do you mean send an email to myself whilst in my hotmail a/c?

Deleted_User wrote: »

Instead of attaching two dozen files manually however, you could create a "zipped" file which is basically a copy of the files you select placed into one file. To create this hightlight the files (after navigating to them in My Computer) right click and select Send To then Compressed (zipped) Folder

If I understand this correctly, all the folders I have, I put into one folder, then use C: to access that folder, then right click and send to my hotmail account.

Deleted_User wrote: »

Double clicking this newly created .zip file will show you all your previous documents. It's like a wrapper if you will.

I've not got to understand that bit yet :rotfl:

[Deleted User]

10past6 wrote: »

Humm, OK, do you mean send an email to myself whilst in my hotmail a/c?

Exactly. You're simply sending an email to yourself so it sits in your inbox, on their servers far far away. Whenever you need it it'll, in theory, be right where you left it.

10past6 wrote: »

If I understand this correctly, all the folders I have, I put into one folder, then use C: to access that folder, then right click and send to my hotmail account.

Unfortunately with hotmail there doesn't seem to be an easy way to highlight or select mutiple files to attach to an email. So you'd need to select one, click okay, wait, select another and so on. To get around this I was suggesting to zip the files, or folders for that matter, into 1 file. You can either try and follow my advice above or Microsofts official guide is at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306531

Or maybe easier on the eyes is: http://www.uwyo.edu/askit/displaydoc.asp?askitdocid=244&parentid=1

10past6 wrote: »

I've not got to understand that bit yet :rotfl:

I was just saying that to get at the files or folders within this "zipped" single file all you need to do is double click. Then you can drag and drop or do whatever to the files within.