Portable Hard Drive

csarina

I do a lot of machine embroidery, saving the designs onto the hard disc, but I have got so many I would like to get an external hard drive for my lap top so I can store the designs seperately from the rest of my stuff. I do bak them up to a disc as well, having had the hard drive fail twice in my laptop.

Any suggestions for a reasonably priced external hard drive, one that does not require a lot of complicated setting up etc?????......as the sales are on I am hoping to pick one up.

I am running Windows Vista Home premuim.

Oblivion

I think a Fujitsu Handydrive would be ideal for your needs. I own two in 300GB and 500GB sizes. They are beautifully designed, very compact and power themselves from your USB drive. I got mine from Amazon ...

LINK to Amazon search.

Dave.

[Deleted User]

How about one of these? http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/-/2144/1411/-/6364662/Philips-SPD5230CC-160GB-Hi-Speed-USB-2-5-External-Hard-Drive/Product.html?searchtype=genre

40 quid for 160gb... to 'set it up' you just plug it into your PC's USB socket

Stompa

How much space do you need? I'd have guessed (though could well be wrong!) that such designs wouldn't be all that large - so a flash drive might be an option?

Oblivion

Stompa wrote: »

How much space do you need? I'd have guessed (though could well be wrong!) that such designs wouldn't be all that large - so a flash drive might be an option?

I'd agree that is a cheaper option Stompa. Sandisk 16GB USB flash drive for just £16 (click on blue text to link) is great value and may well be big enough for the OP's needs. Since this seems to be the OP's first purchase of external storage for a laptop, I still think a high capacity hard drive makes more sense because of all that extra space available to make backups of the entire laptop hard drive.

Dave.

csarina

Unfortunately a flash can fail and you have lost the designs, some of them are quite big.......I use a flash drive to transfer the information from the computer to the machine, although I could do it dorect but its a bit of a faff.

I back my designs up onto disc, but then I have to sort through to find what I am looking for which can be time consuming.
Hence the query about an external hard drive.

csarina

Oblivion,

Having had 2 hard drives fail, a back up external drive is the best option. I already have 3 flash drives. I cannot use a larger one than 2GB it takes too long to load the info into the machine..... I wll have a look at the ones suggested, thank you.

Stompa

csarina wrote: »

Unfortunately a flash can fail and you have lost the designs.....

So can an external drive. Whatever you decide, make sure you have backups.

csarina

Thats why I put the designs onto a disc as well. In the past I have been so glad of those discs......

verloren

csarina wrote: »

Oblivion,

Having had 2 hard drives fail, a back up external drive is the best option. I already have 3 flash drives. I cannot use a larger one than 2GB it takes too long to load the info into the machine

The size of the drive shouldn't affect how long it takes to copy a single pattern across - are you copying the whole lot across before sifting through? If so that increases your risk of data loss (slightly), and wastes time, as you can just sift through them on the external drive.