External Hard Drives

luckymoneysaver

OP you need to decide on the size of drive you want. then if it was me, id just look for the cheapest one. probably from an ebay seller (reputable one with a propper shop) or amazon/ebuyer etc.

Strider590

hethmar wrote: »

Could I jump in please?

(Techi dumbo here). What external (simple) hard drive is there which would save info automatically please?

Lot's of the drives in the shops do this (and I think that's where they start to fall over), they have a big button on the front that does your backups, but this method is very crude.
Me personally I write batch files (DOS script) to back up and organise my files because I may only want to back up certain file types, or organise files into alphabetical folders, backup into dated folders so that I have a backup history or even just clone a drive onto another drive.

Plarkster

I agree with Strider590 - there are a number of drives with an automatic backup feature, whether it's a button on the unit or software to install but they're not always that good or configurable.

For me, the key thing is keeping your files organised - it then makes it a breeze to back things up. It's well worth spending some time going through and organising your files and folder structure and you'll probably find that there's not that many important things you need to backup anyway, so you can keep them in a separate folder and just drag and drop it to your external drive every week or however often you want to make a backup.

hethmar

Its mostly correspondence, photos and some documents (including family history) that I want to ensure is safe. Dell data safe is useless so Ive dumped it as I was never sure it was backing up or not. Id like to have something here that I can turn to immediately should I ever have to.

Many thanks for your help.

Plarkster

That's the thing I don't like about these automatic options - they don't always alert you if they've failed so you have to trust it blindly, only to find out one day when you need the backup that it hasn't worked! Therefore, you have to check periodically that it has backed up everything correctly and if you do that you might as well manually make a backup instead!

Make a backup and see how long it takes - if it's only a few minutes you can do them as and when needed. If it takes a while, it might be a case of starting it before you go to bed or work and leaving things to copy over - Windows always alerts you if the copy process can't be completed so you'll know if there's a problem.

Another option is to store things online - I often save things as attachments in gmail to keep a backup, or use Picasa to make a photo gallery - you can set it to private if you don't want people to see them.

Richie-from-the-Boro

hethmar wrote: »

Its mostly correspondence, photos and some documents (including family history) that I want to ensure is safe. Dell data safe is useless so Ive dumped it as I was never sure it was backing up or not. Id like to have something here that I can turn to immediately should I ever have to.

Many thanks for your help.

The only dependable / reliable [ and properly so ] backup system is yourself !

Win7 for example has a two click ( * ) backup from within ( ** ) windows that is foolproof and can be restored ( *** ) from DOS

- * put a second internal HDD in your puter or a USB external drive, and Win7 will automatically find it for you and offer to back up to it.

- *** because it works from within Win7 and makes your life easy people can / will use it even as I do on a weekly basis.

- *** unlike most of the so called USB backup / restore drives Win7 will restore from DOS in the event of totally catastrophic failure.

If your doing a weekly backup per the above changing the UAC settings will allow you to delete the old / redundant backups to save space.

Each and every time you back up Win7 will ask you if you want to make a restore disk, you must make one to restore from DOS - you only need to make one once

hethmar

Many thanks but I have Vista. I think may be a few memory sticks or something may be the easiest thing for me to follow

I wish I understood it all like you guys

Richie-from-the-Boro

hethmar wrote: »

Many thanks but I have Vista. I think may be a few memory sticks or something may be the easiest thing for me to follow

I wish I understood it all like you guys

Long time since I used Vista, but it's very similar to Win7, read this depending on your version of Vista you already have a WinVista Backup

spud17

hethmar wrote: »

Many thanks but I have Vista. I think may be a few memory sticks or something may be the easiest thing for me to follow

I wish I understood it all like you guys

Hey,I'm an old(ish) git, and have only relatively recently got into this sort of stuff.

But first off,

Have you read the sticky?

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/597170

Also check out Syncback , scroll down to get the free one.

You can chose which folders to back up, when (manual/schedule), and to where.

And for Plarkster, if an auto backup fails, it automatically opens the error log in your favourite browser.

Plarkster

spud17 wrote: »

And for Plarkster, if an auto backup fails, it automatically opens the error log in your favourite browser.

Lol - sounds like Syncback has the right idea. I still prefer to backup manually but for someone looking for an automated solution it's worth a look.