External hard drives

romo_2

My laptop is on the way out and I can't afford a new one, however I have about 5 years worth of photos and music i'm desperate not to loose.

Can anyone reccomend what size hard drive I might need, how much it's likely to be and where the best place to get it might be.

Thanks very much

gonzo127

the simple question is how big of a hard drive does your laptop have already? any portable hard drive bigger than that will be more than enough

however i am interested on how you know your laptop is on the way out? most of the time (if its hardware failure) it is either alive or its dead, there is usually very little inbetween

however if it is software related there will usualy be a way to keep you system working

anyways to answer your question, my usualy first port of call is ebuyer for electricals

kwikbreaks

That depends on how big your laptop drive is and how many photos you've stored on it.

What size to get also depends on whether you go for a cheaper 3.5 inch one which come with external power adaptors or a 2.5 inch one which tend to run off USB power (often using two ports).

You will almost certainly have no space problems whichever you buy as a 5 year old laptop is likely to have a 40GB drive tops and even the 2.5 inch ones start at around 80GB these days.

A cheap 3.5 drive will cost ~ £50-60 and hold 1TB of data. Same price will probably buy 320GB 2.5 inch one.

I always check prices against Amazon as their free delivery means they are often the cheapest these days.

closed

Burn them to dvd, and then post details of why you think it's on it's way out

mrsdarbs

We have this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Buffalo-AirStation-Nfiniti-Wireless-N-WLI-UC-AG300N/dp/B001D9KULQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=computers&qid=1289995151&sr=8-4

It's great, it is expensive, but was a gift to us. It has soooo many videos and photos on it as well as all my business stuff and a load of movies and there's still room on it.

closed

have you got 2 or more copies of all that data (external hard disks fail and can get infected too).

spike7451

I have a little seagate USB external drive I bought from Argos for £40 including a free case for it.It's the size of a cassette tape & is 250GB. I keep all my movies & music on it for when I go away with the TA,saves me carting loads of cd's & dvd's with me!
It's quiet,plug & play & good value too!

mrsdarbs

closed wrote: »

have you got 2 or more copies of all that data (external hard disks fail and can get infected too).

Not for all of it. some is still on my laptop and I'm in the process of burning pictures to discs! lol

I got stung years ago when my main pc broke - motherboard failed or something and pc world couldn't retrieve anything! Ever since then I've tried to back stuff up, but getting a bit lax at it!

Thank you - cos you've jsut given me the kick up the bum to get back on to it!

mrsdarbs

spike7451 wrote: »

I have a little seagate USB external drive I bought from Argos for £40 including a free case for it.It's the size of a cassette tape & is 250GB. I keep all my movies & music on it for when I go away with the TA,saves me carting loads of cd's & dvd's with me!
It's quiet,plug & play & good value too!

That sounds like one my hubby has for when he is away with the army, but I don't know what size it is or anything - I know he has quite a few movies on there though.

spike7451

mrsdarbs wrote: »

That sounds like one my hubby has for when he is away with the army, but I don't know what size it is or anything - I know he has quite a few movies on there though.

Great minds & all that!:D

gonzo127

mrsdarbs wrote: »

Not for all of it. some is still on my laptop and I'm in the process of burning pictures to discs! lol

I got stung years ago when my main pc broke - motherboard failed or something and pc world couldn't retrieve anything! Ever since then I've tried to back stuff up, but getting a bit lax at it!

Thank you - cos you've jsut given me the kick up the bum to get back on to it!

although i still say back everything up yourself the highlighted bit is where you went wrong previously as they are useless

and it also throws doubt on if it was actually your motherboard since that is generally what they always say has broken! and do not ever seem to check anything else, personally i wouldnt take a 'broken' computer to PC world if they paid me