External hard drive

Oddjob

I'm not going to laugh because that's the sort of thing I would do, format my existing hard drive or something similar!!

andy2004

well, i manage to get back all 100% of the data on the drive i formatted luckily, or if not all it was in the high 90's, 99.9-98%
which is why i now have 3 x2tb's one i bought when i bought my new pc motherboard bundle, which i managed to fill, then the 1.5tb WD went bad so had to buy another 2tb drive, which I then formatted, so HAD to buy a 3rd to recover to.
My other hdds are filled, the samsung 1.5tb is filled with a recovery from the first 1.5tb that went bad still need to get around to going through that data. some of it i've deleted, but still around 1tb to go through.
I dont like deleting movies especially if they are good movies and when the footballs/olympics/tennis pretty much any sport and the movies on tv are repeats which i've seen more than 5times. gives me something else to watch.
And hdd's work out cheaper than dvd;s currently hence the reason i stopped buying DVD-R, the last offer i had on DVD-R where £3.50 for 50. now cant buy any for under a £7.50

donnysan

I highly recommend the buffalo technologies drives. They're easy to set up and are ideally suited for backup purposes. I bought a 1 terabyte drive about 5 years ago and still use it today to backup all of my data files.

Go to amazon and search for: buffalo technology nas.

Oddjob wrote: »

Hello, hoping someone can give me advice.

I want to buy a hard drive to back up my pc and laptop. I was thinking of 1tb? so that I can hopefully get two copies of each, ie, a new one and an older one, just in case!! I also want to be able to make a copy of the programs etc. so that if either has to be reformatted and restored, I can get it back to more or less what it was.

Do back up software programs, such as macrium which I have seen recommended on here let you copy programs, favourites etc? I never use Outlook for email so have no emails stored on disc - use Yahoo.

Can you recommend a good make of hard drive to buy, I was looking at one of those clickfree things but there has been another post on here a few weeks ago where people were more or less saying not to bother with it.
If I go for an ordinary hard drive, presumably I would also need a caddy for it.
I was thinking of perhaps a Seagate? Are they a good brand to get?

TIA

Pikeyp

I believe there are only 3 independent hard drive manufacturers now ...

Seagate
Western Digital
Toshiba

There was a buyout going on earlier in the year ... and who knows , there might have been others since!!

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5635/western-digital-to-sell-hitachis-35-hard-drive-business-to-toshiba-complete-hitachi-buyout

andy2004

seagate owns maxtor and samsung
Western Digital owns Hitachi
not sure about toshiba

MoneySavingUser

for who owns who see this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Diagram_of_Hard_Disk_Drive_Manufacturer_Consolidation.svg

I have just ordered this: http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/wd-elements-se-portable-hard-drive-usb-3-0-1tb-black-free-case-for-64-delivered-1282464?page=3

follow40

The best site to look for anything like had drives etc... is hot uk deals.

I just bought this one:

google the following


Hitachi 1TB - USB 3.0 - 2.5" Portable Hard Drive £62.98 @ Dabs

I prefer the USB powered ones as the ones you have to plug in are just a nuisance.

Oddjob

Thanks guys.

Having to wait until payday to get one. I am now actually thinking of getting two, one for the laptop and one for the pc rather that one to put backups of both on. Any important stuff like photos etc are copied onto both pc and laptop anyway.

Then I shall no doubt be on here asking for help to back up

andy2004

pc syncing software should help with that, you could tell it which folders to check on the laptop / pc and then just sync to the external and you could tell it when to do it, nightly, daily, weekly,
Personally i would prefer to do it manually, then i know whats been copied and where and know i have it backed up.
even if i did have 5 copies of the same file could always use duplicate cleaner to remove the copies

garynuman

Acronis are currently running a BOGOF for "True Image Home 2012" (£39)

This is a superb piece of kit. It can be setup for scheduled backups or runs a real-time backup whilst running in the background.

I have 2 licences.

Gaz