External Hard Drive

fenlander_uk

The double connecter is to allow a second USB connection on systems where the power available from a single socket is not enough to power the drive. It is not usually needed, so you can leave the second plug (usually the one on a shorter cable) unconnected.

For backup, I'd endorse Syncback free. It's one of the great free pieces of software available. I also had bad experiences with SyncToy.

Oblivion

Party_Animal wrote: »

Just plugged this in. There are 2 USB connectors. I assume they both need to be connected. There are no instructions and when I look in "my computer" it isn't recognising the drive. Am I doing something wrong? The red light below the on switch on the tower is flashing as if something's happening.
Thanks

If it's not showing up in My Computer, it's quite possible it's a Raw disk that needs to be Initialised and then Formatted. Have a look at this and scroll down to where it describes doing this in Computer Management ... it's not half as daunting as it sounds .....

http://www.overclock.net/t/1227647/how-to-initialize-and-format-a-new-disk-for-use-in-windows

Party_Animal

Thanks, just plugged the printer out from the USB port at the rear and plugged the drive in there. It's picking it up there. Must be a problem with the front ports. Tried downloading Syncback free but somehow I've ended up with SE and a request for a product code. I'll uninstall and try again.

Wammer

What's the difference betwen Syncback Free and Macrium Reflect?

I have been using Macrium Reflect to back up, but Syncback Free seems to have a lot of fans.

closed

full system restore (or individual file/folders) is simple with disk imaging software like macrium.

hard disk fails, windows won't boot, machine gets infected with a worm that deletes or enrypts all jpg's, syncing goes wrong or sync's an unintended deletion, is when you find out the inadequacies of automatically syncing or manual copying of data to an external drive.

whichever you choose, burn a copy of important data to dvd as well

fenlander_uk

Macrium is good for making disk images so that you can restore a full operating system.

If you have your pc organised right, you will have your operating system on one drive and your data on another. You can then use something like Macrium to back up the OS and your working data can be mirrored to a back-up disk using Syncback. This can be done very quickly - much more convenient than running a full backup.

Syncback will sychronise or mirror folders of your choice from your local hard disk to an external disk, cloud storage, a network drive or a website via ftp.

victor2

I_have_spoken wrote: »

Windows Backup and Restore Center (depending on version installed!)

The backup tool on Windows 7 is very good. I use it for an automated daily backup of my data to another drive. Very fast because it just does an incremental backup of what has changed on most days. Eventually (about once a month in my case) it decides a full backup is required, which does take a few hours for about 50Gb of data.
Windows 8 has replaced it with "File History". A step backwards by Microsoft in many people's opinions, but it does kind-of work.

Of course, if your house burnt down, or burglars took both the main computer and the backup drive, it's all gone.
For that, consider an online backup. I have all my (irreplaceable) pictures on Google Drive. 15Gb of storage for free. It's good enough for my needs.