External Storage - USB?

Kaye1

Very helpful thread, thanks to everyone and OP. After listening to Radio 2 today about what 'cloud' storage is, I have been prompted to sort out back-up, so this has been very useful.

Infidel

Wow, looking at the date of this thread made me realise what a procrastinator I've been as I still haven't bought any back-up.

I guess it's partly down to the fact that I'm quite old skool, as in actually prefer face-to-face contact - and so have an actual physical place to go back to should there be any problems with merchandise.

Anyway, I'd better get onto it very soon.

droopsnoot

Currys / PC World sell a reasonable range of USB hard disks and memory devices, and I think USB sticks are in a fair number of supermarkets as well. You often pay a bit more (for example, Currys asking price for a 16Gb USB stick is the same as ebuyer want for a 32Gb, including delivery) but if you value the face to face aspect, then unfortunately you often have to pay a bit extra.

gjchester

Infidel wrote: »

Wow, looking at the date of this thread made me realise what a procrastinator I've been as I still haven't bought any back-up.

I guess it's partly down to the fact that I'm quite old skool, as in actually prefer face-to-face contact - and so have an actual physical place to go back to should there be any problems with merchandise.

Anyway, I'd better get onto it very soon.

Local Tesco had 500GB drives for £40 and 1TB for £50.
I realise it may not be cheap as an "item" and there may be cheaper online (but not a huge amount maybe a tenner at most) but trust me its a lot cheaper than the multi hundreds that a recovery company will charge you.

Frankly very few companies will solve an issue there and then for you if you have a problem, they'll all send it back to the maker.

Nilrem

If you're after a usb hard drive keep an eye on Amazon at the likes of the Seagate "Backup" drives, I picked up a 5tb one a couple of months back for about £110, and they're varying in price (it's pretty much as fast as my internal drives).

But for a proper backup you need two copies (or more).

Personally I tend to use a combination of HDD based, flash memory, and disc based for my backup routine.
Files that don't get changed much/at all tend to get burned to DVDR or BDR, labelled and filed away, as well as copies on an internal and external drive (and about once a year I'll do a new DVD/BD copy if it's reasonably important - I've never lost an internal and external drive too quickly in succession to have not done a copy to a new one).
Files that get changed regularly get copied to a second hard drive, with an occasional copy to a flash drive as well.
Files that aren't that important but would be annoying if I had to find them again tend to just be backed up onto a drive.

DVDR/BDR has a big advantage in that if you get a nasty virus it's unlikely to be able to do anything to them, an external drive (USB or Flash) can have that advantage to a degree as long as it's not connected when you're infected.

for things like photo's I've taken I also tend to just buy a new SD card when the current one is full, and file that away labelled. So for my photo's I tend to have:
The original files on the memory card they were taken with, a copy on my computer in a folder before they've been sorted/named, a folder on my computer (on a different internal drive) where they've been sorted/named. a folder on an external drive sorted and named, and finally DVDR or BDR copies of those folders.

Emails (and other important files) likewise tend to get copied and archived every month or so, with copies going onto a second drive, getting rar'd (with a password), then the passworded rar file getting put on flash memory.

"My documents" gets copied to an external drive every couple of months (individual files that are important get copied far more often), and every 6 months or so I'll burn an archive copy to BDR's - something that has saved me in the past when 12 months later I've realised I need a file I deleted ages ago.

The big issue imo is remembering to do the backups (try and get into the habit of doing them on a set day - say the first Sunday of the month), and keeping track of them, labelling discs/memory sticks is a must.

Anne_Marie_2

Infidel wrote: »

Wow, looking at the date of this thread made me realise what a procrastinator I've been as I still haven't bought any back-up.

I guess it's partly down to the fact that I'm quite old skool, as in actually prefer face-to-face contact - and so have an actual physical place to go back to should there be any problems with merchandise.

Anyway, I'd better get onto it very soon.

Stop procrastinating now! Just go and buy, before you do actually lose your precious documents and photographs.
I've bought most of mine through Amazon, with no trouble whatsoever. Also bought a couple from Tesco, again have had no problems so have never had to return. (Yes, I have quite a few portable drives, I'm very much a belts and braces sort. )

Only problem I have ever had was with an external hard drive which died on me. This was due to the problems with power that we had been having, really low voltage and power cuts. (I'm not in the UK, so shouldn't be a problem there). So, always have gone for portable since then. Luckily, I had stored my stuff on another drive, so nothing lost.

anotheruser

mac.d wrote: »

...and also take advantage of some cloud storage too.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this already.

Both Google and Microsoft offer free online storage (varying sizes), so you could easily have two online storages for double back up.

Plus, there's no reason why you can't have more than one online account to have extra backup space if needed.

While Hard Drives are preferable, within the next 10 years, cloud storage will be the norm. Why store something yourself when you could have it stored in a temperature controlled room, with backups being made automatically by the company?

Oblivion

anotheruser wrote: »

While Hard Drives are preferable, within the next 10 years, cloud storage will be the norm. Why store something yourself when you could have it stored in a temperature controlled room, with backups being made automatically by the company?

... with hackers stealing all your data.

Cyberman60

I use a Toshiba 500Gb 2.5 inch SATA hard drive which cost about 35 quid from PC World on a USB inside a docking device (external casing) that cost me a couple of quid on Ebay.

The beauty of this is that the drive will be a replacement for my current hard drive in my laptop when it eventually packs up.

gjchester

anotheruser wrote: »

While Hard Drives are preferable, within the next 10 years, cloud storage will be the norm.

A Lovely turn of phrase by the respected security blogger Graham Cluley....
Whenever someone says "cloud", change the words to "someone else's computer" and see if its still so appealing.
So in this case (with a minor grammatical fix) think of it as

While Hard Drives are preferable, within the next 10 years, storing your data on someone else's computer will be the norm.

Suddenly cloud does not look so appealing if you want to keep anything private.