External Hard Drive - advice please

castle96

Looking to the future, I think I ought to have one of these... just in case computer goes down (6 years old now), I will have all the 'data' stored. It is mainly photos and letters/documents that I would wish to keep hold of.
What exactly does an external hard drive download when you connect it ? Everything that is on the computer, or can you select what to transfer ?
Any recommendations ? Minimal capacity would do me. Do I leave it plugged in and it just transfers new stuff over ?
Would this be OK
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/4292223.htm

or less capacity (and 1/2 the price, ) this
http://www.amazon.co.uk/External-Portable-SILVER-Pocket-Software/dp/B007GWMZJE/ref=sr_1_6?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1453808991&sr=1-6&keywords=1tb+external+hard+drive

any recs/advice grateful. thanks

pappa_golf

buy the WD one from argos , the other one,s return/warrenty looks a bit iffy


size wise , think of your home freezer , wished you had bought a bigger one now?


copy full directories over to portable drive then remove and store safely

London50

I agree with above, the bigger the better IMO. Most are plug and play so just transfer the bits you want to keep use safe removal and store it away until you get more to transfer. Personally I have a spare 1tb and a 2tb ready to use as I store a lot of music and films on my ones

esuhl

castle96 wrote: »

Looking to the future, I think I ought to have one of these... just in case computer goes down (6 years old now), I will have all the 'data' stored. It is mainly photos and letters/documents that I would wish to keep hold of.
What exactly does an external hard drive download when you connect it ? Everything that is on the computer, or can you select what to transfer ?
Any recommendations ? Minimal capacity would do me. Do I leave it plugged in and it just transfers new stuff over ?
Would this be OK
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/4292223.htm

or less capacity (and 1/2 the price, ) this
http://www.amazon.co.uk/External-Portable-SILVER-Pocket-Software/dp/B007GWMZJE/ref=sr_1_6?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1453808991&sr=1-6&keywords=1tb+external+hard+drive

any recs/advice grateful. thanks

Downloading is the process of requesting data from a server over a network, so with a locally-attached drive you'll be copying or moving or imaging data.

As for what it copies, it's a bit like putty a floppy disk in your PC (if you remember those?). What gets copied to the floppy? Well, nothing at all unless you tell it.

You can simply copy files from your internal drive to the external one (by dragging/dropping or copying/pasting in Windows Explorer), or you can use a helper program (like FreeFileSync) to copy the files, or a disk imaging program which can backup a whole partition and store it as a proprietary image file.

As far as drive recommendations go, in all my years, I've found Western Digital (WD) drives to be most reliable. I have the same WD Passport drive you linked to above and it works really well.

castle96

Many thanks for that

vuvuzela

castle96 wrote: »

Many thanks for that

Make sure you don't actually transfer things over, do a copy of important data. Then you've got it in 2 places in case 1 fails, not just replacing one single point of failure with another...

pinkteapot

If possible, store it outside the house. Mine lives in my desk drawer at work (lockable) - buried away at the back. If there was a fire/burglary, it'd be safe.

I take it home every 3 months and copy the documents, photos, videos etc folders from the PC to the drive. I just use it like a massive USB stick and manually copy when I want to. Some of them do come with software which you may be able to set up to copy automatically?

I got this one:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Passport-Ultra-Premium-Portable/dp/B00Y0R9D6G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453826860&sr=8-1&keywords=wd+passport+1tb

For documents, you could also use a cloud service like Dropbox. For documents alone, a free account gets you plenty of space. You have a folder called 'Dropbox' on your PC and files in it are still stored locally on your PC. You save documents there, instead of in 'My Documents'. Anytime you update one, it's automatically copied to the Dropbox servers. If you have more than one computer and you update that file on one, the new version is automatically copied to the other next time you start it up. Even with only one computer, this has the benefit of the latest version of the file always being in Dropbox.

googler

castle96 wrote: »

What exactly does an external hard drive download when you connect it ? Everything that is on the computer, or can you select what to transfer ?

Think of it as a filing cabinet that you've brought into the house.

What gets filed in the filing cabinet? Nothing, until you actually pick up a file and put it there.

Yes, you can and should select what to copy to it.

You can determine the size you need by looking at the properties of the data you want to copy, and establishing what the total file size is. Then get one that's a good deal larger to allow for future growth.

pmartin86

If you're looking at 2 drives, one of 8gb and one of 1Tb (1000~gb) the first thing you really need to do is assess exactly what you want to backup, and the size of it. Do you want a full PC clone? or do you just want to save your cat pictures and funny memes that youve downloaded? Depending on exactly what you want to do, the product (and possibe associated software) can vary massivly. Fell free to PM me if you want an in-depth chat about things.

Regards
Paul

castle96

thanks. Bought a WD Elements 500gb.

Cannot find 'Cloud' on my computer - HP Pavilion a 6421.

I keep eg photos, in folders.
Q - I copy folder now. Then I add to it later. Will HD just 'take up' the 'new' photos, or all, again ?

agrinnall

There are ways of doing incremental backups (incremental refers to things that have changed since the last backup) but I think you'll need software to do it. Unless you have vast amounts of data I find it simpler just to copy everything each time, and when you start to run out of room on the HD just delete some old copies. The way I do it is to create a new folder on the HD named Data Copy 160127 (or whatever he current date is) and paste the copied date into there.