Choosing a new external hard drive?

TUVOK

I have a HP Z210 Workstation Pc and running an external Seagate Free Agent (500Gb capacity) hard drive.
I've recently read that hard drives deteriorate with about 3-5 years use, mine is ell over that and is also full.

My query is how do I select a drive which is compatible with my Pc for connections/plugs and also I believe SATA sizes, my knowledge of PC's is limited so I'm struggling and don't want to go to a shop and be fobbed off with the wrong drive.
I will be looking for a drive with 1 to 2T capacity.

One other query is how do you transfer the info from my existing drive to the new one? do you just conect the two drives to the PC and send info from one to the other or ???

Any help would be most appreciated.
Thank you.

Carrot007

TUVOK said:

I have a HP Z210 Workstation Pc and running an external Seagate Free Agent (500Gb capacity) hard drive.
I've recently read that hard drives deteriorate with about 3-5 years use, mine is ell over that and is also full.

How much do you actualy use the external? IE is it plugged in on on all the time. If not life may be left. Anyway multiple backups are always better so use the old one as anopther level!

TUVOK said:

My query is how do I select a drive which is compatible with my Pc for connections/plugs and also I believe SATA sizes, my knowledge of PC's is limited so I'm struggling and don't want to go to a shop and be fobbed off with the wrong drive.
I will be looking for a drive with 1 to 2T capacity.

Well they will all be USB. I prefer ones witha  USB(3) A on the drive too becuase with some of the  onn connectors it can be hard to find a cable! (Only reasonable alternative to A conenctors is USB C but only you will know if that is a good Idea! I only have one C on my dekstop and it's at teh back so A it is!

With a low capacity as you sugest I am assuming you want it powereded though USB as well?

I would recopmend amazon not going to a shop though.

TUVOK said:

One other query is how do you transfer the info from my existing drive to the new one? do you just conect the two drives to the PC and send info from one to the other or ???

Yes.

I would recomend https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07DQ91XNK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 and given the price a lower capcity one seems silly.

getmore4less

What internal drives do you have?

Might as well review all your storage requirements.

Not for everyone WD have good deals on refurb

[Deleted User]

The money saving answer is carry on using the drive until it fails. No point arbitrability replacing a drive because you have read 3-5 years is typical life. I've had drives that lasted between 1 month to 10+ years.

Price per storage unit generally falls over time, so buying a replacement before you need it is not money saving, and of course prices are up a bit on hard drives at the moment for various reasons.

When the drive fails, you simply buy a new one and restore the data from your backup copy.

Of course if you have run out of space then that is a valid reason for upgrading. The only other reason would be to take advantage of higher performance specifications.

You have said it is full so I'll assume that is your reason for replacing it, but you also need to budget for increased backup space now, whether that is online cloud space or a second drive to back it up to, so I assume you are looking to buy 2 drives?

IvanOpinion

Just to throw another option into the mix.  Consider using cloud storage instead. I know it isn't necessarily particularly money saving, since it will be a bit more expensive, but it comes with additional benefits.

You could probably move a lot of infrequently accessed stuff into the cloud freeing up space on your current hard disk.  With many you can set up automatic backups and some provide revision history etc.

grumpycrab

TUVOK said:

I have  an external Seagate Free Agent (500Gb capacity) hard drive and is full.

The obvious question, is there anything on this drive that IS NOT anywhere else?  OR is there anything on Pc that needs backing up?  If the answer to either question is yes, then you need the new drive asap.

Carrot007

grumpycrab said:

The obvious question, is there anything on this drive that IS NOT anywhere else?  OR is there anything on Pc that needs backing up?  If the answer to either question is yes, then you need the new drive asap.

I stopped everything as my backup strategy years ago. Completely pointless with the ammount of data I have! May be good for OP though with that little, or people too lazy to differentiate! If it's out there on the internet and easy to find that is my backup (and much is probably not needed anyway (I am a data hoarder, I have a problem ;-) ). Just backing up the important things many times is much more usefull.