Reliable External Hard Drive

superscaper

Reiki_Sue wrote: »

Avoid Maxtor One touch 4 - had mine a year and half and only did about 6 backups and now the cable & plug doesn't work and nothing registers on my main pc or my laptop. So tried another universal cable & plug and that too doesn't work. Lights are on on Maxtor but no ones at home - unless anyone has any suggestions?

Thanks
Sue

Have you tried it on another computer? If still not working then sounds like the hard drive has had it in which case if it's still covered by warranty contact Maxtor. If it's no longer covered by warranty then get it replaced at the retailer you bought it from.

Davesnave

How about buying a flash drive, say 8 -16GB, to double protect the really important back ups? Some places 'abroad' have temperatures & huimidity that can do funny things to DVDs, but I guess it depends where it is.

Leopard

Davesnave wrote: »

How about buying a flash drive, say 8 -16GB, to double protect the really important back ups? Some places 'abroad' have temperatures & huimidity that can do funny things to DVDs, but I guess it depends where it is.

Unwarranted assumptions made in advice posted on threads are the bane of this and many other forums.

Nevertheless, may I make so bold as to suggest that since the OP has made no further postings since signing off this thread over eighteen months ago - to go abroad (or even 'abroad') imminently - the tendering, now, of further counsel to him/her on a question posed in December of 2007 will not be compellingly helpful?

andy2004

if going for a 2.5in drive, make sure its NOT a fujitsu, whilst there 3.5in drives are good there 2.5in drives are rubbish, in the past year i've had to replace 3 laptop harddrives because they died, all 3 laptops had 1 thing in common, they all had fujitsu harddrives, replaced with seagate 2.5in drives.

Davesnave

Leopard wrote: »

Unwarranted assumptions made in advice posted on threads are the bane of this and many other forums.

Nevertheless, may I make so bold as to suggest that since the OP has made no further postings since signing off this thread over eighteen months ago - to go abroad (or even 'abroad') imminently - the tendering, now, of further counsel to him/her on a question posed in December of 2007 will not be compellingly helpful?

No 'unwarranted assumption;' merely a suggestion made in passing.

I read recently that this kind of cyber-bullying is common on the techie forum. It’s particularly ironic that the comment was made in one of the more ‘robust’ areas of the site which, because of its nature, is hidden to those not logged-in.

Mr Leopard, your post tells me little about the subject matter, but it speaks reams about you.;)

financequest

Maplins have several external drives, some are 2.5" USB (powered by USB, but slower speed 5400rpm usually, and smaller capacity 100-250 gig typically). The others are 3.5" (have a separate power supply, higher speed, 7200rpm, and much higher capacities 500-1000 gig or more. The price per gig will be far lower for the bigger drives. I back my laptop up regularly, and keep several generations of these backups on my external 750gig 3.5" drive. I use a smaller 2'5" USB HDD for photos, videos, MP3 etc

BritRael

I would definately recommend the 2.5" USB drives, for cost, reliablity and portability. I have 3 of these; 80gb, 320gb and 400gb (a Western Digital), the first of which I got over 5 years ago in the Yemen and its still going strong. As I work in the Middle East (so heat and humidity hasn't been a problem for me), I mainly use them for storing my DVD movies and music on, which saves me humping tons of discs everywhere.
Years ago, I used to use USB pen drives, but due to the high cost/low space (relative to the 2.5" drives) I never use them now.

Strider590

pgilc1 wrote: »

Stick to the main brands - i'd recommend Western Digital, Maxtor, Freecom, Seagate, etc. I'd also recommend you look for a 2.5 inch drive as they dont need an external power supply and are much smaller and lighter.

The main brands have all had issues with drive failures and tend to use cheap drives and cheap enclosures... Your far better off putting your own together with a good quality 5400RPM drive.
5400rpm is more than enough as the USB transfer rate is the choke point, not the drive speed. Plus 5400rpm drives stay cooler and last longer.

Mine is running 24/7, its a Samsung Spinpoint F2 ecogreen 5400rpm 500GB and an Antec MX-1 actively cooled enclosure.... Cost about £80-£90 in total, at the time I could have brought a main brand 1TB drive for that money (or even a bit less), but I NEED absolute solid reliability, this drive has to be used 24/7.

Don't go for 2.5" if your looking for reliability, these tend to take a right kicking in daily use and they're not exactly very sturdy. Not to mention if your laptop crashes so does the drive, as power is drawn via the USB port = Risk of data loss (albeit fairly small risk).

prowla

I think the WD MyBook units are mirrored, meaning that your data is stored identically on two drives so that when one of the drives fails your data is still all there (and when you replace the failed drive it will be "synced" up to give you the mirrored data again).

But basically, if you store your data in one place only then you are going to lose it when (not if) the drive fails.

I try and keep two (or even three) copies of important data.

Leopard

Davesnave wrote: »

No 'unwarranted assumption;' merely a suggestion made in passing.

I read recently that this kind of cyber-bullying is common on the techie forum. It’s particularly ironic that the comment was made in one of the more ‘robust’ areas of the site which, because of its nature, is hidden to those not logged-in.

Mr Leopard, your post tells me little about the subject matter, but it speaks reams about you.;)

Davesnave,

The "unwarranted assumption" to which I was referring was the presumption I was about to make, myself, in my own next sentence: namely, that if the OP had written eighteen months ago that he/she was intending imminently to move abroad and had not been heard from since, I was proposing to make the breathtakingly unsubstantiated speculation that it might be unpropitious to give further advice, in July of 2009, to an OP who was emigrating in December of 2007.

Leopard wrote: »

Unwarranted assumptions made in advice posted on threads are the bane of this and many other forums.

Nevertheless, may I make so bold as to suggest that since the OP has made no further postings since signing off this thread over eighteen months ago - to go abroad (or even 'abroad') imminently - the tendering, now, of further counsel to him/her on a question posed in December of 2007 will not be compellingly helpful?

My opening comment, to which you take exception personally and incorrectly, was actually an excusatory preface to my own immediately following remark. It may be that in doing so I was "cyber-bullying" (as you put it) myself but masochism is not something in which I have ever been consciously tempted to indulge.

I'll leave it to everyone else to draw their own conclusions as to what your own posting speaks to them about you, your intelligence, your powers of perception and the degree to which you, yourself, make unwarranted and paranoid assumptions.

(Not, dare we infer, that the OP will, by this considerable time, still be numbered among them.)

In regard to the "irony" upon which you muse, I can only say that it is entirely lost on me because anyone at all on the Internet can see what I posted, regardless of whether they are logged-in to MSE or not.



Strider590,

Strider590 wrote: »

The main brands have all had issues with drive failures and tend to use cheap drives and cheap enclosures... Your far better off putting your own together with a good quality 5400RPM drive.
5400rpm is more than enough as the USB transfer rate is the choke point, not the drive speed. Plus 5400rpm drives stay cooler and last longer.

Mine is running 24/7, its a Samsung Spinpoint F2 ecogreen 5400rpm 500GB and an Antec MX-1 actively cooled enclosure.... Cost about £80-£90 in total, at the time I could have brought a main brand 1TB drive for that money (or even a bit less), but I NEED absolute solid reliability, this drive has to be used 24/7.

Don't go for 2.5" if your looking for reliability, these tend to take a right kicking in daily use and they're not exactly very sturdy. Not to mention if your laptop crashes so does the drive, as power is drawn via the USB port = Risk of data loss (albeit fairly small risk).

The postings of pgilc1 to which you refer are also eighteen months old... but he/she is still actively a member of this forum and will, no doubt, appreciate your sudden and unexpected response, however belated.

Whilst what you write in respect of USB2 inherently throttling data transfer rates to a degree that renders spin speeds of greater than 5,400 rpm redundant in a hard drive may be correct, why do you just assume that everyone wishes to restrict themselves to USB2 connectivity in an external drive?

I most certainly don't. Firewire 800 and eSATA connectivity make 7,200 rpm hard drives well worth while - both in 3.5" and in 2.5" enclosures - and I make full use of them on a daily basis. I find USB2 very slow in comparison and would hate to be limited to and by that.

At such low speeds, I (and many others) prefer to use Firewire 400 rather than USB2, anyway; it's more versatile and it doesn't draw on CPU resources.



prowla,

prowla wrote: »

I think the WD MyBook units are mirrored, meaning that your data is stored identically on two drives so that when one of the drives fails your data is still all there (and when you replace the failed drive it will be "synced" up to give you the mirrored data again).

But basically, if you store your data in one place only then you are going to lose it when (not if) the drive fails.

I try and keep two (or even three) copies of important data.

It's worth pointing out, when explaining to others how mirrored drives work, that if the failing drive corrupts the data on the mirrored drive before it finally expires, only a recovery specialist will be able to retrieve it - which is very expensive.

By the same token, if malware gets on to one drive in a mirrored array, the other drive will mirror it; which means that there's no protection there, either.

So, your wise comment about the need to back up regularly to another, independent device or storage facility applies equally to mirrored drives. They offer only an additional layer of redundancy, not a guaranteed ability to preserve data.

(Don't get me wrong and please don't take any offence: I like mirrored drives and am using one right now. But it's important always to make clear to people that they aren't a standalone panacea and that they, too, need to be backed-up. )