External Storage: Go Big or Don’t Bother!

Posted by on 02/03 at 12:04 PM Permalink
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Sometimes it’s hard to believe, but you tend to collect a lot of files. A few documents here, a couple of videos there, and some photos and music all over the place. Before you know it, you have gigabytes and gigabytes of content. And if you have a family that uses computers, the number of files just increases.

But, what happens if your hard drive decides to pack it in one day? Like most people, you probably don’t back up your files as often as you should. And if you don’t, you stand to lose a lot of data should your hard drive fail. Much of that information won’t be easily replaced either. There are a number of ways in which you can back up your information. You can burn it to a CD or a DVD. You can dump it on to a USB flash drive. Or, you can use an online storage service like Box.net or Amazon S3. All of these solutions are good, but they’re limited by the amount of data that they can store.

    Posted by anthonie heusdens  on  02/03  at  08:20 AM

  1. Does accessing or recuperation of data stored on the external hd come with the same problems of opening up which happens after having had the data put in a backed up file at the computer store ( after my hd started to fail) and had to buy a new hd. It cannot be opened without knowing the program that created it, is the window that comes up all the time. The data were salvageable luckily, but it is only slightly better than loosing them under these circumstances.

    2. Posted by East Texas Slim  on  02/03  at  11:01 AM

  2. I recently purchased a SATA 500 GB Western Digital Hard Drive witha case.  I am wanting to use it several computers, my family have ME on there computers and I have XP and and Vista, how do you format and setup for use on these operating systems.  I know if you do fat 32 they will all read the drive, but if you do NTFS the ME computer will not read.
    Any Ideas
    Thank You in advance

    3. Posted by ROBERT PANKIEWICZ  on  02/03  at  11:32 AM

  3. LOST A NUMBER OF HARD DRIVES TO WORMS AND OR VIRUS AND USING MSNTV2 WAS MY CURE !for the problem.

    4. Posted by Roland  on  02/03  at  11:57 AM

  4. Your article on external storage was pretty basic in nature. Allot of the information that was posted was very basic if you are just a novice at computers. I think you should follow up with a an article that explains and even provide instruction on how to access your external storage device via the web. For example, I have my external device hard wired to my wireless router. This would allow me to access it from anywhere through the web. Anyway, just a thought. But I hope you do it.

    Thanks,

    5. Posted by Gary Darby  on  02/03  at  12:48 PM

  5. External backups are one of several redundant approaches I use.  Here are a few other considerations:

    * Raid mirroring copies eveything written on one disk to an second “mirrored” drive internal to your system and provides automatic protection against hard drive failure.  But it does not help protect from human errors or malware that do bad things to your data.
    * An external drive with a backup program that takes daily scheduled “Incremental” backups can protect against accidental or intentional destuction of data.  I use “Acronis True Image” backup which can save and restore entire partitions or selected files.  I take partiton backups of my boot drive and have the ablity to restore the system even if it is not bootable or the drive has been replaced.
    * If you have a network, one external drive can be made available for backing up all computers on your local network. 
    * A UPS (Uninteruptable Power Supply) or at least a quality surge protector is essential to help protect the hardware PC (and external drive)from power surges or lightning damage. 
    * Even an external drive with a good backup program may not save you if a real disaster occurs (e.g. flood or fire).  For this “off site storage” is required.  I rotate external drives to the offsite location weekly, so never have more than a weeks worth of data at risk.
    *Once a year I back up all of my data to DVD’s, also stored offsite.
    * If the data is confidential, the external storage media should be encrypted or at least password protected. 

    Overkill?  Perhaps, but the extra $100 for a mirrored disk, $200 for two external drives, and $50 for a backup program can be implemented in stages and provides years of cheap insurance for files with financial, sentimental, or historical value.

    6. Posted by Jenny  on  02/03  at  05:57 PM

  6. For all online backup and storage related info, I recommend this website:

    BackupReview.info

    7. Posted by chris  on  02/03  at  08:01 PM

  7. The article mentions shunting data to an external storage device to free up space on your machine.  How is that different/safer than keeping it on your PC?  Don’t external devices also fail?

    8. Posted by GeekMike  on  02/04  at  03:52 PM

  8. @Roland - We will keep that in mind. Thank you all for the excellent feedback!

    @Chris - Yes, external devices also fail. Good point...I have my data on my laptop and of course backed up to an external.  I should probably also create disks too!

    ~GeekMike

    9. Posted by Paul Grigg  on  02/04  at  08:25 PM

  9. This was a timely subject, most likely my next project.  However, what about flash memory drives?  Will they be coming to the market soon?

    10. Posted by Lawrence  on  02/04  at  10:39 PM

  10. GooD Stuff, I’m a comp. “ New B “ and I have Found my 40GB was at 2GB at one time! So U R right on time. THANKz

    11. Posted by Frank  on  02/05  at  07:04 AM

  11. Thanks for the good information.  I also agree that a more detailed follow-up would be great.  How about touching on the idea of the speed of these drives?  They are hopefully faster that a USB thumb drive, which I have found to be quite slow when used as a back up.

    12. Posted by GeekMike  on  02/05  at  09:08 AM

  12. @Paul - Flash Memory Drives have been around a very long time. (not sure if this is what you meant)

    http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=FLM

    @Frank and others - I will look into getting a more detailed follow up created. 

    Happy to hear everyone enjoyed this weeks Tech Tip!!

    13. Posted by Alam  on  02/05  at  09:03 PM

  13. Personally don’t like external drives, they get in the way. Better to have a big 1TB internal SATA, you’ll be sorted for a long time…

    14. Posted by Scott  on  02/06  at  11:13 AM

  14. Was searching for some more information on whetehr i should switch to online backups.

    15. Posted by moxeeguy  on  02/08  at  08:48 AM

  15. I have a .5 tb eSATA ... called an eBook. They are perfect in my case. I have to move millions of files to my technician and a 1 tb HDD is significantly easier than working with 3k DVD’s. I am looking to buy a 1 tb eBook or utilize mail my .5 tb eBook 24 times. For portability sake .... an external is usually critical ..... but seldom needed.

    16. Posted by Mike  on  02/08  at  08:49 PM

  16. We could realy use a TechTips sheet on SATA vs eSATA and how to convert one to the other so we can use external drives and the new eSATA flash drives

    17. Page 1 of 1 pages

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