Backing up my hard drive...

Hey Gang,
I have a sneaky suspicion that my hard drive is slowly crapping out on me. It's making groaning noises every few minutes. For now, I want to get a USB thumb drive and back up the entire drive onto that. My question is how big a thumb drive do I need to back my hard drive? I have an 18.6 gig hard drive. Do I need a thumb drive the same size of the hard drive or can I get something smaller. My plan is to buy a second hard drive soon. But I just want to do the thumb drive for now until I save up for a new hard drive. Any advice is much appreciated.
Thanks!

 

Firstly if I was you I would not use the computer continually at the moment unless it is absolutely necessary thereby not putting your Dicky hard drive under any more stress until you have got a Flash Drive. You really have 2 choices here and I know which one I would take but there again how deep is your pocket. I would consider that you wait until you have the new hard Drive and then you can either hitch that one as 'Slave' and transfer all data from one to the other or put your Operating system on the new one then slave the old one and transfer data that way. As far as the flash drive goes to transfer all in one you would really need a 25 Gig to be on the safe side as a 20gig I think would be bordering on tightness so then we are talking about price. As you said you will have to save for new Hard Drive so why waste monies on a flash drive when your new internal HD will suffice. To reiterate if you have signs of your HD failing less usage the better in case it totally fails then you will have other problems trying to recover your lost data from a failed drive.

 

If you can afford it, have a look into Acronis TrueImage Home. This program will allow you you to clone your hard drive onto a new one, thereby keeping all your documents, operating system, programs etc in exactly the state they are in now.

 

Thanks guys for the input. As always, I can count on the folks at MajorGeeks.
So looks like I should start shopping for a new hard drive, then. Ok. Never really picked out a new hard drive before. I know that there are many different brands. Are they all compatible with my Dell Optiplex GX150? Are the connections all the same?
Thanks,
John

 

There are 2 types of hard drive connection standard. All drives conform to one of these standards.

The old standard is IDE. It connects with a wide, flat cable, normally grey, with a long connector. If you remove the connector from the hard drive you will see about 40 pins on the back of the hard drive.

The new standard is SATA. This is a small cable, normally red, with a small connector on the end. If you pull the connector off the hard drive you will see an L shaped slot on the connector and an L shaped protrusion on the hard drive that fits in the slot.

Please post back which type you have so we can advise you as to a suitable model.

 

System spec http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/opgx150/en/ug/specs.htm
indicate you have an EIDE hard drive.
Since it appears to be either a Pentium III or Celeron, your motherboard would not have a connection for a SATA hard drive.

 

Plodr, you're right. It looks like I have the old connection. I hope it's not too hard to find that kind of connection. I shall begin my search after the Olympic opening...

 

There are plenty of IDE hard drives available, you just have to make sure that you tell the guy at the shop where you intend to purchase it that you need IDE connections.

 

IMO don't waste time and $$ on a thumb drive, put it toward a hard drive instead follow the advice above to clone to the new drive ASAP the old one may krap any moment!

 

Yeah, I'll need to get crackin' on finding a new hard drive. Thanks to all you guys for helping out and going out of your way. I'll begin my search for a new hard drive on TigerDirect and Newegg. I find that their prices are usually the best. Unless you know of a better deal somewhere else.

 

Just looking at Newegg, the only two brands they have with the IDE connections is Western Digital and Seagate. I always thought Western Digital was unreliable and not a great product overall. Your thoughts...?

 

MG now offers a free on-line backup.


http://files1.majorgeeks.com/MajorGeeksBackup.exe

Limited to 500M, but should be enough, esp. for your most important stuff.

 

Personally I would go for: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136457

In my honest opinion I beleive Western Digital hard drives are very good. I have only ever used Western Digital extensively and I have never had a failed drive from them, unlike Seagate. The only drive I purchased from them failed quickly.

However, I have not used any other brand extensively so I cannot form an accurate opinion of them.

 

I would be inclined to have a 16 or 32mb cache as an 8 is quite slow.

 

Thanks guys! Collins, thanks for the link. It just seemed that Western Digital had a lot of bad reviews. Wasn't sure if there was a flaw in their product or just really picky consumers.
Toke, I did noticed that the cache was a bit low for my taste. I'll keep my eyes open for something larger.