External Hard Drive for Backup?

Hello Computer People,
I will begin by letting you know that I do not know much about computers and any help from you who do is appreciated. I have recently gone through a problem when I tried to update my gateway pc with microsoft service pack 2. My computer kept trying to resart itself and then would shut down. I spent six hours on the phone with a nice fellow from microsoft India and he was finally able to get the thing to start. Since then the computer has been acting crazy. Things disappear, change, or just will not work. I know that I should reload the operating sysytem (win xp student and teacher edition). The biggest scare was that I would have lost everything that we have saved like music, word files and my wifes sims game and downloads. To save everything to cd's would take way more time than I have. My question, is an external HD a good option? File wise we have (I think) about 10GB of files without the individual programs like word and such. Would an 80GB compontent work or do you think I should go larger. Thanks for your time. CS

 

Welcome to MG. An external hard drive is a good solution for backups. For the best safety concerns it should be stored off-site from your PC, or at least in another room. My recommendation is that it be at least 4 times the maximum size of your info. This should include all the stuff on your PC, including all .exe files, etc., to save having to do re-installs and then having to reload your data. What I am getting at, is to be able to do 3-4 full backups of everything. Make sure that you can delete the oldest backup when you do a new backup. I use Norton Speeddisk after I have deleted the oldest backup, to defrag the drive, before I do the latest backup. I guess the final size of harddrive you should select depends on how often you decide to do a backup, and the value of the stuff being backed up. A business PC backup is obviously more valuable than a backup of home PC info. Do you want to backup daily, weekly, monthly, or whatever? Have you decided on what backup software you will be using? Bazza

===

 

while we are on the topic...I was considering an external hard drive for storing vasts amount of mp3 and ogg vorbis files. Keeping all my music on the external drive thus freeing up my main drive... as well as having my music portable. I have been pricing external hard drives and see that a larger cache size ups the price a bit (such as a low cache of 2meg up to a larger one of 8 or even 16) is this going to be an issue on what is basicly a drive used to store and play music. Do I need to shell out more for a larger cache or can I get by with a 2 meg size and save a few bucks?

 

Just music, shouldn't make much of a difference.

 

You could also consider a NAS device. If not get a the biggest drive you can afford. May work out cheaper to buy a hard drive and an enclosure then buying a ready made external hard drive.

KCL

 

What is a NAS device?

 

I agree with KCL, buy the enclosure and drive and put together yourself. I bought a maxtor external 80gig last year and cost me $250cdn not knowing I could buy a drive and enclosure for just over $100. Make sure if you buy one that it has its own powersupply and a on/off switch. Mine does not have one so I have to uplug it as I don't use it all the time. I find it very handy as it can be plugged into any of my computers and use the files I have stored on it or to transfer files. climbsurf welcome to MG

 

Is there software that I can load then that will run the backup for me if I build an external drive? Also, is there a specific size of a hard drive that I should look at? Thanks

 

There is built in backup software in Windows under Programs > Acessories > System Tools. Or you could probably google something for free.

Size depends on what you need. How large do you expect your music and file to grow? All depends on what you use it for.

 

Go back to the first post on this thread and then read all subsequent answers. Baz

===

 

This may sound dumb but, why do you need a program for backing up? If you can just back up to a couple of disks, whats the big deal? I have never backed up before so please don't yell at my silly question. LOL.

 

Re-read all the previous posts again.
We need to know what operating system you are using. XP, Win2000, Win98, Win98SE, etc. Do you have a CD burner or DVD burner on your PC.
What capacity are your hard drive/s?
How many gigabytes of info have you on your hard drive/s?
How often do you want to backup? Daily, weekly, monthly, or what?
Have you got a firewall like Zone Alarm and anti-virus software installed on your PC (like AVG or Avast)?
Do you keep them up-to-date?
How often do you clean all the crap from your PC?
after every net session?

We need more info from you to enable us to help you.

Read the Announcement about half way down the screen, from Major Attitude, about how to provide this info to help us. Bazza

===

 

Sorry NAS = Network Attached Storage. Basically a hard drive with a lan interface on it.
KCL