What are the best external hard drives currently?

[Lydzor]

I'm off to Uni in September and have decided that I will use my current external hard drive as a backup drive. I can then just copy the important things I need over to a new hard drive and take that to Uni instead. I've had my Iomega Silver Series hard drive for about 5 years and it's always been rock solid, are they still good drives? My current one is 300 GB which seems to be plenty as I have 146 GB left still. I want a drive which is not going to fail and lose important work.

 

[FreeStream]

Well if it's important work then it should be backed up anyway!!!

Surely two drives would be the way forward?

As for drives, I just bought a 2.5" enclosure and a HD of my choice, 200Gb 7200RPM at the time, going fine still

 

[Lydzor]

I usually make sure that once I've finished with an assignment then it goes on to my external hard drive as a backup in case I need to use it in the future (which more often than not is needed). I agree I can't see an issue with making backups on seperate drives though. Was just wondering as a friend of mine bought an external hard drive (I think it was a seagate) which broke and subsequent replacements reacted the same.

 

[macfanuk]

I've had 2 hard drives die in the last 12 months (both have been Western Digital) so I'm paranoid about backing up now (both drives were backups and both died so lost everything). Now I have a backup of my backup drive

 

[Ezyryder]

I think its all down to how important that data is. If its very important and you couldn't do without you should have it backed up in 2 places plus the place where you use it. If its important but you can do without then one backup is fine I imagine.

 

[macfanuk]

I think its all down to how important that data is. If its very important and you couldn't do without you should have it backed up in 2 places plus the place where you use it. If its important but you can do without then one backup is fine I imagine.

My problem is that I don't even remember what was stored on the drives as my data management isn't particularly well organised, but it doesn't stop the sick feeling when you realise 300GB of data has disappeared.

 

[hartty]

Well if it's important work then it should be backed up anyway!!!

Surely two drives would be the way forward?

As for drives, I just bought a 2.5" enclosure and a HD of my choice, 200Gb 7200RPM at the time, going fine still

+1, this is what i did and it works like a charm

 

[FreeStream]

I usually make sure that once I've finished with an assignment then it goes on to my external hard drive as a backup in case I need to use it in the future (which more often than not is needed). I agree I can't see an issue with making backups on seperate drives though. Was just wondering as a friend of mine bought an external hard drive (I think it was a seagate) which broke and subsequent replacements reacted the same.

Surely you want a backup for every stage?

Some people are far FAR too lax in their attitudes to saving and backing up ANY work, and then regret it when it comes back to bite them in the backside.

Find a windows app that will backup all your files from one HD to another on a regular basis, I use Time Machine on my Mac Pro which forms a backup every hour. I have subsequently never lost anything, however I also have a secondary backup every few days using a different app. For you however one HD should suffice.

Do it properly first time round, trust me.