external hardrive help?

beachBOYken

beachBOYken

beachBOYken

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hi

i would like to get myself an external hardrive to be able to backup things like my itunes library and photos and any documents

ive never had one before as ive always just used cds or usb drives for stuff ,so would like a little help on a decent hd drive.

I have windows 7 and would like something easy to setup and use?

cheers
 
Any external HDD will do the job but it depends if you want it to be portable or not as some are powered through the USB port, whilst others have a separate power adaptor. I have a 500GB LaCie external HDD and whilst it's very good, it's not very portable. I would look at the Western Digital Passport range if I were you. That's what I would buy if I needed a replacement.
 
thanks

i dont need it to be portable and dont really want loads of wires so usb powered would be best but i would also like and easy drag and drop method and no need of installation?

would the ws passport still be good?
 
All external HDD's will allow you to drag and drop files mate and are plug and play. LaCie make excellent external drives as do Western Digital. I would avoid Seagate but that's just my own personal opinion ;)
 
To be honest most manufacturers of external HDD's will ship their drives with some sort of backup software that's intended to make things easier (my LaCie drive did) but it's very easy to just format the drive when it's connected to your PC. Make sure you Format it as NTFS but.
 
hi again

ive decided to get the lacie even though it has ac mains , could you tell me if its got any software preinstalled and if so is it easy to just do what you said and format it as ntfs?

seen as i have windows 7 i dont think the backup software on this will work.

thanks:)
 
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Hi there. LaCie are rock solid and reliable so you won't regret your purchase :)

Mine came with backup software on it which I had no interest in using so all you do is connect the drive, cancel any popup windows that appear (if you have auto play enabled) then look under Computer and locate the drive letter. Right click on it, select Format, Give it a name and make sure it's set as NTFS. This is what it will look like (although this one is being formatted for FAT32 under Windows XP).

windows-7-usb-format.jpg
 
if i get a 1tb external hardrive would it be ok to put music,photos on it as well as say a full system image or would it be best to have a seperate hd for system images?

also would i still format external hardrives to ntfs for backup images?

thanks
 
ive been using a 250gig freecom mobile drive ii since last xmas. great little piece of kit, and completely changed my view on backing up to dvds. Usb powered (on my old pc, the front headers couldnt supply enough juice, so i emailed freecom and they gave me a choice of a power adaptor or a usb cable that plugged into two ports for free. i took the usb cable). also pretty compact, doesnt make a noise whatsoever, and transfer rates are ... acceptable.

only niggle is that that there is some kinda encryption thing on it that mounts itself as a virtual cd drive and tries to autorun itself everytime i plug it in, and i haven't found out a way of getting rid of it :/
 
beachBOYken said:
if i get a 1tb external hardrive would it be ok to put music,photos on it as well as say a full system image or would it be best to have a seperate hd for system images?

also would i still format external hardrives to ntfs for backup images?

thanks
Click to expand...

I use my external HDD for storing just about everything.. Music, Photo's, Backup images of my important CD's and Windows 7 system image.

The reason why I suggest Formatting as NTFS is because using FAT32 means you are limited to a maximum file size of 4GB.
 
hi

I think i will use an external hardrive then for my system images and for photos and music backups. are disk images downsized or are they exact size?

while im here i would like to clear my internal hd of my old backup images as i think ive got more than one on there and there all mixed up ,so would like to start a fresh should i just click format like above , not sure if i should use quick or normal format as im unsure how long it will take ,its a 500gig drive with a couple of disc images on it?
 
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Disk images are usually compressed to save space. You can't format your internal drive from within Windows and even if you could, you do realise it would wipe the entire drive including the operating system? lol ! Just delete whatever you don't need from your internal HDD and then download CCleaner and run that to clean up any old files left over.

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/
 
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