External HDD For Backups

Kemik

Kemik

Kemik

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Hello all,

I'm looking to buy an external hard drive to use to backup my computer data, videos and the like.

I'm looking at around 250GB or 320GB of space as I'll be needing about 4 or 5 times the amount of space that my daily backup will take. I'll probably backup personal documents daily then my videos weekly or every few days.

My internal hard drives are both (2 x) Seagate SATA 200GB but one has a bad sector and I've been getting a lot of corrupted files on it recently so I'm going to RMA it and get a new/repaired one.

Can anyone suggest a good external hard drive for these uses?

Thanks.
 
You can look for those ready made solutions by Seagate, Western Digital and Buffalo. They come in the casing and a hdd or 2 inside.

Alternatively, you can buy a hdd and an external casing to house the hdd. Its all up to you.

Those ready made solutions usually have 1 or 2 yrs of warranty. While the other solution usually have 1 yr's warranty for the hdd casing and 3 or 5 yrs warranty for the hdd depending on the manufacturer.
 
Even thought the warranty is less I think I'll be looking more towards the "one unit" desktop external hard drives.

I've heard LaCie are pretty good but the only reviews I can find are from regular people who buy it and write a few lines about it. Most of them say they get really hot.
 
Kemik said:
I've heard LaCie are pretty good but the only reviews I can find are from regular people who buy it and write a few lines about it. Most of them say they get really hot.
Click to expand...
Any fanless external drive will get warm, my Lacie is no exception but it's not worryingly hot. The biggest worry I have with the Lacie is that it contains a Maxtor drive although I believe the current ones are using Seagate or WD drives.

My next external will be a self build, there are far more options for connectivity etc available that way.
 
My suggestion would also be to buy an external enclosure and a drive to put in it.

You can choose what disk you'd like... the size and manufacturer of preference. Or whatever you have sitting around at home.

Plus, as mentioned above, you have a greater choice of interfaces - USB, firewire (if you want to cling to it), or it could be NAS.
 
Seems like everyone is suggesting getting a caddie. Can anyone suggest a good one? I'd like to use a SATA drive inside it.

Thanks.
 
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Thanks.

So it comes with a bracket that attaches to the back of the case like a graphics card/sound card and then I plug the internal end in to the SATA slot on my motherboard?
 
Yup, that's how it works.

I forgot to mention, the caddie also supports USB connection but you have to take it apart and swap some connections internally if you want to switch between eSATA and USB.
 
Cool thanks.

Now I just have to choose either Seagate 320GB or WD 320GB :P. I've not used a Western Digital before so I suppose I should try them out. They have a smaller warranty but everyone seems to be going for them over Seagate at the moment. Not sure why.
 
I wouldn't go for the 320Gb WD from OCUK over the Seagate, it's the older KS series drive and isn't as quick as the Seagate 7200.10. The 500Gb AAKS WD drive however is slightly faster than the equivalent Seagate.
 
looking for NAS

I'm leaning towards getting a NAS myself, I see there are some that house internal drives as well as being able to connect external USB2.0 drives to them. That seems like a good idea ? Of course the USB drives would need their own case as well though...

Does anyone know if the NAS types in general come with some form of backup utility that you can set once and it will make incremental backups on a schedule ?
 
As far as I know it comes with a cable to go between the enclosure and the supplied bracket, the product pages aren't clear about whether the bracket connector is a proper eSATA port or not. eSATA connections are a different shape to internal SATA ports and some solutions proporting to be external SATA just use internal SATA connections.
 
It would be nice if these external NAS enclosures would support Gigabit Ethernet instead of just plain old 10/100...

Not all motherboards have eSATA support.
 
WozNot said:
It would be nice if these external NAS enclosures would support Gigabit Ethernet instead of just plain old 10/100...

Not all motherboards have eSATA support.
Click to expand...

lacie gigabit nas mini 250 to 500 gb with gigait and usb 2..... might be an idea
 
i have brought 2 different pre built external hard drive units and both have died,

then decided after reading on here to build my own so to speak,

brought a icey box thingy and slammed a hdd in there it may be fan less but it doesnt get that warm to be honest and has some pretty lights round the outside.
 
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