Back-Up HDD. Internal, or External..??

OK, so I have one 500GB Seagate Cuda Hard Drive. There good Model. the 7200.11 (11) is the newest model. it's got the 32 MB cache, and 3.0Gb/s transfer. they are good drives and they are getting Fairly cheap. I can get a brand new one for $79.99 right now at Buy.com

So Here is my question. I have nothing to back-up all my Data to.. I really really need a second drive just in case of a Drive failure. it's happened to me once. I never wanna loose everything again. I have over 3,000 songs and Lots of Photo's and video's. I'm going to get one ASAP. I wanted everyone's opinion. I was thinkin to get an identical drive, and just make exact copy of my current drive, and then have a program always do that.. so if I get a failure. I'm ok cuz I can just swap them out.. But then I started thinkin that maybe I want an external.. If I'm going out, going to a freinds house, or whatever. I was thinkin maybe a Seagate External. or Maybe those cool My Passport ones. whatever is best and mid priced.

So what does everyone think, what would be my best bet for best Drive, safest. and overall a good price ratio. I know external's sometimes die faster than internal cuz always getting moved and what not, or from heat in that tiny enclosure. so I'm just not sure..

Peoples Opinion's are very much wanted. Let me know what you think I should do. I'm only using around 300GB now.. maybe a lil more. but I plan to add to that.

Thanks, Cheers!

I'm always lookin for a good deal. I'm thinkin external because I can have portable 500GB.. that would be great.. I know that Firewire and eSATA are both much faster than USB2.0 but when it's something your only using to Back-up Data to.. and not something I'll be using on a daily basis, I'm thinkin that the speed is not all that much of importance.. yes I could get a external that has USB and eSATA both.. but they cost a good $40 or more just for having the eSATA. and like I said, it's nice but not all that important.. the cheapest one I could find for a 500GB external HD by seagate was like 119.00 USD.. until I found this.

Seagate 500GB FreeAgent USB 2.0 7200RPM External Hard Drive - ST305004FDA1E1-RK - Buy.com

I'm thinkin I'll get that, Does not have eSATA or anything special. but it's cheap, and just what I need. How does this look. thats a GREAT deal and pretty cheap for 500GB and even better has a 5 yr warranty. what ya guys think?

Edit* Or something like a WD MyBook, I'd get a my passport but they only go to 320. The Mybook looks like it has better cooling, as the Seagate doesn't have any vents at all from what I can see.. what do you guys think.??

Amazon.com: Western Digital 500 GB My Book Essential 2.0 - USB 2.0 External Hard Drive WDH1U5000N: Electronics

Just wait until you try to make a nice large backup.....and hope you either have a backup UPS or else never ever lose power when making your backup....

eSATA drives that have a USB access would be the best - use the eSATA on your computer and the USB makes it portable.

well, your right.. and if I ever did have a drive fail.. I'd be loading whats on the external.. and that would be a good load of around 250GB or more.. and that extra speed would come in handy.. you make a good good point there sir.

I see you have 2 of the Cuda 500GB 32mb ones.. I have one of those.. and was thinking about getting a second.. so it's either another one of those.. or an external.. what should I get.. i do like the idea of portable. What do you use your 3 different ones for.. is one for gaming, one for music, pics, and video's. and one for your OS and programs.. or is one a backup.. I'm just tryin to decide whats the best choice for me here.. I just want to back-up all my important info!

Does anyone have a good or bad experience to share about there WD External MyBook, or about there Seagate FreeAgent Pro.?? Please do. or info that will help me choose what to get.?

I use the one 500 GB drive as my OS drive (only have a small 100 GB Partition on it as I want to eventually put other OSs on the machine in a multiboot scenario). I use the other for all my downloads, profiles, pictures, music, videos, etc.

I am actually not currently using the 250 GB as it only has a 16 MB Cache and is *noticeably* slower than the other 2 - that might eventually leave my system as it doesn't even have any partitions on it right now.

I will (probably in a month or so) add 2 more of the same bad boys, or their bigger brother - the 750 GB variety - and use one as a sole backup internal drive and use the other in an eSATA for m for portability.

I see.. ya eventually I wanna get another internal.. I'll do that eventually. probably the same one. cuz like you said, it's fast.. but for now I need something to back-up everything to.. better safe than sorry. and like you said. When doing a big load of moving. bein fast will come in handy.. so I'm getting the Seagate Freeagent Pro 500GB with USB, eSATA, and Firewire400.. the one with all 3. and I'll use the eSATA port on my nifty CM690 case.

Do a lot of reading regarding reviews on that one - I have heard *many* negative things about that drive, particularly that it runs hot and fries itself (more than likely the connectivity circuitry) quickly - some as soon as within a couple of weeks of purchase.

i use an external drive to back up to incase anything happens physically to my pc

Thanks for the info John.. I was reading the same thing.. So I switched my reading's over to the WD MyBook, and I found just as many. if not more... no probably more on it having issues. The MyBook has all the vents all over the top and what not for cooling. the Seagate Freeagent does not seem to have any cooling solution. But I read more and more people saying I'm done with WD.. going to seeagate. The Way I've decided to look at it. is that they are HD drives. Drives fail. They move, a lot and it's bound to happen sooner or later. I take great care of my things. Always careful. So Might as well get what I've had before, and trust. and that was Seagate. They make one of the best internal drives. so might as well get there external, it's jsut an internal in a shiny cool case or whatever. I bought that FreeAgent anyways.

Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500GB Triple Interface - USB 2.0, eSATA, FireWire - External Hard Drive - ST305004FPA1E3-RK - Buy.com

not bad. $121 thats the cheapest I could find the Tri interface one ANYWHERE. After your input I changed my mind. and I'll be using it Via eSATA. Hopefully it lasts. they are the only one with a 5 yr warranty. so hopefully that means something.

Personally, I would have gone the same route - they support their drives pretty well so I would not be too worried - but the rash of failures on that specific model were outrageous. However, if you say the WDs are worse, then it is easy to make up yer mind, eh?

My rational for not going the external route is quite simple - I already have 3 drives in the system to be bolstered with 2 more soon. If something physically happens to my computer, chances are that my external is going to be there too - and it will be taken out,. If it is a power surge, that is already covered between house insurance and my UPS so the machine itself is safe.

The only real thing I will lose will be documents and such that haven't made the latest incremental backup - almost all my pics are online somewhere, and almost all my large files like ISOs and such I can always download again....

And I personally hate lugging around a very large (or even small) external drive....

Whats UPS?

ya thats what I thought. I've been meaing to get a CPS. lol

Oh and get this. So I ordered my 500GB external off of Buy.com and they usually are a little slow on the shipping and what not. but If you remember I ordered it yesterday if I'm remembering right. and I didn't wanna pay for the shipping. so the 7-9 days was free... the 3-5 was $14.99 and I chose the 7-9 Day Free shipping cuz I didn't wanna pay for shipping. Knowing that buy.com is always slow.

So, I walk outside today. and It's here, ALREADY. thats amazingly fast compared to what I thought. So I paid for the free 7-9 day and It got here Overnight. Pretty impressive, although the package was NOT padded and the box was sliding around. not to mention really hot, so I'm a little worried.

So John, or anyone else that cares to answer. Whats the best way for my to do this. I have a 500GB drive thats about 225GB Left on it. so I'm using over half. I just got a 500GB external to back everything up, it comes with a software, not sure how good it is tho. I'm NOT planning on leaving this thing on for 24/7 I'm only going to turn it on for important backup's or maybe once a week or so. I don't want this baby overheating.
So what should I do, Should I just click and move the entire C drive over. or what. What do you suggest. this is my first external I'm backing up to.. Tips would be nice..

thanks!

I've forgotten exactly the steps XP takes to backup and have yet to learn how this is handled in Vista, but if you want to backup the entire partition (like a ghost image), then why not use the tools Vista has in Backup and Restore? If you just want to back up files, then I'd just drag them over... 250GB's shouldn't take that long.

Well I'm not really sure what I should do, I just built this computer about 3 months ago. and I've used about 300GB already, I have tons and tons of pictures. I have over 3000 songs, I have movies, Programs, Games, DVD Burning software, things I've paid for.. what everyone has.. and I don't wanna loose all that if my Drive Fails. But, I'm planning on getting a second 500GB internal and copying everything exactly to it. so if one dies. I can use the other and everything will be good.

But for now I've only got this 500GB External. So what should I do, whats the best way to go about this. Should I use a program Like Ghost, or vista's backiup, and make an image of my entire drive. (Whats the advantage to this) would that allow me to get a new drive if this one failed. and just move it from the external to the new one. and then just be up and running.. is that what making an image of it does??

Or should I just backup to the External all the important stuff like all the pics, music, and videos, programs, and all my program install exe's? and then if anything happened I could Re-load Vista. and drag and drop everything from the external to my new OS on new drive.

Basically I just wanna make sure I have everything on backup so if this drive fails I still have all my stuff.. I don't need to be all technical. I just want to backup everything. if my current drive crashed. I'd just get a new one and reload windows. then move all the good over.. Unless there is better ways to do this. I'm sure this external came with a Disk for that.. should I give it a look?

In the event your current primary drive fails an image would allow you to back up to the point you're at right now; everything would be the same. You would not have to reinstall programs or transfer files as you would have to do had you only backed up the data. If you've got the machine tuned as you want it, then by all means ghost an image to the external drive... even if not perfectly tuned, ghost that bad boy!

That would be the "best" way to use the external drive as you really intend and save time in case of future failure. Having an image externally, and powering it off, is better than ghosting an image on an internal drive because who's to say the second internal won't get wiped too? Same principle as burning to DVD; the goal is to save data no matter what may happen to the machine.

oh ok.. Perfect.. your very helpful, Thats exactly what I wanted to hear.. So what Ghost program should I use.. lol

My Machine is not Perfect, but It's as good as it's going to get for now. I'm going to continue the average things like Defrag, and workin on my CPU OC. but for now it's good to go and would love to be at this point given a failure.. So sounds like thats what I want to do, Make a Image of it.

Question tho. That image your saying I should Make. Would I be able to Take this ext. drive to say a freinds house and plug it in, and take some songs or a movie out of it.. or is the Image one big image I can only add the entire thing.
Cuz I'd wanna be able to take things out of this ext. as I needed. Plus have a backup Image. Can I do both. or does the image allow for me to take things I want.

Thanks again. I've not seen you around much, but your very helpful so far.

What a Shame... I didn't even think about it. I was just chillin. NOT USING MY HEAD. and after You john said that eSATA is a great feature and would be much faster than the USB2.0 and that I should get the external with eSATA instead of only USB. it made sense. and I got the one that cost $30 more that had all 3 ports.. My case on top has a eSATA port.. and if I remember correctly I plugged everything in and all was good. But now after doing a little research I find out that my eVGA 750i FTW Mobo does NOT.. I say does NOT have eSATA.. Ouch.

So basically I got the better ext. HD with the eSATA and I can't even use it. So I'm going to have to use the much slower USB2.0 to transfer everything.
Although it's not that bad as I transfered over 1,300 songs in around 7 minutes. But I can only imagine how long 250GB will take.

Shrugs Shoulders. what can ya do. I shoulda paid more attention!

xguntherc said:

So what Ghost program should I use?

Would I be able to Take this ext. drive to say a freinds house and plug it in, and take some songs or a movie out of it.. or is the Image one big image I can only add the entire thing.
Cuz I'd wanna be able to take things out of this ext. as I needed. Plus have a backup Image. Can I do both. or does the image allow for me to take things I want.

Click to expand...

Acronis True Image. Not sure about Norton Ghost, but with True Image you can pull files out if the need presents itself. If you intend to run around with the drive, then perhaps you should image the OS and then just copy the files you intend on sharing. Best of both worlds minus the hassle of pulling stuff out of the image.