A better backup hard drive

[keakar]

i have been looking into the idea of getting an external backup hard drive for a while now and this is what i have discovered:

- if you want one its way cheaper to buy the external drive case and buy the hard drive of your choice seperately, this will save you a lot of money and it will be a better fit for your needs.

- most inexpensive external drives use usb interface which is slow as chit and takes forever

- getting aa eSATA external drive is best but not all computers have ESATA plugs for it so plan on adding a pci slot or drive bay interface to older systems.

- getting a usb to eSATA adapter is a waste of time so just get the usb drive if you need universal connectability and expect slow transfer speeds.

- if you are using this as a backup drive to restore your computer in case of a virus, you are not supposed to keep it connected or update it frequently since doing so will corrupt it with the same virus that destroys your computers main files.

- if buying an external drive the plug and power source are the most likely to fail due to overheating or poor quality so pay close attention to them as well as how convenient they are. (having plugs and converters all over the desk isnt very convenient especially if its staying plugged in all the time.

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now i just wanted a fresh clean restore drive to fix my computer back to the way it was in case i got a virus.

my solution was to simply add another internal drive to my computer, ghosting a fresh clean install to it, then leave it unplugged. if i get a virus i just reformat the infected drive to kill the virus then unplug it. now i just plug in the other drive with the ghosted image on it and im finished, windows is already installed, updated, and registered. all my programs and files are also installed and working too. all i have to do now is ghost an image onto my other drive which is now blank after having been formatted. after ghosting i unplug that drive so it is no longer in the system and it is a virgin backup that cannot be infected. this sollution only works best if both drives are of the same gb size (its hard to ghost to a smaller drive than the original) and it has to be used on the same computer or it doesnt work without needing to be reregistered.

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these are my thoughts on external hard drives:

prebuilt external drives are just not worth buying because its much cheaper to build your own.

if you need your files updated regularly then use a thumb/flash drive for all your data files.

now for regular updating of media files an external backup drive is a good choice to protect against losing your files because of a drive failure but it wont protect you from a virus.

 

[WhiteLotus]

well thats all good and proper but what happens if you just want to take a chunk of music round to a mates. external hard drive wins

although yes i do see your point and it is valid

 

[Grings]

what about eSATA though?, they spin down when inactive, as with a regular (internal) HD, and have no perfomance penalty

I also think NAS external drives are worth considering, a friend of mine uses one to stream media from (which uses a great deal less power than having a pc turned on)

 

[keakar]

well thats all good and proper but what happens if you just want to take a chunk of music round to a mates. external hard drive wins

although yes i do see your point and it is valid

well for something like that newegg has many choices of thumb drives @ 8gb size for $30-$40 and it doesnt get any more easy than that but lets say you wanted all your files with you, then yes a portable hard drive is the best way.

what about eSATA though?, they spin down when inactive, as with a regular (internal) HD, and have no perfomance penalty

if you mean the heat issue,
the problem is not really the drive overheating, they do get hot on you especially with large data transfers but most all drives are inactive unless retrieving data, the problem is the power supply for the drives are not the best quality and some get overheated and fail.

as for the drive interface,
well esata just stands for external sata so it is just like plugging directly into the motherboard so its the only real choice in my opinion but esata external drives are higher priced than usb external drives and if you were wanting to be able to use it on more than just your computer you get to the question of interface connectability because as i mentioned not everyone has an esata plug interface on thier computer case so adding an inexpensive pci slot interface or a front drive bay interface is sometimes needed. if you tried using a usb to esata converter you would lose all your transfer speed rates and be back to usb speed. which is what the usb and esata external interface drives use, the converter is just built into the drive already.

I also think NAS external drives are worth considering

i think solid state drives are most logical next generation backup drive to end up with but for now they are still mighty expensive for the average person to justify buying one.