Recommend me a good external

S

StapleMammal1

Contributor
My 2TB external decided to take a long nap. Thankfully I had the important data on it backed up to our personal cloud and my amazon cloud. Now I need a good but inexpensive 2TB or better external hard drive.

What say you TeeDub?
 
ssd's are horrible for backups. Price is too high and reliability isn't fully realized.
A spinning drive you can scrape data when they fail or start to fail, when an ssd goes, they are toast.

I have a 3tb wd book I back up with every 6 months. The rest of my datas are on bare hd's and those are backed up in my 2tb raid server.
 
I have Samsung 'story' drives - they are super nice and look really cool. The light around the knob changes blue or green if it is usb 2 or 3 connection. I like how you can just switch them off but still leave them plugged in.

They stopped making them, tho you can still get the shells on ebay for about $30 and just slam a 3.5" drive into them.

M2QQLUF.jpg
 
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I have 3 of these.
http://www.amazon.com/Passport-Ultr...5342868&sr=1-17&keywords=wd+my+passport+ultra

Multiple replication is the key. I make images of my C drive using Acronis True Image, put them on the WD drives. Then I used Beyond Compare to sync my storage drive to the WD. I rotate one drive to Ashley who lives 250 miles away, and I switch back and forth between the other 2 drives using Beyond Compare. Also have clone drives in my case. So that's 4 copies of my storage drive using BC, along with images.

I love the way everyone talks about Raid but barely anyone actually does it. Raid is not the answer, a bunch of backups is.
1. Clone your SSD to a standard hard drive using Acronis True Image, then unplug that drive.
2. Clone your storage drive to a similar drive using Beyond Compare, then unplug that drive.
Now you have clone drives sitting in your case unplugged and the Ransom virus can't get to them.
3. Make images of your C drive using Acronis True Image and put them on the WD 2 TB drives.
4. Use Beyond Compare to copy your storage drive to the WD drive, rotating between 3 WD drives each time.

I've done restores using Acronis and it works. With Beyond Compare, I use the Sync to Right command, copying all the folders to the WD drive. You can exclude directories, and tell it which directories to back up. I run the program, it tells me which files have changed, I push the Sync button, and it works.
 
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I believe I was the one who put NGFM onto Beyond Compare and I take pleasure in knowing his data is safe and easily synced
 
ArakAtak said:
I believe I was the one who put NGFM onto Beyond Compare and I take pleasure in knowing his data is safe and easily synced
Click to expand...
Yep, you were, and it's one of the best tips I've got from TW. BC4 is the best. Before that, I was manually copying the folders and doing byte counts. BC4 does all that automatically just by pushing a button.

I have all my digital pictures going back 16 years to when digital cameras came out in 1999. Same thing with all my music MP3s. Haven't lost anything and don't plan on it.

On my computer, I always have a brand new power supply sitting on the shelf ready to go, and the cloned drives are in the case unplugged. Basically, I have a back up of the parts that are most likely to fail when it comes to a computer.
 
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I will never buy another WD drive again. Of all the manufacturers of HDs, both internal and external, theirs are the only ones to ever fail me.

Toshiba makes some nice external 2.5" drives that are USB3 compatible and require no external power source. They're in rugged aluminum enclosures. I've got a 500GB connected to my system now.
 
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