External Hard Drive Questions

VMax2007 · March 14, 2009

OK, I bought a Western Digital "My Book" 500 GB External Hard Drive today for backing up my 6 year old PC. It works good but it's getting old and I want back-up incase the HD dies.

Anyway, I have never owned one of these before or even used one. I assumed it came with back-up software, which it did...kind of. It came with a 30 day free trial of Memeo AutoBackup which I am running right now.

My questions are:

1. Do you guys use back-up software or just do it manually using Drag-n-Drop?

2. What software do you use?

3. Any suggestions/hints on the best way to use this thing?

97SierraGMC · March 14, 2009

well depending on what you are trying to save...

this is what i do:

i bought a external enclosure and a 640GB Western Digital Drive and its just connected through usb, but i put everything on there, like music, movies, downloads, pictures, and then i have it download or save directly to there so it doesn't use the computers hard drive at all

so pretty much the only thing on my internal hard drive is the operating system and the programs.

A new hard drive will most likely work better / less chance of failing than a 6 year old hard drive so its best to use the new one.

but as far as backup software i have no idea..

txab · March 14, 2009

You mean you don't know everything?

I have used backup software. Norton ghost is one cause it was free after rebate along with other Symantec software. Acronis is a great backup software IMO. I use it to clone complete HDs as well. But most of the time I do it manually. All my data files that change are stored in the same folders so it's easy to drag and drop those few folders

pwall · March 14, 2009

Not that I have used it, but Windows has a backup utility....right click on the C drive in 'My Computer', select Properties, then Tools, then Backup.

I have all my data on a linux box with RAID, so I don't worry too much about backups. ;)

And occasionally I copy all my data to an external hard drive (much like what you're doing) and give it to my father-in-law to hang on to....just in case.

jwhjr · March 14, 2009

I just drag and drop for my backups.

tobias · March 14, 2009

Try this: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/s...t_03july14.mspx

Darkanion · March 14, 2009

I bought a Seagate FreeAgent drive a while back. It came with the Memeo software you mentioned. (Fortunately, it wasn't a 'trial' version of it, though.) The Memeo software seems rather limited, though.. It can backup file types, but not whole directory structures. That kind of irritates me. I've been meaning to write a script to do my backups -- probably via RoboCopy.. It's not elegant, but if it's running at 3am and I'm asleep, it doesn't really matter..

stadt11 · March 14, 2009

I never use any backup software. I just write my own backup-scripts (within a command/batch file). Plus, it's free

MarkD · March 14, 2009

Depending on the MyBook model you bought, you get a trial version or a full version of backup software.

Me, I have a main OS hard drive (Veloci-raptor) and all my data on other drives in the server. My laptop, I have the WD backup drive that is the same as my laptops drive 320GB and I back up weekly.

Important stuff like kids pics are also archived on DVD-R's

P71_CrownVic · March 15, 2009

OK, I bought a Western Digital "My Book" 500 GB External Hard Drive today for backing up my 6 year old PC. It works good but it's getting old and I want back-up incase the HD dies.

Anyway, I have never owned one of these before or even used one. I assumed it came with back-up software, which it did...kind of. It came with a 30 day free trial of Memeo AutoBackup which I am running right now.

My questions are:

1. Do you guys use back-up software or just do it manually using Drag-n-Drop?

2. What software do you use?

3. Any suggestions/hints on the best way to use this thing?

1. Manually drag and drop.

2. Not applicable

3. I say use it for storage...lol.

svensk · March 15, 2009

I back-up to my FTP server. But I also have the usual collection of external hard drives laying everywhere.

tobias · March 15, 2009

You know, if you used a Mac all you'd have to do was plug that drive in and Time Machine would back up everything for you.

It'll even allow you to restore the entire system back to exactly the way it was when the failure occurred. It's amazing.

I have used it on my laptop to swap to a larger HD and it was flawless. Every setting, preference, file, etc. was all put right back into place. In the case of an actual failure, it'd be as though nothing ever happened.

Zembonez · March 15, 2009

I love my external drives. I drag and drop everything. Documents, Outlook backups and address books, pictures, etc. Everything else is easy setup if you ever format and reload or replace a system. Most backup utilities that I have tried sucked. They drag WAY too much useless crap over and leave half of what I wanted to save.

You are on the right track.

svensk · March 15, 2009

You know, if you used a Mac all you'd have to do was plug that drive in and Time Machine would back up everything for you.

It'll even allow you to restore the entire system back to exactly the way it was when the failure occurred. It's amazing.

I have used it on my laptop to swap to a larger HD and it was flawless. Every setting, preference, file, etc. was all put right back into place. In the case of an actual failure, it'd be as though nothing ever happened.