A lil help from the PHers, please?

[j1mmyd]

This, I'm hoping, will be just a quickie.

I want to back up files from my computer system to an easily accessible and removeable source. Maplins have external 100Gb hard drives for around £100. Those would be large enough and seem to be what I need, but before purchasing I thought I'd check with those more knowledgable. My question is:

1) what system is most reliable;
2) simplest to use; and,
3) most cost effective?

Speed of transfer is also pretty important - I don't want to have to spend a day a week backing things up, nor do I really want to be swapping disks over or otherwise 'messing about'. A tape drive is out of the question as I want to be able to take the data with me and plug it into either my home desktop or my laptop.

Many thanks for your time.

[puggit]

I'd avoid backup software then and use something that synchronises/copies the folders on demand...

Someone will be along with some good names soon

[ErnestM]

budget?

ErnestM

[j1mmyd]

ErnestM said:

budget? ErnestM

How cheap can you do it?



Seriously ... I'd like to take around 20Gb of files from my office to home, while keeping the hard drives on my laptop reasonably free. I was thinking one of these external hard drives would be the thing as something like a zip drive would need multiple disks ... only thing is, I got to thinking how reliable an external HD might be ... and then thought there might be other, maybe even simpler, alternatives that I didn't know about.

[Jinx]

Buy yourself an Ipod. Problem solved.

[j1mmyd]

OK - so how reliable is something like this:

www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=48607&TabID=1&source=1&doy=7m4

Am I likely to find myself screaming at some non-functioning peesachit having lost all the stuff I needed to work on and having to drive back to the office at 3am on a Sunday morning (I'm a genuine insomniac)?

(It's cheaper, bigger and probably faster than the iPod or other recording device, but is it reliable?)

[JonRB]

£100 for 100Gb is quite expensive.

Novatech currently have a Maxtor 300Gb external drive for £100 inc VAT.

See here

[j1mmyd]

Thanks, Jon ... seems the ones I saw in Maplins have come down in price a lot too. 100Gb is still listed as £100 but discontinued while the one above is also larger and cheaper.

I've had a look at that one you linked and it looks the mutt's .... I'll pop in to town on Sunday and have a llok at what's on special offer.

[rameshuk]

Scan seem to have a plethora of suitable drives:

www.scan.co.uk/Products/Products.ASP?CatID=16&Category=Hard+Drives&Thumbnails=yes

[ErnestM]

j1mmyd said:

ErnestM said: budget? ErnestM How cheap can you do it? Seriously ... I'd like to take around 20Gb of files from my office to home, while keeping the hard drives on my laptop reasonably free. I was thinking one of these external hard drives would be the thing as something like a zip drive would need multiple disks ... only thing is, I got to thinking how reliable an external HD might be ... and then thought there might be other, maybe even simpler, alternatives that I didn't know about.

The Seagate external drives are (1)relatively cheap and (2)come with an excellent backup suite which, basically, clones your drive over behind the scenes as you make changes. If you FUBAR your system drive, it's dead easy to grab the files off of the external.

If you don't mind a little more expense, the above drive with Norton Ghost 10 installed on your PC is even nicer (think brand new system drive, insert norton ghost on boot and complete restore inside 20 minutes or so...)

ErnestM