Best Storage Alternatives? Free up my hard drive

[doudou 0]

What are some of your opinion of backups and storage? I am close to using up my 120GB of hard drive space on my computer and I want to one store my files else where and free up some space and two have a backup. I’ve been exploring some options. DVDs are getting cheaper and cheaper, they cost as low as $0.27/each for 4.7 GB of space. While external hard drives are normally $1 per GB.

 

I wondered what other people do and what is the best option.

[Markymark2 0]

I tend to backup my stuff on to DVD myself...I have to buy a pack of 25 to store my music...I do a backup of films and apps once my 250Gig drive starts to get full up..I download a lot of UK TV too so this fill up a lot of room fast...this also gets archived and reseeded when needed...I would love to get hold of an old server backup tape system and then be able to do most of it onto one tape at time...i know it takes a long time...but thats not the issue...its physical room...i got TOO many spindles of burnt cds and DVDs lying around...wouldnt mind to have jsut a few tapes with everything on too..this way I can keep the DVDs also as a backup backup )

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

I have 2 hard-drives running on my system:

1 120GB HDD UATA-133 w/ 8MB Cache - Maxtor1 80 GB HDD ATA-100 w/ 8MB Cache - WD

Maxtor:
Linux - 70 GB
Windows - 40 GB

WD:
Data - 80 GB

I think the best way to do it is to have an external hard-drive. They are cheap (custom made ones).

xboxrulz

[doudou 0]

Exactly how cheap are hard drives, what about speed? I heard that external hard drives tend to be slow. Have you had any reliability issues?

[Markymark2 0]

If you have USB2 or Firewire the opposite is true!! they wil have a faster TX rate than your internal HDI have an 80gig drive which I bought an external case for..it has USB and Firewire connectors on it and inside a tiny board and then the power and IDE cables for the HD...all for 25 EuroI use it all the time to take to peoples houses when I am repairing stuff or take it to a mates house and give them all the latest stuff ive downloaded...I was soo impressed with this I went one step further...I took the thing apart and actually installed it inside my tower unit...its now running as a second HD that is very fast to copy stuff to and from....then I went out and bought a bigger external case...I got this great one that allows you to fit a DVD drive or a HD inside it....this way I can unclip my DVD burner from my tower and take the DVD burner out on the road for instance to do a backup on someones pc and hand them some DVDS...I ended up buying a 40gig HD for cheap money to have in it also..This has turned out to be a great little way of backing stuff up in a hurry...and the case only cost me 40 euro!!

[doudou 0]

That’s great, I had no idea external hard drive can be so fast and so cheap. I have to look a little more on the US market. I am not sure if I can get it for that cheap. What do you do about backing up your files? Edited September 17, 2006 by doudou (see edit history)

[sparx 0]

Regardless of which backup solution you adopt, you must remember this - VERIFICATION OF DATA INTEGRITYBig words, quite geeky sounding too, except what they imply is something that most of us tend to neglect. Out of the entire spectrum of users, very few of us actually take regular backups. An even smaller percentage of those back-uppers (for lack of a better word in my vocabulary) do so regularly and at a fixed schedule. An even more miniscule fraction routinely check the integrity of their backups. DVDs / Optical Media (BluRay) can get scratched, Hard Disks can get bad sectors and someone might decide to put your entire collection of backup tape media next to an MRI machine ;-) [for the uninitiated, an MRI machine has extremely powerful magnets which can easily wipe data from magnetically stored storage devices]. The backed up data has to be kept safe form physical hazards like fire, water and even inherent environmental moisture not to forget fluctuating temperatures. And obviously - keep your backups in an off-site location. At regular intervals, check your backup to make sure that the data stored can be retrieved. Don't save data in spanned archives, for that's just inviting disaster. If a single archive in a spanned set goes wonky, you'll be left without access to the rest of the files in the archive. It's better to create separate archives for the folders / files that you wish to backup.

Edited September 27, 2006 by sparx (see edit history)

[unimatrix 0]

I use the backup application that's part of .Mac and go to DVD's with compressed files. Also, I use a 300GB external firewire HDD for video projects and stuff.

[seec77 0]

Yeah.. external hard drives are great and they cost almost nothing!!

I've got a 120GB external hard drive right here next to me on which I store all my music and other important files. It's just a backup, so I don't know if it's fast enough to be using it as a normal storage places for frequently accessed files (even though I'm sure you won't notice a problem with loading a few Word documents from it). I do know that the drive is fast enough for everything I've wanted to do with it (mainly copying), and that for the small amount of buck I sure do get a lot of bang.

 

Besides, I can take it over to other peoples' houses and let them in on some new music, or transfer a heavy file (as I'm going to do tomorrow), and it's really quite useful. If your data isn't that sensitive, an external hard drive should definitely give you all you need and some more! If your data is that sensitive, nothing is good enough to store it and you should just create multiple backups. I know I don't have anything that important that I'm going to cry over if it's lost, except maybe some old nostalgic chat logs and whatever (I can practically follow through my first love again from old MSN Messenger chat logs, but that's mainly because she was so shy ).

 

And as for what to use for making backups on the software side, I just use Windows Explorer, even though I know it's not that great for what I'm doing... but it's not like my files change that often that I have to synchronize them every half an hour. For what I want it's just great.

[Grafitti 0]

That’s great, I had no idea external hard drive can be so fast and so cheap. I have to look a little more on the US market. I am not sure if I can get it for that cheap. What do you do about backing up your files?

 

The US market is about the cheapest you can get. Even I try to save up till a friend is going to the states, and then i order stuff online there.

If you're looking for cheap externals, here are some ideas:

Seagate / 250GB / 7200 / 8MB / ATA-100 / EIDE / OEM / Hard Drive with Ultra USB 2.0/FireWire Enclosure

$100

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se8&CatId=136

 

Fantom / Titanium / 250GB / 7200 / 2MB / USB 2.0 / External Hard Drive

$90

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se9&CatId=136

 

Western Digital / MyBook Premium / 500GB / 7200 / 16MB / USB 2.0/Firewire / External Hard Drive

$260

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se8&CatId=136

 

Fantom Drives / G-Force MegaDisk / 600GB / 7200 / 16MB / USB 2.0 / External Hard Drive

$290

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se429&CatId=0

 

Calvary 160GB 3.5" 7200RPM eSATA + USB 2.0 External Mobile Solution

$100

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se768&CatId=0

 

 

etc. there's 26 pages of external hard drives, so you should be able to find something you like, and at $0.50 a GB, that's hard to beat.

of course, you can also order a regular 300GB HD for $60, and then find a cheap casing for $10, but IMO you're better off buying the ready-made ones.

Edited September 28, 2006 by Grafitti (see edit history)

[wutske 0]

I usualy back my data up on severa DVD-rw, unfortunately, this is a very slow and rather unsafe way. Best thing to get is probably a HDD.Here in Belgium I can get a 160Gb @ €60 and a ICY Box Mobile Dock (this is the best way since it connects the hdd to a PATA port instead of USB2.0/FW) @ €25 . This solution costs €0.5/Gb ($0.7/gb ???) and it's much faster than a set of DVD's).

[foolakadugie 0]

The US market is about the cheapest you can get. Even I try to save up till a friend is going to the states, and then i order stuff online there.

If you're looking for cheap externals, here are some ideas:

Seagate / 250GB / 7200 / 8MB / ATA-100 / EIDE / OEM / Hard Drive with Ultra USB 2.0/FireWire Enclosure

$100

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se8&CatId=136

 

Fantom / Titanium / 250GB / 7200 / 2MB / USB 2.0 / External Hard Drive

$90

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se9&CatId=136

 

Western Digital / MyBook Premium / 500GB / 7200 / 16MB / USB 2.0/Firewire / External Hard Drive

$260

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se8&CatId=136

 

Fantom Drives / G-Force MegaDisk / 600GB / 7200 / 16MB / USB 2.0 / External Hard Drive

$290

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se429&CatId=0

 

Calvary 160GB 3.5" 7200RPM eSATA + USB 2.0 External Mobile Solution

$100

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se768&CatId=0

etc. there's 26 pages of external hard drives, so you should be able to find something you like, and at $0.50 a GB, that's hard to beat.

of course, you can also order a regular 300GB HD for $60, and then find a cheap casing for $10, but IMO you're better off buying the ready-made ones.

 

Agreed. TigerDirect has awsome prices. Sometimes they are with rebates, but as long as you send in the rebate you can get some really good deals. I got an internal 160GB drive for 23 dollars after rebate from them. I recently got out an old external drive that died on me long time ago and switched out the drive inside with a new hard drive and it's working quite nicely.

 

I don't like backing up on DVDs because it takes so long to do so. It takes so many DVDs to backup all my data; furthermore, some of my video files and such are too large to fit on a 4.75GB DVD.

Edited October 2, 2006 by foolakadugie (see edit history)