External hard drives for backup images

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Good evening!

I’m sitting here looking at a new Seagate “Expansion” 1GB external drive. Although I purchased it a week ago, it remains unopened. I bought it intending to use it to store back up images as well as some precious 20 year-old home videos that I have recently captured to my internal HD from VHS. I intend to edit those later, but want them off of the HD because they are BIG files. I already have a WD My Passport Essential 320GB portable external HD, but it is full.

Now my question. I am reluctant to open the above mentioned Seagate as the consensus in other forums seems to be that the “Expansion” is particularly prone to crashing, and I may return it. I have used other stuff that was panned on the forums without problem. And I realize that most of those who post on such forums are those who have had a bad experience. Don’t always hear the success stories. I was attracted to the “Expansion” because it is drag and drop; no back up software. Has anyone any experience with this HD? Are there better choices? I’ve heard that the software on most external HDs can be disabled. If so, is this a safe practice? The Best Buy guys didn’t have a clue about HDs. I spent $69.00 for it and was pleased with the price, but will spend more if need be for more peace of mind. I’ll await any advice before going forward.

Thanks for any help,
John

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Are you sure of the size 1GB seems very small for an external HD. I have a Seagate FreeAgent GoUSB 1 TB HD which I can whole heartedly endorse. Works wonderfully to store all my Images on. Very pleased. Plus I like the physical size of this HD. It easily fits in my PC case so I can take it where ever I go.

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Are you sure of the size 1GB seems very small for an external HD. I have a Seagate FreeAgent GoUSB 1 TB HD which I can whole heartedly endorse. Works wonderfully to store all my Images on. Very pleased. Plus I like the physical size of this HD. It easily fits in my PC case so I can take it where ever I go.

Ted,

That one looks like it will do nicely (yes, 1GB should be 1TB). Are you using your’s sans the software?

John

P.S.

I really like Ted and Chuck’s combo, but don’t think I’m slick enough for that set up!

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Ted,

That one looks like it will do nicely (yes, 1GB should be 1TB). Are you using your’s sans the software?

John

P.S.

I really like Ted and Chuck’s combo, but don’t think I’m slick enough for that set up!

I did not use any Seagate software because I already had Acronis. I really like the size of the Freeagent Go. Very easy to carry around. Set up is a breeze because in essence there is no setup. I connect the Ext HD through my USB port, Windows asigns a drive letter (usually the next available) then I use my Imaging app and tell the app where to place the Image (Ext HD) and press proceed. That’s it. Done in less than 1/2 hour including validating the Image. Just be sure that whatever app you use for Imaging, you use this app to create a Repair Disk. (see my Acronis 2011 instructions) Now WHEN I screw something up, I use my up to date Image to restore my OS.

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I’m sitting here looking at a new Seagate “Expansion” 1GB external drive. Although I purchased it a week ago, it remains unopened. I bought it intending to use it to store back up images as well as some precious 20 year-old home videos that I have recently captured to my internal HD from VHS. I intend to edit those later, but want them off of the HD because they are BIG files. I already have a WD My Passport Essential 320GB portable external HD, but it is full.

Thanks for any help,

John,
Hello… Question… Is your PC a desk top? If so have you considered an “internal HD” Some PC’s have room for additional hard drives. Regards Fred

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Hi John,

I’ve not used your specific external hard drive model, so I cannot confirm reliability. However, most external hard drives come with some form of backup software, and every model I have used does not require the use of the included backup software, and drag ‘n drop can be used to copy any desired files to the external drive.

In fact, I have deleted all backup software on the external USB hard disks I have purchased as I do not use the included software.

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drag ‘n drop can be used to copy any desired files to the external drive.

I wouldn’t mess with Windows drag & drop for copying large numbers of files. It chokes big time, as people other than me have also discovered. In fact, I’ve had trouble copying large numbers of files even using more techie methods, such as Teracopy (which was recommended to me here in the lounge and also choked) and Windows RoboCopy (choke). And all this choking caused endless, continuing headaches, forcing me to pull the plug on my computer (Task Manager didn’t work), which might have damaged some software item on my 2 TB Western Digital external hard drive because it began to get flaky and Windows Backup and Restore refused to use it. I ran chkdsk on the drive, as recommended by Windows, and after about 36 hours, it choked, too. I have so many files already on the external HD that I can’t offload them and reformat it, as I’d like to try next. Maybe I’ll just throw the thing out. I don’t know. Personally, I think computers just plain suck, and I wish I could live without them.

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You appear to be worried about the term “expansion” rather than the hard disk which the unit contains! All it is is a hard disk but with a USB interface, rather than more directly connected within the PC.

I would consider it far more important that you seem to be treating this hard disk as the only form of backup of what you consider to be important files. For complete backup you must use multiple devices and multiple media, wherever possible. The difficulty is that your files probably extend past the capacities of both DVD storage (perhaps even Dual Layer or BluRay) and of USB Flash Drives, which would normally be recommended as supplementary backup mechanisms to a hard disk.

Remember the motto, that “every storage medium and device will fail, the only question being ‘When?’ “. That’s why you hedge your bets by having several different media types – so you aren’t hit by a bad batch of (say) UFDs…

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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You appear to be worried about the term “expansion” rather than the hard disk which the unit contains! All it is is a hard disk but with a USB interface, rather than more directly connected within the PC.

I would consider it far more important that you seem to be treating this hard disk as the only form of backup of what you consider to be important files. For complete backup you must use multiple devices and multiple media, wherever possible. The difficulty is that your files probably extend past the capacities of both DVD storage (perhaps even Dual Layer or BluRay) and of USB Flash Drives, which would normally be recommended as supplementary backup mechanisms to a hard disk.

Remember the motto, that “every storage medium and device will fail, the only question being ‘When?’ “. That’s why you hedge your bets by having several different media types – so you aren’t hit by a bad batch of (say) UFDs…

I’m with BATcher on this. Disk space is cheap. Use multiple drives. More and more of our lives are on our PCs and laptops, photos, videos, music, financial data, etc. Why leave it to chance? I personally tend to stay away from prepackaged external USB drives. They aren’t bad per say, but I think you can get more bang for your buck by purchasing a bare bones drive and a external enclosure. One benefit of this is that you can partition it the way you want, and there is no built in software to use up part of the disk. To take it a step further, I know some people who rotate drives and keep one off site at a trusted friend’s house, or in a safe deposit box.

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You appear to be worried about the term “expansion” rather than the hard disk which the unit contains! All it is is a hard disk but with a USB interface, rather than more directly connected within the PC.

I would consider it far more important that you seem to be treating this hard disk as the only form of backup of what you consider to be important files. For complete backup you must use multiple devices and multiple media, wherever possible. The difficulty is that your files probably extend past the capacities of both DVD storage (perhaps even Dual Layer or BluRay) and of USB Flash Drives, which would normally be recommended as supplementary backup mechanisms to a hard disk.

Remember the motto, that “every storage medium and device will fail, the only question being ‘When?’ “. That’s why you hedge your bets by having several different media types – so you aren’t hit by a bad batch of (say) UFDs…

“Expansion” is the name of this particular Seagate product line. It is packaged cheaply and looks to be a bare-bones product, which I don’t mind, but am not wild about it having only a 1 year limited warranty. Quite heavy to lift, too. As I said above, a lot of complaints about this particular drive on some forums I checked out. At $69.99, my feeling is that I should be able to get something with a better warranty for the same price or a bit more.

Agree on the multiple back-up strategy. I intend to clean up the 320GB external drive and double back- up everything vital onto both drives, and keep one at my daughter’s house. I’ll also put the home videos on DVD, just to be safe. Thanks for your good advice and concern.

John

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Newegg has a 2TB Western Digital this week for $95

Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

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Newegg has a 2TB Western Digital this week for $95

Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

I bought 2 WD 750GB ext HDs and regret it because, unbeknownst to me, they have added the HD to the boot sequence and now I cannot boot to the C: drive unless I unplug the HD. I have no idea how to change this and it bothers me a lot!

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I bought 2 WD 750GB ext HDs and regret it because, unbeknownst to me, they have added the HD to the boot sequence and now I cannot boot to the C: drive unless I unplug the HD. I have no idea how to change this and it bothers me a lot!

You should be able to go into your bios and set USB as the last option in your boot sequence. Which WD’s did you purchase? Some have a virtual CD drive that is built into the firmware of the enclosure that can be hidden using WD’s software.

If you are unfamiliar with working in the BIOS, give us your machine make and model and we can look up the settings for you.

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And I would pair that with this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112

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Something to consider about backing up your photo data…

I also have a Seagate FreeAgent USB drive. The software that comes with it is Acronis imaging software; I use this to create an image of my operating system drive (data is on another HD in the computer case). I also have a Sabrent USB drive that I use to backup my data drive. Acronis is not a good choice for backing up data because it is compressed and not directly accessible. I wanted to be able to access the data on demand without even having to launch WinZip or such; I wanted a straight copy of the data.

Drag & drop does not work reliably for copying large quantities of data – Windows Explorer tends to get tired. I knew this (from past experience) and dropped to a command line, issued VERIFY ON, and used the XCOPY command to copy the data; this method also failed – I got an out of memory error. Apparently Cobian Backup (and similar programs) can do the job – it is not a ‘synchronize’ program, it copies directories and files you specify. I got a copy, but did not try it out because I had already manually copied over the remaining 25GB or so of the 130GB of data I was backing up.

I just wanted to give you a warning to not try to drag the entire directory of data if it is large – break the process up into chunks.

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Drag & drop does not work reliably for copying large quantities of data – Windows Explorer tends to get tired. I knew this (from past experience) and dropped to a command line, issued VERIFY ON, and used the XCOPY command to copy the data; this method also failed – I got an out of memory error. Apparently Cobian Backup (and similar programs) can do the job – it is not a ‘synchronize’ program, it copies directories and files you specify. I got a copy, but did not try it out because I had already manually copied over the remaining 25GB or so of the 130GB of data I was backing up.

I have had good luck with Backer. It synchronizes folders and gives you pretty fine-grained control over how that works. You can access the files on your backup drive directly; they are not compressed or encrypted. http://www.cordes-dev.com/english/overview.html

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Drag & drop does not work reliably for copying large quantities of data..

I use Windows 7 built-in copy program Robocopy to backup user files. I create Robocopy commands in a batch file and run it using the Windows Scheduler once a day – much easier than running an incremental backup on a constantly running basis.

Personal backups using ROBOCOPY: http://web.ncf.ca/pat/pdqlib/robocopy.html

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I use Windows 7 built-in copy program Robocopy to backup user files. I create Robocopy commands in a batch file and run it using the Windows Scheduler once a day – much easier than running an incremental backup on a constantly running basis.

Personal backups using ROBOCOPY: http://web.ncf.ca/pa…b/robocopy.html

If you have Windows 7 you might look into Sync Center (or just type ‘sync’ in the line above the Start button). It is a far cry from the old unsupported SyncToy.

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Something to consider about backing up your photo data…

Drag & drop does not work reliably for copying large quantities of data – Windows Explorer tends to get tired.

I just wanted to give you a warning to not try to drag the entire directory of data if it is large – break the process up into chunks.

For the benefit of future Loungers, I can verify Rodney’s remark above about not using drag & drop to move very large files. I tried to move a 25GB folder that way and Win Explorer just sat there spinning. I opened the folder and moved the individual files one at a time with no problem. A 4GB file copies to the new location in about 2 minutes. I believe that Clint also mentioned this. Thanks for your help, guys!

John

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I try to use free software whenever possible, so that I can freely recommend and pass it along to anyone (including those who can’t afford to buy software). It seems to me that the best file-backup solution is reverse-incremental, but unfortunately, when I searched around last year, the only free solution I saw was for Linux. The engine is rdiff-backup, and KDE has a nice interface for it, named Keep. (You can install this even if you primarily run Gnome.)

On the Windows side, some people really like doing incremental backups using Cobian, but there seem to be problems with that: if you delete or rename a file, do incremental backups, and then have to restore, the old files will get restored too. I believe you’ll get the same problem if you use XCOPY

So, for Windows, I prefer to use multiple external drives and not mess with incremental backups. As others have mentioned, simple copy/paste or drag/drop really is not very reliable. Also, after the initial backup, a good one-way sync is MUCH faster, in addition to being more reliable.

1. SyncToy. My favorite tool for sync-ing is Microsoft SyncToy, because it is so optimized for speed. That is, if some huge files have been moved around on my hard drive, it will rearrange them on the backup drive too, rather than deleting and re-copying them. (This only works if I used SyncToy to create the original backup–if not, it still works fine, but it will delete and re-copy the files like any ordinary sync tool.)
TIP: SyncToy is great for quickly sync-ing media files, such as my music collection, between multiple computers that are all on a home network.

2. SyncBack. However, if you need to have include/exclude filters or other detailed tweaks, or want to automate things a bit more, SyncBack is a better choice.

3. WinMerge. When a manual file copy fails (e.g. I drag and drop a too-huge folder), or when I just feel like updating a backup manually, I absolutely love WinMerge (from winmerge.org, or portableapps.com). It’s not just an excellent file-comparison tool; it’s also very handy for comparing two folder trees and manually sync-ing them. (This tool is handly for lots of tasks; not just for backups.)

4. Some people use XCOPY for doing a one-way sync to update a backup, but I believe this generates a messier (non-exact) copy that includes outdated files (like the Cobian problem above).

Jon

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Since I want the files I use most frequently to be backed up more frequently, I don’t rely exclusively on backups to an external hard drive. “The cloud” may not be a good fit for you, but since my files are not state secrets or highly sensitive documents, sync-ing them to all my home computers via a “reasonably trustworthy” web service was a good option for me. An added bonus is that then they become available to me when away from home as long as I have web access and remember my login info.

Initially, I tried using Dropbox, and it was quite easy to set up and use. However, it required that all my sync-ed files be moved into a special folder created by Dropbox, which is something of a black box. That is, data moved into Dropbox could no longer be simply backed up to my external drive in the same way, so if my laptop were to crash or be stolen, the only restore option would be the Dropbox website.

So, I switched to SugarSync a couple months ago and have been truly amazed. It too is very easy to set up, and unlike Dropbox, it lets you leave your files exactly where you want them. You can even have partial overlap in what your computers sync. That is, you can have folders A, B, and C sync-ed to the server from computer 1, but only have folders A and B sync over to computer 2. Thus far, it has been unobtrusive yet very reliable for me. And its quota is generous–my free account came with 5GB, which increased to 6GB when I referred two friends.

Oh, that reminds me. Here’s my referral link; if you use it when signing up, both you and I should get a bonus (of 500MB, I think).
https://www.sugarsync.com/referral?rf=e6dmzd4bymcsn

Note: Aside from this referral, I have no other incentive or interest leading me to promote SugarSync (or Dropbox for that matter).

Jon

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Others have mentioned this topic already, but I wanted to cast my vote in favor of (small) enclosures. You’ll spend a bit more for a hard drive plus an enclosure, but you’ll be getting more flexibility, and probably a better drive too.

I recommend buying a hard drive that is compatible with your computer, in case you ever need to swap them. E.g. my laptop came with a 320GB SATA drive, so I bought a 640GB SATA laptop drive, and an enclosure. I chose to swap them right away and use the smaller drive for backups, but that’s a matter of preference.

Although they cost more, I like laptop drives best because…
– my computers are all laptops
– laptop drives are much smaller and lighter than desktop drives
– they don’t require a power supply (fewer wires, and more importantly, less vulnerability to surges–or simple power supply failure)

If you partition your drives (e.g. C: for system and installed programs, D: for data and portable programs), you may want to partition the backup drive to match. This is easiest to manage if the backup drive has a high capacity.
partition 1: blank for now
partition 2: just a “bak” folder containing backed up files and a compressed image of C: .

If you want to pre-image partition 1, that makes recovery faster–just swap the two drives and boot right up. But having a bootable partition on an attached USB drive can confuse your computer, so when I do this, I also tell Windows not to mount it (by unassigning the drive letter, under Computer, Manage, Disk Management). Your choice.

Oh, for imaging software, I didn’t find an free one that I liked when I looked a few years ago, so I bought a copy of BootIt NG for about $35. It works very well for my needs, and even includes a partition-resizing tool. But it does have a significant learning curve. (TIP: it is also a boot manager and you can install it as such, but I just run it from a CD for partition work and never actually install it.)

More recently, I’ve tested Macrium Reflect (free), combined with Bart’s PE (free to Windows users, but you have to build your own copy).

Acronis is nice but not free, unless you get a free copy with your (Seagate?) drive.

Jon

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in this thread,
maybe someone has a clue how to get my aging but very satisfactory MB (Elitegroup PT800CE-A with a 3gHz processor and a 200gB SATA1 drive).
and SATA1 ( 2 drive slots) and should be able to talk eSATA to an external HD box – I bought one from Sandberg that talks ESATA2 or USB2 – I think I have covered most angles, setting jumpers on the drive to slow it down to 1500MB/s etc-
The PC simply does not recognise the esata connection and the 1 tB drive- Nor does it recognise the 1tB drive when connecting to the internal SATA – I tried several drives from different makers- no go.
the USB connection works fine with a smaller drive
what to do ? I´d hate to discard of the 3GHz machine that works so well. hints , anyone ?
best, musiklab in denmark.

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in this thread,
maybe someone has a clue how to get my aging but very satisfactory MB (Elitegroup PT800CE-A with a 3gHz processor and a 200gB SATA1 drive).
and SATA1 ( 2 drive slots) and should be able to talk eSATA to an external HD box – I bought one from Sandberg that talks ESATA2 or USB2 – I think I have covered most angles, setting jumpers on the drive to slow it down to 1500MB/s etc-
The PC simply does not recognise the esata connection and the 1 tB drive- Nor does it recognise the 1tB drive when connecting to the internal SATA – I tried several drives from different makers- no go.
the USB connection works fine with a smaller drive
what to do ? I´d hate to discard of the 3GHz machine that works so well. hints , anyone ?
best, musiklab in denmark.

If you have XP and trying to use an eSATA card you might need to find drivers. IMHO eSATA external is preferable to USB 2. When I went this way i had the same problem getting XP to identify the card. i was able to find drivers at the products web site and then it worked flawlessly. In fact when my original hard drive crashed I was able to restore it to a new hard drive using my Acronis Rexcue disk and the Acronis backups on the external hard drive.

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I’d be concerned if the only backup was a lone hard drive. Although undeniably they are very reliable these days, it is a definite law of the Universe that if your computer goes down, you’ll find the hard drive broken too!

My solution though is quite simple. I use two external hard drives. My ‘Archive’ drive is principally for all those important long-term storage items I need to keep, family photos, important correspondence, music and documents, etc.

The second external HDD is used for a more conventional backup using True Image. I create a backup image of both my main computer and the Archive drive at least monthly, sometimes more frequently if I have important new items to store.

My external drives are dual USB/eSATA and I use eSATA which is considerably faster and more reliable than USB. If you don’t have external eSATA ports on your computer, you can get a dual port SATA to eSATA backplate for your PC for just £3.27 from eSataBackplate This is a backplate that connects 2 of your spare motherboard SATA ports to two eSATA ports on the backplate.

With this belt and braces arrangement, it doesn’t matter if the computer and one of the external drives die as I still have everything on the other source.

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I know nothing about the Expansion, but have purchased other Seagate products, specifically their NAS. It was a disaster. It did not work as it was supposed to. It is supposed to work for up to 5 computers, but if you install it on 5 computers, and then retire one of the 5, there is no way to unistall the product so that you can re-install it on a new 5th computer. Virtually zero tech support, and the little that they did offer was totally non-responsive to my question and problem. I urge you not to buy from Seagate. In the end, I bought from Western Digital and have been very happy with their support and the hard drive that I bought from them.

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I tried to use both a Seagate and WD 1T backup but neither worked using eSATA even though they had ports and advertised ability to use them. When I do my weekly full disk backup on USB it takes FOREVER! I gave up and made my own external backup drive out of an empty case (easy to find) and extra hard drive. instead of a forecast 5-hour backup job using USB it takes about 1/2 hour using eSATA.

Seagate had me update it’s firmware which helped for one backup. The next day I tried to make an incremental backup which forecast 10 hours! I know that these estimates go much lower in a hurry after you get started, but none of these did. It turned out that it couldn’t keep its firmware updates after it was powered off.

Remember when Seagate’s tech support was staffed by pros who knew what they were doing and backed up good products?

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Hello everybody:
I once lost a hard drive it just stopped working. Many years ago but I got the lesson.
My solution is as follows:
1 – My Desktop has two internal 1TB each Hardrives
2 – I also have two External 1 TB each harddrives
3 – For the backups I use Acronis no doubt the best software to use for that
4 – Once a week overnight I create a perfect image of C drive on my second internal drive
5 – One of the external Hardrives is used for an ongoing backup of C that runs automatically
This way if C goes wrong I have a perfect Image on a drive that becomes the system drive.
If anybody wants to know about the 2nd External HD well its for the backups of my Laptop and Notebook over the home network.
It is a safe system, that can stand for different failure scenarios and HDs these days are really so cheap
I hope its useful to you

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Michael —
Most motherboards *I* have encountered that have both IDE and SATA onboard do NOT have the SATA ports activated by default. I usually have to go into the BIOS setup and turn them on, and then everything seems to be just fine. You might also check your eSATA cable. I also have an external drive with both USB/eSata ports, and couldn’t get the eSATA to function. It turned out to be a defective cable.

Best regards,
Phil Heberer

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I would consider setting up multiple drives (including the one you bought) and making sure you have copies in multiple places, you will have a failure, it is a question of when. Though… if all your HD are at your house there still is a risk…

I always suggest that people should consider internet backup rather than local. For somewhere around $50 a year you can backup an unlimited amount. This means that if your HD dies, your computer is stolen, your house burns down – the data is still there and available. Plus these services will automatically find and load new or modified files you create… and in some cases keep revisions in case you have corruption or want to drop back to an earlier version. I have been suggesting http://www.mozey.com or http://www.carbonite.com but there are a variety of others out there.

Yes you pay every year, but it removes the remembering and risk out of doing it yourself.

You have a lot of data so be prepared for a slow intial upload time depending on your internet connection.

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I always suggest that people should consider internet backup rather than local. For somewhere around $50 a year you can backup an unlimited amount. This means that if your HD dies, your computer is stolen, your house burns down – the data is still there and available. Plus these services will automatically find and load new or modified files you create… and in some cases keep revisions in case you have corruption or want to drop back to an earlier version. I have been suggesting http://www.mozey.com or http://www.carbonite.com but there are a variety of others out there.

Correction: It is http://mozy.com/. Works great and has saved my bacon when my computer got stolen.

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I was attracted to the “Expansion” because it is drag and drop; no back up software. Has anyone any experience with this HD?

I use “copy and paste” almost exclusively for transferring large files onto external drives. Added programs on an external drive for the purpose of backing
up data is a waste of my time and money. I want an empty and bare drive waiting for me to format and use. And I also want to choose what program, if any,
to use to backup data with. I don’t want some manufacturer choosing this for me.

As long as one does not over due the size of copied data/files then you will never run into problems. You have to take into consideration your
computers overall hardware specs to a degree, and the operating systems ability to handle large file transfers. Tens of GBs tend to work just fine,
maybe even a hundred GBs, but I would not want to go further. If you have a sucky system, expect sucky results.

So no, there is no problem with the type of drive you have. Be reasonable when transferring large sets of files by means of
drag n’ drop or copy and paste.

Edit
On a side note,
if your are working with large video files, one should edit or encode/compress them on the fastest internal drive first, then copy them over to your external storage drive.

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I think using ANY kind of hard drive for backup is a mistake. They are, after all, mechanical hard drives and we’ve all experienced HD failures at one point or another, whether it’s the motor, or some electronic component.

MY SOLUTION: I use a pair of SD memory chips, in rotation, along with Genie backup software. The SD chips are totally electronic, have no moving parts, are very small and convenient to use. For my desktop, I use a card reader that cost around $15 My HP notebook has a card slot, so I just stick in the chip and fire up the backup. I have each chip color coded so I don’t wipe out my last backup before making a new one. These chips are really inexpensive, especially if you catch KMart having a sale. I got 2 2Gb chips for $20. I’ve used tape drives, CD’s, DVD’s and external HD’s for backup over the years, but the SD solution is the best one I’ve found.

Win7Pro, I5 CPU, 8Gb RAM, SSD boot drive, external 4Tb SSD storage

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P.S.

I really like Ted and Chuck’s combo, but don’t think I’m slick enough for that set up!

Thanks, but actually its deceptively simple. Macrium Reflect and Acronis both offer imaging software that also does file level backups and restores. Very easy to use and setup, and both offer automated solutions that you can set to run “off hours”. If all you need is to make images, Macrium has a free version that works great. When you do decide you want a second backup drive (and I think you should), consider getting one with an eSATA port. Much faster. For now, that Seagate should serve you well.

I think using ANY kind of hard drive for backup is a mistake.

MY SOLUTION: I use a pair of SD memory chips, in rotation, along with Genie backup software.

I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing. SD cards are very handy, and have many uses beyond consumer electronics. But they are akin to using floppy disks as far as disk space is concerned. You must not have very much data to protect. Most of us are backing up hundreds of gigs of data, not 2 GB. My laptop has a 500gb drive it it, and the current image is almost 300gb. My data backups alone are well over 200GB. I wonder if my old DOS copy of PKZip can span SD Cards?… While its true that hard drives can and do fail, their reliability is actually quite good. I personally have not had a drive fail in well over 10 years. One drive I have is at least 7 years old and ran for nearly 4 years straight without being shut off, and one laptop we have is about 5 years old. Again, the key is not to rely one one drive for backups.

I have to make a comment about using the “cloud” for backups. Call me old fashioned, but there’s something about putting my personal data in the hands of others that I find distasteful.

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I think using ANY kind of hard drive for backup is a mistake. They are, after all, mechanical hard drives and we’ve all experienced HD failures at one point or another, whether it’s the motor, or some electronic component.

MY SOLUTION: I use a pair of SD memory chips, in rotation, along with Genie backup software. The SD chips are totally electronic, have no moving parts, are very small and convenient to use. For my desktop, I use a card reader that cost around $15 My HP notebook has a card slot, so I just stick in the chip and fire up the backup. I have each chip color coded so I don’t wipe out my last backup before making a new one. These chips are really inexpensive, especially if you catch KMart having a sale. I got 2 2Gb chips for $20. I’ve used tape drives, CD’s, DVD’s and external HD’s for backup over the years, but the SD solution is the best one I’ve found.

I think you may be unaware that flash memory has its life limitations too. Typically, manufacturers quote 100,000 read/write cycles and 10,000 physical insertions. Dropping them, poor handling/storage and incorrect use (removing them incorrectly) can shorten their life too. So although they may be slightly more robust than ‘mechanical’ hard drives, they probably have a similar life expectancy.

However, hard drives, especially external eSATA drives, have enormous advantages over flash memory: speed (80 – 100MBps compared to 20 – 30 MBps), vast storage capacity and cost per MB.

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I think using ANY kind of hard drive for backup is a mistake. They are, after all, mechanical hard drives and we’ve all experienced HD failures at one point or another, whether it’s the motor, or some electronic component.

MY SOLUTION: I use a pair of SD memory chips, in rotation, along with Genie backup software. The SD chips are totally electronic, have no moving parts, are very small and convenient to use. For my desktop, I use a card reader that cost around $15 My HP notebook has a card slot, so I just stick in the chip and fire up the backup. I have each chip color coded so I don’t wipe out my last backup before making a new one. These chips are really inexpensive, especially if you catch KMart having a sale. I got 2 2Gb chips for $20. I’ve used tape drives, CD’s, DVD’s and external HD’s for backup over the years, but the SD solution is the best one I’ve found.

4GB is a tiny amount of data!

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4GB is a tiny amount of data!

Noir Dan,
Hello… I agree…. even my totally “stripped out” Vista OS with no programs, Patches or Updates (P U’s) loaded is 4.2 GB….. and 8.4 with all my programs.
Guess some feel that backing up your OS is a waste of time… that is until it crashes
Regards Fred

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I have used the Cavalry CAXB Series 500GB USB 2.0 / eSATA external hard drive for over a year and it has plug-n-play features built in plus it is either USB or eSATA. It’s just as fast as an internal drive and you just plug it into an open SATA port and away you go.

My ASUS motherboard has a SATA port in the back, but if your motherboard doesn’t have one, you may have to get the adapter that allows you to have a SATA plug available at the back of your computer.

All available at Newegg at very reasonable cost. (Cavalry uses a Hitachi drive)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822101132

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Hi, John,

I have been using the Seagate Expansion 1TB for six months, and, so far, have not encountered any of the negative comments posted in forums about this model. It works right out of the box, is relatively fast in transfer, is virtually silent (nothing ‘clicks’), and turns off when PC is shut down. It does use an external power supply plugin, but I use a PC and have no need of portability.
I also use Acronis True Image to backup my complete PC, and backups of my personal stuff also ends up on CD”s or DVD’s, and/or another lesser capacity external HD.
Previous forum advice to back up to an internet website program is well advised if you are extra nervous about preserving your work. The price seems low enough. Using ‘Expansion’ as an adjunct to other precautions should give you peace of mind.
Jason

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I have an ancient Seagate 250 Gig external drive that my wife and I have used for years to back up our important files. We have never had a problem with this drive.

She uses windows explorer? (Hit Windowkey-E or go to My Computer to bring it up) to drag and drop files on the Segate drive while I use a freeware backup program from Microsoft called “SyncToy”.

We have never had a problem either backing up or restoring any of our files.

Probably the main safety feature that we use is to completely disconnect the drive as soon as we are finished, not only from the computer, but also from the AC power source. Then we store it in a safe place in the Climate-Controlled area of our house…

jiml

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Good evening!

I’m sitting here looking at a new Seagate “Expansion” 1GB external drive. Although I purchased it a week ago, it remains unopened. I bought it intending to use it to store back up images as well as some precious 20 year-old home videos that I have recently captured to my internal HD from VHS. I intend to edit those later, but want them off of the HD because they are BIG files. I already have a WD My Passport Essential 320GB portable external HD, but it is full.

Now my question. I am reluctant to open the above mentioned Seagate as the consensus in other forums seems to be that the “Expansion” is particularly prone to crashing, and I may return it. I have used other stuff that was panned on the forums without problem. And I realize that most of those who post on such forums are those who have had a bad experience. Don’t always hear the success stories. I was attracted to the “Expansion” because it is drag and drop; no back up software. Has anyone any experience with this HD? Are there better choices? I’ve heard that the software on most external HDs can be disabled. If so, is this a safe practice? The Best Buy guys didn’t have a clue about HDs. I spent $69.00 for it and was pleased with the price, but will spend more if need be for more peace of mind. I’ll await any advice before going forward.

Thanks for any help,
John

Seagate did have an issue with firmware in their Expansion line of external hard drives about a year ago. Since that time, there have been few if any reports of reliability issues with this brand of external hard drive. I use Western Digital MyBook or Passport Essential drives because: (1) the warranty is two to three years, if registered on line; (2) the warranty begins when you first register the drive, not on the day of purchase; (3) simplicity — these are nearly bare-bones hard drives, and can be formatted and used any way I choose. I partition the drives to separate my Acronis True Image Home System backups from my Data Backups (Windows Copy/Paste, but no huge media files to worry about). On my internal 500GB SATA Drive, I also partition, with Data, Media, and Operating Partitions. (Windows 7 64-bit also creates a small “System” Partition, which must be backed up alongside of the main Windows Partition if using Acronis.) and (4) reliability — I have had zero errors or failures on six Western Digital Drives in six years of ownership and heavy use for backup and recovery operations.

Good enough for you?

I do not see any reason not to use Seagate Expansion Hard Drives, as long as they are relatively recently manufactured, and you get them from a retailer who will take them back if they fail within a year. Even a 30-day take-back policy will cover any firmware issues which may show up. Don’t buy anyone’s Extended Warranties, as these will almost never pay off in terms of replacement or service costs. But do register your warranty on line, and subscribe for recall notices (but not product advertisements). Only registered users can get tech support or firmware upgrades from Seagate or Western Digital.

You got a very good price on a good hard drive. Use it and enjoy it for a long time to come.

-- rc primak

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Everyone should favor having multiple backups, especially for the stuff that’s really irreplaceable.

Since I always have at least two working machines that can hook to the Internet, I’m in favor of online backup. But if you do that, have only one machine, and it crashes to the point where it won’t even boot from CD, then you won’t be able to retrieve from a Website storage unit. (You may still be able to flash the bios from floppy, even if you have to take the case apart to install a floppy drive temporarily**. It pays to assure that your boot CD can get your machine to access the web. Hiren’s, Bart’s, and the UBCD4Win boot disks are not completely transparent about doing that for you.) So I think it’s good to have an external hard drive that the machine can boot from.

Right now, I’m trying to find an external enclosure with eSata cabling; I’ll supply my own HDD, but the odd part here is that I want the HDD to be liquid cooled. There are enclosures with fans, and if the drive is going to be worked much, it should be more than passively cooled, I think. I suspect I could modify a docking station so it would accommodate a thin liquid heat sink, but I wonder if anyone is marketing an enclosure that is built for that kind of cooling.

** If you are fortunate, the mainboard bios is on a chip that plugs into a socket. (Some of the mainboards at my house have bios chips that are soldered directly to the board, and replacing them can take some deft use of desoldering equipment, liquid flux and a small temp-controlled iron.) Several places sell bios chips that are programmed with the latest versions for your board. They’re cheap insurance.

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For me the choice always comes down to warranty. The best warranty I find is 5 years for Western Digital Black and Enterprise drives. It’s still disappointing the expected lifetime is 5 years. If your data is important the longest warranty should be top criteria in my humble opinion.

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After bad luck with a series of encased backup drives, I have started using plain internal hard drives with a docking station.

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I would recommend staying away from Toshiba 2TB external hard drives! They look stylish, are relatively inexpensive, but perform badly.

I purchased 4 of these and they are a pain the the *** . When connected to Windows their software creates a virtual CD drive that loads a monitoring application that is completely unnecessary. They eSATA connections are also unreliable because the drive powers down after a period of inactivity and will not restart without manually pressing the power button. This makes these drives entirely inappropriate for unattended backups.

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I use an external cassette that I plug SATA hard drives into. The cassette, in turn, interfaces with my computers via a USB port. The cassette I have used for the last few years is: Vantec NexStar 2.5in. or 3.5in. SATA to USB 2.0 & eSATA Hard Drive Dock. A USB 3 dock is available too. I have recently purchased this item, plus a USB 3 add-on PCI-E card, and it smokes. I protect the hard drives using: Ziotek 3.5in. Hard Drive Gasket Open Air Enclosure Black. They stack in my closet and I keep one in a safe deposit box at the bank. This system is economical since I’m not paying for external hard drives with their attendant, independent power supplies and interfaces. I use the savings to buy good quality, 7200rpm, high capacity drives. I’ve had to restore crashed systems more than once. My philosophy, if one backup is good, more is better — and one offsite is best.

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For software, I really like the SyncBack products from 2BrightSparks http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html I’m using and am very happy with the free version. You can point to anything Windows can mount, do incremental backups, full backups, specify directors, files, etc.

I have a NSLU2 with two 1T drives; drive 2 mirrors drive 1, all files go onto drive 1.
I also push files to a remote server. I have a DreamHost web account which comes with a 50G ‘backup’ user account, anything over 50G is a nominal fee and the monthly on the web service is pretty cheap too so even if I’m not running a web site, the backup account is as cheap as anything else out there (or was when I started this process a couple of years back). The nice thing about DH’s backup is that it’s just file space and I decide what goes in. Most backup services require that you run their software on your machine and it keeps files on your PC in sync with the backup server. Once you remove a file from your PC, it’s yanked from the backup server too…if I want to pull a bunch of stuff off my main PC, I want to leave it at the backup site until I’m ready to delete it.

I can’t recommend any hardware; I’ve used lots of different drives and everything has worked well.

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Drag n’ drop or copy and paste is perfectly viable when done with reasonable file sizes, unfortunately you will have to determine the limits with your system.
I don’t know if there is a difference between copy & paste and drag & drop, but I strongly prefer the former. If you have weak system specs, choose a chunk of files
that are reasonable in total size and let it finish the job.

Factors that may give rise to problems when using the above file copy methods:
Systems with low memory
Improperly configured page file
Hard disk errors, data corruption, unresolved hard disk or NTFS file errors.
Selecting too much data in terms of total size for transfers

Reasonable: Not excessive or extreme, Showing reason or sound judgment

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Here is what I do:

I have a new Dell Studio 17 Laptop running Windows 7 Ultimate 64. It has a built-in eSATA/USB port. Clearly not an older device, so your situation may vary… I have also added a PC Express port dual eSATA card from Startech.

a) I use Mozy – it is set up to get stuff that is in the category of ‘routine’ onto the cloud. I do not backup my consulting project work to Mozy (alone). Cannot recover the Laptop from Mozy and do not expect to. Be careful to set Mozy’s directory sources appropriately for your OS – Win 7 stores stuff slightly differently by default than earlier versions e.g. Thunderbird Mail.
b) I use an Addonics Z enclosure with swappable 1TB SEAGATE eSATA drives, 7400 RPM speed. Drives are cheap compared to time lost. I have also purchased the SNAP-IN 2.5 inch eSATA adapter for this device. (Addonics Z actually uses USB as well, but eSATA is way faster). Cannot recover the Laptop from the Addonics and do not expect to, except see (d)
c) I use a MyBook World NAS (PATCHED UP, BTW) to store stuff in my house on a separate disk. That stuff is routine stuff like music, pictures, whatever. Cannot recover the Laptop from the NAS and do not expect to.
d) I periodically use Backup4All with the Addonics and a pair of dedicated 1TB disks to image my laptop. While I will never actually try it live, I believe this will get me most of my laptop back in the event of disaster. I have not sent the disks off site but need to do that (Thanks for the reminder).
e) And, I mail myself stuff that matters, and I park stuff that matters on USB sticks.

Call me paranoid, but I am pretty sure I am not going to lose my entire world. Again, just buy bare disks – cheap and effective. Forget the crappy enclosures from the vendors that add no value, and their throwaway included software is also usually worthless. Treat them like GIGANTIC USB sticks…. not pocket size, really, but stick the spares in a shoebox or between your mattress and box spring.

The Addonics Z enclosure, by the way, is very solidly built and comes in a 5-high version as well as the one slotter. I really like it. Cannot say the same for the BlackX Duet dual eSATA drive slot I also purchased, which works OK, but is flimsy.

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About a year ago I too decided to use external hard drives for backup. This was my process.

I wanted a drive of 1TB or larger. I searched Newegg and Amazon to see which drives got high reliability reviews and to check and see if drives had any “idiosyncrasies.” These are the only two sites I know of that rate drives. It’s not a representative survey, but it’s all I can find. I narrowed the search to drives that scored at least 4 out 5.

I also checked with a relative in the tech business. He recommended Western Digital internal drives with an enclosure, Caviar Black only.

Interestingly, it was very difficult to find an external drive with a high rating.

I settled on a WD Caviar Black 1TB, and purchased a Rosewill external enclosure for it. Finding the enclosure was a similarly difficult process, there aren’t that many that receive uniformly high ratings. The model I bought is a USB/eSata, and the eSATA transfer speed is significantly higher than USB 2.

Several months ago I purchased a second backup, a WD Elements 1.5TB external drive USB 2, got high ratings. After thinking about it and hearing various unhappy tales, I decided that having two complete backups on two separate drives (kept in two separate locations, I might add) was the only way to “ensure” that my 1TB or so of data was safely backed up. Of course, I suppose both drives could fail at the same time, but I figure the chances of that are low enough to live with.

I also use the drives to store images of my OS partitions. And a few months ago for the first time I had to use that for the first time, as I had an OS crash and could get back up only by restoring a previous image.

Good luck.

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I have a Seagate FreeAgent USB drive (1.5 TB) and have had no problems. Someone wrote that theirs came with Acronis. Mine may have but it is called Seagate Manager and does not include imaging. I did the initial save to it using xcopy and it worked fine (I read previously that someone had trouble with that method).

I also have a Western Digital 120 GB USB drive I use to store photos and music (my C drive is only 120 GB). I backup the WD and C onto the Seagate using their software every few days depending on how much has changed and every week automatically. The really important stuff (financial and medical) also go onto a ram drive which rotates every couple of weeks with one in a safe deposit box.

I already had one house burn down (the drives survived!!!) so I don’t worry much about it happening again. If any of the three drives dies I have the data on another HD and some of it in a lockbox.

It all depends on the importance of the data and your tolerance for risk. Everyone is different.

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I have a Seagate FreeAgent USB drive (1.5 TB) and have had no problems. Someone wrote that theirs came with Acronis. Mine may have but it is called Seagate Manager and does not include imaging. I did the initial save to it using xcopy and it worked fine (I read previously that someone had trouble with that method).

I also have a Western Digital 120 GB USB drive I use to store photos and music (my C drive is only 120 GB). I backup the WD and C onto the Seagate using their software every few days depending on how much has changed and every week automatically. The really important stuff (financial and medical) also go onto a ram drive which rotates every couple of weeks with one in a safe deposit box.

I already had one house burn down (the drives survived!!!) so I don’t worry much about it happening again. If any of the three drives dies I have the data on another HD and some of it in a lockbox.

It all depends on the importance of the data and your tolerance for risk. Everyone is different.

Mine came with Seagate Manager and Seagate DiscWizard; DiscWizard is Acronis.

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I have an external 1TB Seagate Desktop drive that I am having to replace under warranty for the 2nd time in less than a year. Making CLICK CLICK noises is all that this drive is best at!

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re: USE SHOCK RESISTANT LAPTOP DRIVES IN EXTERNAL ENCLOSURES

I learned that standard *desktop* hard drives may not be engineered to be “shock resistant”, so I now use “shock resistant” *laptop* hard drives for modest size backup needs – for instance with external USB/eSATA enclosures.

(One relatively small bump can kill a standard hard drive, in my case, a “non-shock resistant” backup hard drive in an enclosure slipped and fell about 6 inches onto a hardwood floor, and stopped working completely.)

Windows 7, at least the Pro/Ultimate/Enterprise versions, contain “free” backup software that is capable of taking both “system images” and incremental “backups” of directories/files.

I have tested the Windows 7 “System Image” on work PCs with dual boot Windows XP and Windows 7 Enterprise, and found it reliable (if somewhat quirky) for “bare metal” restores of the entire dual boot environment.

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My biggest concern? What if an EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) wipes out all magnetic media? (big solar flair or terroist shinanegans) All of my images and documents are on hard drives and they would be toast. A terrabyte is a lot of DVDs – blue ray or not!

Am I correct in thinking that DVDs would be immune to an EMP blast?

Just wondering.

My Backup Strategy is This…

I use BackupMagic to perform “copy and paste” backups…. http://moonsoftware.com/bmagic.asp After the first backup it does incrementals (only backs up new or altered files/folders). You create backup routines – selecting the folders to be backed up. You can set up multiple backup routines, drop a shortcut on the desktop and double click it to launch the back up. I love it… very flexible, simple, and fast.

I backup to an internal 2nd hard drive and then back it up to two separate external USB drives. My latest one is a terabyte USB by HP. It seems fine so far. All of my other USB hard drives have been small laptop types by Signature. The oldest one is 3 or 4 yrs old and the newest one is a 320G. They’re great. I love their size and simplicity. I got them all at Costco (great support and return policy).

I also always set up a separate partition for Program Files, so when I install a new program that’s where it gets loaded. The goal is to keep bloat on the C partition to a minimum. I did a clean install of the OS and then created an image. And I create a new image of it once or twice a year after cleaning it up (scan disk and defragment routines).

I once had a really nuisance bug sneak in and wreak havoc. It took less than an hour to wipe the C drive and restore my latest image and then restore the data files from my backups. I use BootItNG ( Boot It Next Generation) for that – and more – but it is a bit intimidating until you get it sorted out (Google it if you’re interested). Although their videos and support are waay better than when I first got it.

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I am a firm believer in redundancy so I have two 1TB external drives, one from Hitachi and the other Iomega. I keep identical data and images on the two drives. I have been doing the images with Acronis but I plan also to do images with another program as well.

In regard to data, I just use copy and paste, or drag and drop, to transfer data from the computer’s drive to the external drives. To make sure that the two external drives have the same data as well as synchonizing with the desired folders on the computer’s drive, I use SyncToy, a marvelous free program from Microsoft. It is probably not a good idea to use SynToy to move an enormous block of data to the external drive. But once you have copied the data to the external drives, SyncToy can be used to make sure that they are synchronized according to your specifications. Unless you need to delete or copy another enormous lump of data, SyncToy can easily keep track of the varous additions or deletions that you might want to make on the external drives. All this is very simple and requires no additional software or elaborate arrangements.

As a security precaution, I usually keep the external drives disconnected(i.e. no power) unless I am actually using them. Also I don’t access the external drives when I am online. Whether that is a necessary precaution I really don’t know, but I feel safer when keeping the external drives as isolated as possible.

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I have a Seagate FreeAgent USB drive (1.5 TB) and have had no problems. Someone wrote that theirs came with Acronis. Mine may have but it is called Seagate Manager and does not include imaging. I did the initial save to it using xcopy and it worked fine (I read previously that someone had trouble with that method).

I also have a Western Digital 120 GB USB drive I use to store photos and music (my C drive is only 120 GB). I backup the WD and C onto the Seagate using their software every few days depending on how much has changed and every week automatically. The really important stuff (financial and medical) also go onto a ram drive which rotates every couple of weeks with one in a safe deposit box.

I already had one house burn down (the drives survived!!!) so I don’t worry much about it happening again. If any of the three drives dies I have the data on another HD and some of it in a lockbox.

It all depends on the importance of the data and your tolerance for risk. Everyone is different.

I too bought a Seagate. Mine is a Go Flex FreeAgent 1.5TB 2.5″ with a USB3.0 and eSATA cords. I got it from Best Buy a week ago. I also use a Maxtor 300GB and an external enclosure with a 500GB drive. I also use flash cards and websites and other sources for backing up my data.

Here is a link to the GoFlex Drive:
Seagate – FreeAgent GoFlex 1.5TB External USB 2.0/3.0 2.5″ Portable Hard Drive – Black

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MacMall has a 1 TB Fantom drive for $79.95 with $30 in rebates, so final price is $49.95. I just got one and it seems to work fine. It is an external drive in an enclosure with USB and eSata connections.

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I’ve been using a 1TB Seagate Expansion drive on my old Win XP desktop since the end of 2008. I had some initial concerns with drive “clicking”, but virtually eliminated that once I removed the paging file from that drive in Windows virtual memory settings (it now only “clicks” a few time on boot up, and is otherwise quiet).

I’m using ShadowProtect Desktop to make incremental backups of changes to my C: drive image. I can mount a backup archive as a drive letter and retrieve individual files (via drag and drop) for those times when I mess up :o) Also, the incremental archives are periodically “rolled up” so that the total amount of storage I’m using doesn’t keep on increasing.

I haven’t looked at on line (cloud) storage of backup images for a while. However, the fact that my backup images are password encrypted is enough security for me to allow storage of those files with a third party.

Given all the applications I have installed and the customisations, shortcuts, layouts, etc to my Windows installation, I’m much happier to be doing complete image backups rather than backing up selective files from My Documents. I can, and have, restored from an image backup a number of times, very quickly and relatively painlessly, using the boot CD that comes with the backup program. Before using external drives and an imaging program, I found it took me a couple of days to reinstall Windows, setup email accounts, reload My Documents, find and reinstall all applications – and there was always something that I lost completely (including my sanity!). The cost of external storage and the features now available with inexpensive imaging software, it makes sense to consider these options and implement a more comprehensive backup solution.

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I bought it intending to use it to store back up images as well as some precious 20 year-old home videos that I have recently captured to my internal HD from VHS. I intend to edit those later, but want them off of the HD because they are BIG files.

Someone has already mentioned it, but Blu-ray is something to consider for storing the files. (You know the size of your files, and each Blu-ray disk has a capacity of 25 GB.) That is for long-term storage alone, which is what you have said you want. You can copy them from the disk anytime to edit or otherwise use them, with the stored version intact on the disk.

There are quite a few external drives available now which are USB3-upgradeable, and the time is close enough now to keep an eye out for those. If your next computer (they’re getting less expensive all the time) is equipped with a USB3 slot and support you may be kicking yourself that you didn’t buy a drive that will be compatible with the faster system. All existing USB devices will be backward-compatible, of course, but the higher speed will be a big attraction.

For general notes on external hard drives, I would point out that they are no different from internal hard drives in that you should scan them on a regular basis (CHKDSK with switches and drive letter), and if you have a fair turnover of files on them, especially if there is a fair number of small files, they will benefit from defragmentation.

For copy versus backup, you have said that you are saving a particular type of file. If they are single large files, that will affect any number of things so far as storage is concerned. You might even want a program to tell you how best to distribute them among your backup destinations to maximize use of available storage, if using something like Blu-ray. (Anyone know of one?) More importantly, however, file types vary by compressibility. Things like MP3s are already about as compressed as they can get, and photographs are notoriously resistant to compression, at least by backup or imaging programs. It may be safer to just copy relatively incompressible files and don’t even consider backing them up.

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.

For general notes on external hard drives, I would point out that they are no different from internal hard drives in that you should scan them on a regular basis (CHKDSK with switches and drive letter), and if you have a fair turnover of files on them, especially if there is a fair number of small files, they will benefit from defragmentation.

peterg-

I like your suggestion to use Blue Ray to store large files; I’m saving my home video files to standard dvds, but have to chop some of them up to fit them on the disk. Your post reminded me of a question that has been hovering in the back of my mind for a while now. And it’s probably a dumb question. What effect does defragging a HD have on an Acronis back-up image that’s stored on that HD?

Thanks,
John

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What effect does defragging a HD have on an Acronis back-up image that’s stored on that HD?

When a file is fragmented, it is in fragments on the disk, which means that the read-write head has to flip about finding the fragments in order to read them. Defragmentation puts the fragments together so that the whole file can be read smoothly and swiftly.

If you exclusively store large files on the drive and they are defragmented, then it is like storing large marbles in a jar: there is plenty of free space left (if you pour water in the jar, for example) and that means that there is plenty of free space available for smaller marbles, and if you have small enough particles to store (and they are defragmented), you can fill the jar entirely. If you store nothing but big files, a lot of storage will go to waste.

An Acronis image is a file like any other file so far as storage is concerned (or a set of files if they are spanned), but there is one often-overlooked storage location for them that might interest you. By default, *.tif files (Acronis image files) are excluded from Acronis backups, and that means that you can store them on any drive you care to back up, and they won’t cause your backup file size to balloon. The drive or sector you are most likely to want an image for is your boot drive, but you obviously don’t want to store a backup of that drive on the drive itself. If you have more than one computer, however, it’s fair game, especially if you have a lot of free space on it.

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An Acronis image is a file like any other file so far as storage is concerned (or a set of files if they are spanned), but there is one often-overlooked storage location for them that might interest you. By default, *.tif files (Acronis image files) are excluded from Acronis backups, and that means that you can store them on any drive you care to back up, and they won’t cause your backup file size to balloon. The drive or sector you are most likely to want an image for is your boot drive, but you obviously don’t want to store a backup of that drive on the drive itself. If you have more than one computer, however, it’s fair game, especially if you have a lot of free space on it.

peterg,

Thanks for your quick reply. A good explanation of disk defragmentation; I understand that. You lost me on the above paragraph, though. Would you be kind enough to take another shot at me? I really do want to understand what you are conveying. And, does a defrag of an external HD affect a back-up image stored on that external HD? Thanks so much for your help and patience.

John

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peterg,

Thanks for your quick reply. A good explanation of disk defragmentation; I understand that. You lost me on the above paragraph, though. Would you be kind enough to take another shot at me? I really do want to understand what you are conveying. And, does a defrag of an external HD affect a back-up image stored on that external HD? Thanks so much for your help and patience.

John

So far as I know, if you save to an external drive much will depend on the state of the drive when you save to it. If the drive is empty (and large enough for your file) there is no reason for the file to be fragmented at all. If, however, you save to an external drive with files and fragments of files that are not defragmented, then what you are saving will have to be saved somewhere, and if there is no location (I don’t know how automatic this is) big enough to save it without fragmentation, then it will be saved, fragmented, in whatever free spaces it can find.

The moral of that story is to defragment before saving a large file (and if you have multiple large files then put them all on first so that none will be fragmented). If you happen to use the freeware defragmenter MyDefrag, then it has an option to consolidate free space, which will open as a large as possible a free space into which a large file can be saved if there is sufficient room.

That is for external drives, which is the topic of the thread. I admit I got off on a tangent, but if you have a a backup (an Acronis *.tif file) and simply want to store it somewhere for the long term, then you can put it on any drive that you are backing up without having to worry about bloating the backup, because unless you change the default, Acronis will simply ignore it when performing the backup. You typically can’t save it directly to the drive or partition, but you can move it there if you have space for it and want to keep it. Typically this would be for a different computer than the one you have moved it to, but even if you did it would probably be easy to recover if the machine crashed. One useful long-term backup would be an early one in which you have the operating system and office suite all installed, because they can be restored in no time at all compared to the time it takes to install them in the first place.

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peterg-

Thanks for the explanation; I understand now. Excellent point about defragging the target HD before placing an image back up there. I do already use MyDefrag and have my kids using it on their machines also. I’ve been very pleased with it. I’m pretty sure that I came across it in a Windows Secrets newsletter article about a year ago.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving!
John

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