<p>Not all 1TB drives are equal. There are available interfaces, features like auto-shutoff, cache size, flash ports, etc. I’d avoid Seagate drives for a few more months. They had a disaster of a problem in customers not being able to access the data on their drives - it started in December 2008 I think. They issued one firmware update which worked for some people.</p>
<p>I like the Wester Digital MyBook drives with variable speed and eSATA ports. They use less power and run cooler when idle and have auto-shutoff with Firewire and USB. I would love a drive with FireWire 800 but those are hard to find and expensive.</p>
<p>Here is a stupid question. Do I have to save the same files over and over again or do I have to buy some software that just downloads what is different? I assume I would want to back everything up every night but can’t imagine saving everything over and over again.</p>
<p>^^ The software will typically only save ‘updated’ files. Once the initial backup is done the subsequent incremental backups will typically be quick for most people. You should also be able to decide what to backup so for example, you don’t need to backup all the cached internet pages in IE/Firefox. Check the particular backup app to see what it actually does but an incremental backup is a very basic feature. There’s no need to save what’s already been saved.</p>
<p>Carbonite, Mozy, Time Machine, and any other decent backup app will only backup changed or new files - whatever’s changed since the last backup. The very first backup will of course backup the entire directories that the user configures to be backed up (which might include the whole disk).</p>
<p>There’s no reason at all to backup what’s already backed up when nothing’s changed and it would only busy-up the system and extend the time to transport all the data.</p>
<p>I keep all my folders within “my documents”. I just back up everything. I create a folder on the backup HD with a date and drag and drop all the folders (I don’t back up all my music and pictures every time, there are so many I just backup new stuff).</p>
<p>I prefer this rather than having just 1 backup copy. If I get really anal, I will get a 2nd HD and alternate.</p>
<p>BCEagle, I think that was a Seagate I saw for $99 TB. I paid $150 for 1.5 GB upgrade in 1996!</p>
<p>OP, I’d say take the leap to Mac! I’m a Mac person from the get go ('85) but also work on and troubleshoot PCs. My new iMac is bigger, faster and cheaper than any of its predecessors. Got D a MacBook for Christmas and that’s great too. S’s Dell gives us nothing but trouble.</p>
<p>As for the backup, I use Time Machine to backup to an external USB drive. I was able to recover from a catastrophic failure of my old iMac (I have some culpability in that as I made some rash decisions while I was trying to recover from kernal panic) using the old “backup”. Didn’t lose a thing. Interestingly, my bloated inbox (yeah, yeah, I’m one of those people who never cleans up the inbox and has thousands of messages) was archived and easily searchable by content.</p>
<p>January 20, 2009 (Computerworld) Seagate Technology LLC today is offering free data-recovery services for customers who purchased the company’s Barracuda 7200.11 desktop hard drive through December 2008. A firmware bug in those drives has produced a high number of failures.</p>
<p>According to users on Seagate’s online support forum the drives tend to freeze for about 30 seconds during I/O transfers of streaming video or when reading or writing files at low speeds.</p>
<p>“We’re offering free data recovery because the information on the drives is not deleted. It’s just rendered inaccessible by this suspect firmware,” said Seagate spokesman Michael Hall.</p>
<hr>
<p>Western Digital is my current drive of choice.</p>
<p>I am considering Intel SSD drives for future notebooks. It’s a bit rich at $800 for a 160 GB drive but I expect prices to come down in a few years as they improve process geometries.</p>
<p>“I like the Wester Digital MyBook drives with variable speed and eSATA ports.”</p>
<p>This is listed at $119 at Best Buy, so we will go out this morning and get this. Sue, thanks for the link on how to back up outlook. I copied that down. I will do some final googling this morning to check out software that will work with my Dell. I am leaning toward Acronis True Image.</p>
<p>you should also back up your address book. I don’t think that is part of the regular outlook backup. Not sure if this was mentioned in the thread I posted before</p>
<p>I use Carbonite and have been able to recover almost all data easily from 2 hard drive failures since I started subscribing. It also was very helpful when I got a new computer, for moving data from one to another. I know a lot of people prefer Mozy, so I’d look into both.</p>
<p>When I say “almost” all data it is because as a default there are some things that will not be saved. It is very easy to add those file type or locations to the backup, but you might not know you need to until AFTER the crash… For example, some programs on Windows store important data in registry entries or in a separate area especially for program data – you don’t realize this was a problem until after you do a restore, reinstall the program, and find that you can’t get the settings back. </p>
<p>Also, Carbonite doesn’t save videos by default – again, you can override these settings – but if you use Carbonite, after you do the initial backup, I think its worth spending time double checking to make sure everything you want is being backed up. It is easy to tell whether a file folder or individual files are backed up because Carbonite adds a green dot to all of the icons for whatever it has backed up. You can change preferences for any file or file folder simply by right clicking and checking whatever carbonite option you might want to apply.</p>
<p>I bought the Western Digital 1TB MyBook with eSATA yesterday and am in process of putting everything on that external drive. Unfortunately our computer doesn’t appear to have eSATA capacity, which would make the transfer 5x faster, but it is nice to know it’s there for when we upgrade. This drive also works with a Mac and had the software (WD Anywhere Backup) built in. We pushed a single button and it went to work, apparently copying 100% of what is on the computer now, which is what I want. In retrospect, I should have told it to only work when the computer was idle because it slows it down too much. Going through a USB port will take several days to complete the full back-up. Tomorrow morning when I have to work, I may need to stop the program in order to get anything done. I looked at the HELP manual for the hard drive and it was a nothing. I need to read the help manual for the softwhere, but don’t want to disturb it until it is done. I just hope stopping it after 36 hours and then restarting doesn’t lose what has already been saved, but it shouldn’t. Every GB closer I get to being backed up makes me feel better.</p>
<p>One last question. When using an external hard drive for back-up, can a virus get into that and destroy everything? Does that mean I have to unplug it when not using it for back-up? I was hoping to delete a lot of the files on the internal drive after I have put them on the external drive to free up space on my computer so it runs faster, but I would still like access to them so don’t want to have to keep the external drive unplugged, but will if leaving it plugged in defeats the whole purpose.</p>
<p>I do not trust the automatic backup programs and backup manually. With photo files this is really very easy since I store by date and can easily see the date range that needs to be backed up. If you are dealing with a lot of files without a convenient way to determine the new files, then you may have to trust the backup software. If you are using a drive for archival storage, I think it is safest to leave that drive unplugged when not in use. It is also best to store it in a firebox or offsite location. I am not sure why you would want to use the archival drive for a working drive. That way you still have no separate backup. I am using 2 storage drives. When I want to access stored files, then it is really quick to start up one of the drives. I would then transfer those files to my computer HD and then turn off the storage drive.</p>
<p>I agree with edad. the idea of a backup is that it is NOWHERE near the computer and it is SAFE. Fireproof box is where it belongs.</p>
<p>I just create a folder with the date of backup and then drag and drop the folders I want to backup. I also only backup new music and pictures since last backup. </p>
<p>I have multiple dates of backups on the same drive.
I backup email, bookmarks, address book, firefox profile every time.</p>
<p>The Analyst: I’ve been away for the corporate help desk for quite a few years…and it is a challenge to deal with these issues on your own.
I had a regular external hard drive for years - but I recently switched to a Click Free Hard Drive. You plug it in your USB and it backs up all of your important files (emails, docs, pics, music) with just one click. And if you crash, it’s just one click to restore. You unplug it after you back up and can store it in a fireproof box ( I need to get one of those this week!).
I find the interface to be MUCH easier to work with. I put an appt in Outlook and do a backup each week. I know that puts me at risk for losing recent work - but I HATED those backup systems that were constantly searching my systems for new files. And if I’m working on an important presentation or report, I’ll save it to a flash drive.<br>
Good luck to you!</p>
A computer virus is actually a piece of software that requires the computer to run it. Once it’s running it can attack things like files on your disks. Since the external drive is just another drive to the computer, then files on it could be attacked as well. Make sure you run anti-virus programs and be careful what you download and avoid opening email atachments even from people you know - especially women who love to forward the self-help or advisory attachments.</p>
<p>An external hard drive can provide backup in case your system hard drive crashes and can provide additional storage but if you have a fire or have a theft, the external drive is at risk as well so if you really want protection, you should have some form of offsite backup for your most important files.</p>
<p>^^^
But it won’t get infected if it’s not plugged in. I plug my hard drive iin once per week to do a backup and then it’s put away.
I got the Clickfree product because hard drives seem to NEVER come with instructions. If you already have a drive, you can get the Clickfree transformer for cheap.
The Wall St Journal raved about this product…it makes things REAL easy.</p>
<p>^^^ But if the computer has a virus lingering then the external drive could get its files attacked once one plugs it in. </p>
<p>Again, having A/V software and not opening potential virus-infected files (usually email attachments) and not going to questionable websites will generally keep the computer quite safe.</p>
<p>“Again, having A/V software and not opening potential virus-infected files (usually email attachments) and not going to questionable websites will generally keep the computer quite safe.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately viruses and worms are getting ever more sophisticated and they are affecting legitimate websites (like CNET) and the mere act of logging onto a network or plugging in an infected flash drive can result in infection. On my Windows systems, I usually run weekly scans, run Windows Defender, Spybot S&D, AntiVirus, and regular scans from other vendors. The result is that I’m using Windows systems less and less and Mac OS X about 99% of the time.</p>
<p>The relatively new Conficker worm is an example of a new breed of worm which tries brute force password attacks on computers in a network so it helps to have strong passwords for your accounts. The research work that I’ve seen on Conficker demonstrates a level of sophistication that I haven’t seen before in a worm using multiple vectors for infection and then closing those vectors so that the system appears to be patched. The last research report that I read said that current anti-malware products do not detect Conficker [it’s a hard problem because it has multiple ways to hide itself].</p>
<p>Also keep up with Windows Updates. There was a Windows Update last fall that would protect against the first vector of Conficker.</p>
<p>I agree with BCEagle. Viruses have become very nasty of late. My husbands computer crashed with Antivirus 2008 (a virus that mimics antivirus software). Then my son’s computer also crashed. Hmmm, I thought, they must be visiting unsafe sites. </p>
<p>Then, MY computer got the infection. And I am fully protected with up to date virus and spyware software. And I knew it was a virus right away (didn’t accept any of the offers) but that didn’t help. Awful. I know it infected millions of computers across the country.<br>
I don’t visit crazy sites, but I do searches off google for information or for products I’m interested in purchasing. I don’t plan to give up doing research on my computuer. </p>
<p>The only software I could find to remove the virus was Malwarebytes (SpyBot, my trusted program, was useless). I was lucky. My husbands entire drive was wiped out. If a hard drive was attached, it would have gone down with the ship. </p>
<p>I would not feel safe at this point with a drive attached. I know I can pick up a virus when I plug it in, but I run all the scans before I do so. And I usually know if I have something going on by the way my computer behaves. </p>
<p>BCEagle.Thanks for the tips on Conflicker. I wish I could use a Mac but my clients are Windows folks so I worry about compatibility.</p>