new external hd?

[dandare]

hey folks i'm looking to buy a new external hd to back up my images from my comp, i'm a photographer so have loads. my comp is a few years old and starting to play up a bit so i want ot get it sorted before it totally goes on me. i was reading somewhere that folk back up with new hd's evry 2/3 years as thats the rough life span, is this correct?
anyhoos i've seen a few, western digital/freecom 500gb ranging from £70-150 are there any certain specifications i should be looking for? i've never had to back up stuff yet, so am a little unsure about it all. i've still got the smell of photo chemicals on me if ye know what i mean.
ta

 

[oneman]

hey folks i'm looking to buy a new external hd to back up my images from my comp, i'm a photographer so have loads. my comp is a few years old and starting to play up a bit so i want ot get it sorted before it totally goes on me. i was reading somewhere that folk back up with new hd's evry 2/3 years as thats the rough life span, is this correct?
anyhoos i've seen a few, western digital/freecom 500gb ranging from £70-150 are there any certain specifications i should be looking for? i've never had to back up stuff yet, so am a little unsure about it all. i've still got the smell of photo chemicals on me if ye know what i mean.
ta

You got to remember that hard disks can go at anytime. Companies like Seagate offer 5 year warranty but does not mean that they can't fail before that time. Once you get the new drive then I would get into the habit of backing up weekly or even daily, especially if your lively hood depends on the data. I would say that I expect disks to start failing either in the first 6 months and then a after 3/4 years.

As for the actual hardware there are a couple of options,

You can buy a empty external enclosure (something like icey dock) for around £15 and install you own hard disk which is very easy to do. This gives you the option of selecting the interface for the drive (IDE or SATA) and your computer (USB, Firewire or eSATA).

Else buy a external enclosure with a disk already installed. Both Western Digital and Freecom are well know brands which work fine.

Final option would be a NAS server (which can be pre-populated with disks) which could be of interest to you as you can get a NAS box which supports 2 or more disks which you can mirror so if a disk fails then you still have a copy of your data (won't prodect you if data is damaged by virus attack as the damage will be duplicated to both copies). Expect to pay in the region of £100 for unpopulated NAS server.

 

[thommohawk]

if its ease you want forget nas drives ect...just go for a usb external drive, i have a 500gb seagate and a 250gb phillips both work the same,although the seagate looks nice and lights up,

http://www.ebuyer.com/cat/Hard-Drives/subcat/External-Portable-Drives


above are examples of externals, as you can see theres different sizes, makes,shapes but all in all they all work the same, its the easy option and they should last ages as long as there not bashed about.


choose a size you think you will need and go from there, once plugged in they will show as another drive so you just send your files to that drive letter or drag and drop your files, pretty straight forward even for a new user.

bonus is you can move the externals and use them in other pc,s so if you like you say put pictures on it you could take the hd to someone elses house plug it in a retreive the pictures/files there.

 

[dandare]

thanks for the replies folks.