Buying an external hard drive....any recommendations?

[mojouk]

The best buy that I've found so far on a 'reputable' pc supplies website is from dabs....

http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...y=11154,4294960320,4294960493,40182,40872&v=3

what do think??

Has any one seen anything better?

The only problem with the above mentioned drive is that it needs an additional power supply cable, which doesn't make it compact enough for me.

Does anyone know of a similar storage 60-80GB that only requires a USB lead?

 

[muckshifter]

Always look for "high-speed" on the box with any external USB2 device ... there are 3 different speeds USB2

 

[floppybootstomp]

You could always buy an external enclosure and put your own hard disk in it.

Range of external enclosures Here

They come in all flavours, to take PATA & SATA disks and connect through USB2 or Firewire or both.

80Gb seems a tad on the small side for an external disk, consider at least a 160Gb size.

Most of those enclosures come with an external power supply though I believe there are some on the market powered through the data connector cable.

 

[mojouk]

I should clarify what I need the external drive for....

I'd like to do a complete System Restore on my PC, but I would like to buy an external drive to back everything up (the entire C Drive).

Is it possible to make a ghost copy of all my documents/programs/everything, so I can put everything back in exactly the same spot after I've System Restored??

Do I have to buy an external drive (the back up drive) that is bigger than my PC's Hard drive in order to clone my PC's current set up?

My PC's hard drive currently has a capacity of 186GB, 99GB of it is full.

Your help is much appreciated.

 

[floppybootstomp]

You'll need some software, such as Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost.

If you have around 100Gb to backup, True Image can compress your C drive and it would probably fit onto an 80Gb external drive.

But why do you want to do a system restore? That usually implies you have problems.

If you have, doesn't seem much point in backing up your C drive, you'll just be backing up your probs.

If that's the case would be best to back up important files (My Docs; Pix; Music; Browser favourites or bookmarks; E-Mail addresses; saved games etc) and do a fresh install.

 

[psd99]

ive seen a 200gb western digital external harrdrive in maplins for £99.99
its usb2.0 connectivity

i felt it was good value for money!
check out

(link removed by mucks)

its on there somewhere im def interested.

 

[psd99]

umm see this:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=46695&doy=

 

[garyten]

I managed to get a 80 gig external, usb2, off e-bay for £50 and a copy of norton ghost for £15. I only do complete backups as i never got a " windows CD" with the computer when new, i only have a restore partition on the hard drive, and i wouldnt like to depend on that if i had a serious problem.

 

[mojouk]

You're absolutely right floppy...

I do have some 'issues' with the performance of my PC at the moment. I'm not sure what the exact problem is, but what I do know is that it is so much slower than 1 year ago, and some of my programs keep on crashing. Especially when I open up 2 at the same time. I used to be able to do it with no probs.

How do I backup my Browser favourites. I've never figured out how to do this.

psd99, that does seem extraordinarily good value,.....just have to find that extra bit of cash now

 

[Adywebb]

How do I backup my Browser favourites. I've never figured out how to do this.

My Computer>Hard Drive>Documents and Settings>User>Favourites and copy the folder

 

[floppybootstomp]

My Computer>Hard Drive>Documents and Settings>User>Favourites and copy the folder

Dat be it, it's a yellow star

Those Maplins drives are well priced, gotta say.

 

[Adywebb]

Those Maplins drives are well priced, gotta say.

They sure are, I'm very tempted - anyone know how good they are?

 

[mojouk]

Hi

There's nothing in my 'Favourites' folder.

I looked in the following:

My Computer>Hard Drive>Documents and Settings>User>Favourites and copy the folder

and my folder is empty.

How can I find out where my favourites have been stored?

 

[V_R]

My Computer>Hard Drive>Documents and Settings>User>Favourites. Thats for Internet Explorer.

Dunno if it'll help but if your using Firefox then open the browser, go to the bookmarks buttion at the top, click on 'manage bookmarks' from the drop down menu. Then click on file>export and choose a place to save it. Easy!