Purchase External Hard Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter DebbieG
  • Start date Start date
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DebbieG

I have a Pentium 4, 2.53 GHz, 512 MB RAM, XP Home Edition. I am wanting to
purchase an external hard drive in order to back-up my hard drive before
installing SP2. But I am so confused...

I am seeing USB and Fire Wire. I'm assuming I need to buy USB but not sure.

I am seeing 2 MB and 8 MB cache. I'm assuming that 8 MB is better. But if
I'm just going to use this for back-up purposes does it really matter?

I am seeing "Hard Drive Format Service". Do I really need for them to do
this?

My used space on my hard drive is less than 10 GB. How big a drive should I
buy to back-up?

Do I need to purchase special back-up software or just simply copy my hard
drive?

Of course, I'm not wanting to spend a whole lot of money on this because I'm
going to use it just for back-up purposes. So, any suggestions on the best
place to buy this?

TIA,
Debbie
 
Most Pentium 4 motherboards have USB built into it, so you may not need to
buy a USB adapter. Check with the motherboard manual/manufacturer.
Firewire is an add-on adapter and is normally used in digital editing.
However, if your motherboard does have USB 2.0 ports, you may want to buy a
USB 2.0 add-on adapter board.

8 MB of cache is way better than 2 MB. However, since you are using it as
backup, you may not need it. 8 MB would be useful if you were to using the
drive as your main drive.

The formatting service is optional. You should have all the tools in
Windows, or with the drive, to format it yourself.

As for the size of hard drive, I usually recommend getting the exact
capacity that your main hard drive(s) are in total.
If you have one drive: the same size as your main drive

If more than one: the total capacity of all hard drives put
together.

The software is VERY important. You can not just "copy" the drive(s) to the
external unit. XP's utilities do not allow a complete copy of the hard
drive. You will need to locate a drive imaging utility. The two popular
ones are:

1) Symantec Ghost

2) Drive Image -- now owned by Symantec also.

There are other similar utilities but I have no experience with them. These
two utilities work quite well.

Y.
 
Yves,

Thanks so much for answering my questions.

I found a 120 GB internal hard drive for $99.94. I understand that I can
buy a hard drive enclosure to use it externally. How do I know which
enclosure to buy? I've done some searching but I don't know what to look
for.

TIA,
Debbie


Most Pentium 4 motherboards have USB built into it, so you may not need to
buy a USB adapter. Check with the motherboard manual/manufacturer.
Firewire is an add-on adapter and is normally used in digital editing.
However, if your motherboard does have USB 2.0 ports, you may want to buy a
USB 2.0 add-on adapter board.

8 MB of cache is way better than 2 MB. However, since you are using it as
backup, you may not need it. 8 MB would be useful if you were to using the
drive as your main drive.

The formatting service is optional. You should have all the tools in
Windows, or with the drive, to format it yourself.

As for the size of hard drive, I usually recommend getting the exact
capacity that your main hard drive(s) are in total.
If you have one drive: the same size as your main drive

If more than one: the total capacity of all hard drives put
together.

The software is VERY important. You can not just "copy" the drive(s) to the
external unit. XP's utilities do not allow a complete copy of the hard
drive. You will need to locate a drive imaging utility. The two popular
ones are:

1) Symantec Ghost

2) Drive Image -- now owned by Symantec also.

There are other similar utilities but I have no experience with them. These
two utilities work quite well.

Y.
 
DebbieG, if you have physical space inside your system I would recommend
placing the drive in the computer as a slave drive. The instructions that
come with the drive should explain how. You will then be able to backup to
the drive using any of the software that Yves recommended without the
problem of attempting to get the external drive to work if XP crashes. You
could then boot with the floppy drive (created when you install the backup
software) and copy the drive image/partition back to the main drive.
 
LVTravel,

Is there something special inside my system that I should look for where I
would put the extra hard drive? As you can probably tell I'm not much of a
hardware person -- I don't open the thing unless I have to.

To play devil's advocate ... what if I want to put what is on the 2nd hard
drive onto another PC? Wouldn't it be easier for it to be portable or can I
just put it inside another PC and access it that way?

Another question ... I have another PC with Windows 98. If I have a
portable external hard drive, could I use it to back-up both PCs?

I appreciate your help.

Debbie


DebbieG, if you have physical space inside your system I would recommend
placing the drive in the computer as a slave drive. The instructions that
come with the drive should explain how. You will then be able to backup to
the drive using any of the software that Yves recommended without the
problem of attempting to get the external drive to work if XP crashes. You
could then boot with the floppy drive (created when you install the backup
software) and copy the drive image/partition back to the main drive.
 
Debbie

Don't get too confused by all the jargon. You should first check in your
computer manual or look at the rear panel for the possibile way to connect
external devices.

You will see either or both USB and Firewire.

Now most external hard drives have BOTH connections.

You can happily use USB [USB2 preferably] and it won't take all day to
backup your drive.

From my recent investigations a built-up solution [with software CD] from
Maxtor was cheaper than buying the case and drive separately!

If you get Maxtor they will have all the software for backing up or cloning
your hard drive.

I would get an external drive that's larger than your current drive:
partition it 50/50 or at least so that one partition is >665 of your current
drive. Backup/Clone the Current drive to this patition - the process
includes file compression so it isn't going to take up the same amount of
space.

The other partition can then be used for other work.
 
You should consider what you wish to backup, yr full sys or yr data; two
very different things.
Data backed up can be recovered to any pc, a sys backup, not necessarily so,
eg a win* sys is specific to the sys it was installed on.

BAR said:
Debbie

Don't get too confused by all the jargon. You should first check in your
computer manual or look at the rear panel for the possibile way to connect
external devices.

You will see either or both USB and Firewire.

Now most external hard drives have BOTH connections.

You can happily use USB [USB2 preferably] and it won't take all day to
backup your drive.

From my recent investigations a built-up solution [with software CD] from
Maxtor was cheaper than buying the case and drive separately!

If you get Maxtor they will have all the software for backing up or cloning
your hard drive.

I would get an external drive that's larger than your current drive:
partition it 50/50 or at least so that one partition is >665 of your current
drive. Backup/Clone the Current drive to this patition - the process
includes file compression so it isn't going to take up the same amount of
space.

The other partition can then be used for other work.





DebbieG said:
LVTravel,

Is there something special inside my system that I should look for where I
would put the extra hard drive? As you can probably tell I'm not much of a
hardware person -- I don't open the thing unless I have to.

To play devil's advocate ... what if I want to put what is on the 2nd hard
drive onto another PC? Wouldn't it be easier for it to be portable or can I
just put it inside another PC and access it that way?

Another question ... I have another PC with Windows 98. If I have a
portable external hard drive, could I use it to back-up both PCs?

I appreciate your help.

Debbie


DebbieG, if you have physical space inside your system I would recommend
placing the drive in the computer as a slave drive. The instructions that
come with the drive should explain how. You will then be able to backup to
the drive using any of the software that Yves recommended without the
problem of attempting to get the external drive to work if XP crashes. You
could then boot with the floppy drive (created when you install the backup
software) and copy the drive image/partition back to the main drive.


buy
a using
the to
the wanting
to to
do my
hard
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
DebbieG, to answer your first question. If you open the case and see an
open 3.5" bay (just like the one that the current hard drive is in looks
like) you can install internally without problem. If there isn't a 3.5" bay
go the external route. USB is fine. I have used XPCGear.com (I have no
connection to them other than as a consumer) a couple of times and they seem
to beat other's prices. I checked them out again and something like this
looks good: http://www.xpcgear.com/extremepcgear/caseue705blk.html

For your second question. If you are planning on swapping around on
different systems, an external drive is necessary unless you want to open
the system each time you want to move it.

For your third question. If the new drive is formatted as a FAT 32 drive
you would be able to use it in either a Win XP or 9X system (if external one
that can use USB). If you format the drive as an NTFS drive (this format is
only available on Win NT type systems (NT, 2000 or XP) you would not be able
to use it on any Windows 9X (95, 98 or ME) system. If you want to use the
full size of the drive, format it in FAT 32 on the Win 98 system. Win XP
won't be able to format the drive to its full capacity as XP limits its FAT
32 format to 32 Gigabyte size.

If your 98 system is not 98 Second Edition you may have problems getting
some external drives to work on USB. Make sure that they specifically
include drivers for Win 98 (XP systems don't normally need drivers as they
are built into XP).

As someone else said in this thread, backing up just data is entirely
different than backing up the operating system. If you are going to back up
data, the backup programs in XP and also 98 are fairly good but one can't be
used on the other's program. You can purchase a commercial backup program
which will work on 98 & XP. If you are going to want to backup the entire
drive (including the operating system (OS)) you will need a program that
will duplicate the partition on the backup device. The problem is that not
all of those programs will read a USB drive without the full OS installed.

Any more questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Good luck on your project.
 
LVTravel,

Thank you for taking the time to give me such a detailed answer. I really
appreciate it. Now I know what I need to know in order to make a decision.

Thanks,
Debbie


DebbieG, to answer your first question. If you open the case and see an
open 3.5" bay (just like the one that the current hard drive is in looks
like) you can install internally without problem. If there isn't a 3.5" bay
go the external route. USB is fine. I have used XPCGear.com (I have no
connection to them other than as a consumer) a couple of times and they seem
to beat other's prices. I checked them out again and something like this
looks good: http://www.xpcgear.com/extremepcgear/caseue705blk.html

For your second question. If you are planning on swapping around on
different systems, an external drive is necessary unless you want to open
the system each time you want to move it.

For your third question. If the new drive is formatted as a FAT 32 drive
you would be able to use it in either a Win XP or 9X system (if external one
that can use USB). If you format the drive as an NTFS drive (this format is
only available on Win NT type systems (NT, 2000 or XP) you would not be able
to use it on any Windows 9X (95, 98 or ME) system. If you want to use the
full size of the drive, format it in FAT 32 on the Win 98 system. Win XP
won't be able to format the drive to its full capacity as XP limits its FAT
32 format to 32 Gigabyte size.

If your 98 system is not 98 Second Edition you may have problems getting
some external drives to work on USB. Make sure that they specifically
include drivers for Win 98 (XP systems don't normally need drivers as they
are built into XP).

As someone else said in this thread, backing up just data is entirely
different than backing up the operating system. If you are going to back up
data, the backup programs in XP and also 98 are fairly good but one can't be
used on the other's program. You can purchase a commercial backup program
which will work on 98 & XP. If you are going to want to backup the entire
drive (including the operating system (OS)) you will need a program that
will duplicate the partition on the backup device. The problem is that not
all of those programs will read a USB drive without the full OS installed.

Any more questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Good luck on your project.
 
Any time.

DebbieG said:
LVTravel,

Thank you for taking the time to give me such a detailed answer. I really
appreciate it. Now I know what I need to know in order to make a decision.

Thanks,
Debbie


DebbieG, to answer your first question. If you open the case and see an
open 3.5" bay (just like the one that the current hard drive is in looks
like) you can install internally without problem. If there isn't a 3.5" bay
go the external route. USB is fine. I have used XPCGear.com (I have no
connection to them other than as a consumer) a couple of times and they seem
to beat other's prices. I checked them out again and something like this
looks good: http://www.xpcgear.com/extremepcgear/caseue705blk.html

For your second question. If you are planning on swapping around on
different systems, an external drive is necessary unless you want to open
the system each time you want to move it.

For your third question. If the new drive is formatted as a FAT 32 drive
you would be able to use it in either a Win XP or 9X system (if external one
that can use USB). If you format the drive as an NTFS drive (this format is
only available on Win NT type systems (NT, 2000 or XP) you would not be able
to use it on any Windows 9X (95, 98 or ME) system. If you want to use the
full size of the drive, format it in FAT 32 on the Win 98 system. Win XP
won't be able to format the drive to its full capacity as XP limits its FAT
32 format to 32 Gigabyte size.

If your 98 system is not 98 Second Edition you may have problems getting
some external drives to work on USB. Make sure that they specifically
include drivers for Win 98 (XP systems don't normally need drivers as they
are built into XP).

As someone else said in this thread, backing up just data is entirely
different than backing up the operating system. If you are going to back up
data, the backup programs in XP and also 98 are fairly good but one can't be
used on the other's program. You can purchase a commercial backup program
which will work on 98 & XP. If you are going to want to backup the entire
drive (including the operating system (OS)) you will need a program that
will duplicate the partition on the backup device. The problem is that not
all of those programs will read a USB drive without the full OS installed.

Any more questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Good luck on your project.
of can need it
Click to expand...
 
In case you wanted follow-up, I purchased an internal hard drive and an
external enclosure. I installed it today and it works great. Now all I
have to do is back-up my files.

One question ... I bought an AMS Venus DS 5.25 in Aluminum External
Enclosure. It has an on/off switch on it. When I switch this on, the fan
runs. This may seem like a dumb question but do I need to switch this off
when I turn off the PC? I'm assuming that I should only turn on the fan
when I'm using it since it's purpose is for back-up. The instructions that
came with the enclosure made no mention of this. Just curious.

Thanks again!


Any time.
 
Debbie:

Yes, turn off the power switch on your USB external hard drive after you've
finished with the drive. The switch also powers up the enclosed hard drive
in addition to powering up any fan in the unit. And there's no need to run
the hard drive after its work has been done.

Art
 
I also agree with Art.

If you have a computer with USB 1.1 ports, the only thing to remember is to
plug in and turn on the drive again before powering on the computer so when
the computer boots it will find the drive without any problems. This is
really only necessary when the drive is a USB 2.0 drive (which yours
probably is) and the USB port on the computer is a 1.1 port (which may not
be the case on your computer). The computer will "complain" if you turn on
or plug in a 2.0 device on a 1.1 port in an already booted computer.
Nothing bad would happen but saves the complaint message.

Glad all is working for you.

What format did you use on your new external (refer to my earlier message?)
 
I am seeing USB and Fire Wire. I'm assuming I need to buy USB but not
sure.
Click to expand...

For that purpose, there isn't much difference between the two. You could
buy a case that supports both interfaces, then you could choose either.
I am seeing 2 MB and 8 MB cache. I'm assuming that 8 MB is better. But
if
I'm just going to use this for back-up purposes does it really matter?
Click to expand...

No practical difference. If you were to use it as a primary drive that sees
lots of activity, it would be prudent to buy the 8mb variant. Check
warranties, as some 8mb drives have better warranties, like WD--or at least
did a few months ago.
I am seeing "Hard Drive Format Service". Do I really need for them to do
this?
Click to expand...

I've never seen this, but you can format in either Windows or DOS, depending
on version. Why pay for something you can do yourself? If you're using
WinXP it is very easy.
My used space on my hard drive is less than 10 GB. How big a drive should
I
buy to back-up?
Click to expand...

Forty GB is about as small as it gets these days for new drives.
Do I need to purchase special back-up software or just simply copy my hard
drive?
Click to expand...

All this depends on your Windows version. XP Pro, for example, has Windows
Backup built in. Win98 does not, but I'm not sure about others. Norton
Ghost is excellent for cloning a HD, and using this you can produce an exact
copy of the drive and use it like the original.
Of course, I'm not wanting to spend a whole lot of money on this because
I'm
going to use it just for back-up purposes. So, any suggestions on the
best
place to buy this?
Click to expand...

You can buy a case for about $30 that has both FW and USB2 interfaces, and
if you shop around you can find deals on HD's. Check out these sites:

www.dealnews.com (click on "Storage" section)
www.dealone.com

For cases, try: www.mwave.com, www.newegg.com, or eBay.

If all you have to back up is 10gb, you could buy a 40gb drive for a song,
then pick up a case, spending little in total.
 
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