Recommendations on External Hard drive

[jamawass]

Hi all
I would welcome recommendations on external hard drives mainly to back up my PC. One touch backup is paramount with software to backup the OS in case of a crash. Please list drives you have personal experience with regarding ease of use and reliability.
Another question is when backing up do I have to log in as each seperate user to backup or will all the user's preferences, files etc be backed up if I'm logged in as administrator in Win XP. Thanks in advance for any input.

 

[Cheesetogo]

Does it need to be external? The internal drives are much cheaper.

 

[jamawass]

Originally posted by: Cheesetogo
Does it need to be external? The internal drives are much cheaper.

Yes

 

[ribbon13]

I would go for a Seagate and an external kit.

AMS DS-2316B2BK

This one if you're on a really tight budget.
Koutech EEU325

HDD size?

Seagate 160GB $98

 

[LasombraB]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
I would go for a Seagate and an external kit.

AMS DS-2316B2BK

This one if you're on a really tight budget.
Koutech EEU325

HDD size?

Seagate 160GB $98

I second that motion.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: jamawass
Hi all
I would welcome recommendations on external hard drives mainly to back up my PC. One touch backup is paramount with software to backup the OS in case of a crash. Please list drives you have personal experience with regarding ease of use and reliability.
Another question is when backing up do I have to log in as each seperate user to backup or will all the user's preferences, files etc be backed up if I'm logged in as administrator in Win XP. Thanks in advance for any input.

He's not just looking for "parts", he's looking for a solution.

 

[jamawass]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
I would go for a Seagate and an external kit.

AMS DS-2316B2BK

This one if you're on a really tight budget.
Koutech EEU325

HDD size?

Seagate 160GB $98

Do either of these come with good backup software?

 

[ribbon13]

Norton Ghost is what you want. And I haven't seen a good external drive + software kit that didn't suck...

 

[jamawass]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
Norton Ghost is what you want. And I haven't seen a good external drive + software kit that didn't suck...

Do these enclosures have auto off to save my Hd life? I'd prefer firewire as all my usb ports are used up.

 

[ribbon13]

AMC DS-2316CBK

And it's easier on a hard drive to stay on all the time than it is to start and stop a lot.

 

[oog]

i was just shopping for an external hard drive and enclosure. i ended up with a seagate 200gig drive from outpost for $79 (i think the rebate may expire today) and a cheap compusa enclosure. i had ordered the bytecc enclosure from newegg, but it was DOA. many enclosures do have a physical on/off switch. the one i got from compusa also has a physical switch for turning the fan on and off, but it seems like many of the aluminum enclosures don't even need a fan.

as for one-touch backup, i've only really seen that in pre-built external drives with things like the maxtor one-touch. i think iogear also had one. both were using dantz retrospective express, which a friend of mine really likes. i've always been satisfied with doing my backups with the built-in ntbackup, scheduled to run each day. ntbackup doesn't compress the archive though, which increases the speed of backup, but it also increases the drive space it uses.

edit: you do get a lot more for your money with a drive and an external enclosure. the drive + enclosure cost me $109 in total and i ended up with 200gigs. i think i could have only purchased about 80-120 gigs for that price if i had purchased a pre-built.

 

[Stoneburner]

what's the cheapest you can get an external hard drive kit? I just removed an old 80 gb maxtor and i want to convert it to a portable media drive.

thanks in advance.