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External hard drive backup solution


Jim Murray

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WOW! kirisute, thank you, that makes it all so clear, you are obviously used to explaining it to the less knowledgeable! I shall actually print this thread and read and inwardly digest ... before I act on it, unusual for me I am normally of the school of "read the notes/manual after its gone wrong!"

 

my pleasure!

i do this for a living; im actually in charge of nie on 300+ computers and laptops as well as building and repairing them for the last 16+ years! LOL

as for these "small" drives your all talking about:

a standard pc hard drive fits in an internal pc bay of about 5 inches...they come in a few "flavours": IDE, Sata and solid state. IDE is the old boy on the block, connected via ribbon cable and running up to quite decent speeds and sizes. The "teen" of the class are the SATA drives. Offering faster drive speed witha much smaller connection type that moves data faster and also uses a bit less power. Finally the new boy on the block is the solid state unit which in effect operates similar to SD cards and Memory sticks: ie: its all stored on a chip inside a drive with no moving parts; they are limited at present by their size; though the speed of data transfer can be considerably more than the previous two drives. Expense also comes into play with these units being very expensive still.

 

Now for the drives that are being discussed here: chances are anything thinner than an inch will have enclosed a 2.5 inch drive...a laptop drive. It will be either sata or IDE and there really is no way to tell without pulling the unit appart to see. if you go smaller then your looking at "memory stick" drives which are solid state: (usb pens etc)

if you can hear your drive humming then its NOT solid state!

as for banging and crashing them about. Most drive these days have built in impact protection and can take upwards of about 7g's of impact with no problem; providing that is, that the drive isnt spinning at the time!! and thats the real crunch!

If a drive is still spinning then avoid bumping it or moving it if you can! A standard drive operates a spindle of metal disks that are written onto my a magnetic arm.

Think of the inside of one of these looking like a record player using cd's!! you have a stack of cd's and a stack of needles that move across them, writing data to them magnetically. now if you jolt that unit as it moves; you skip the needle! you corrupt data!

so it really doesnt matter what drive you are using...if its not solid state, then the primary concern is jolting it when its in motion! Be careful moving it, dropping it, banging it when its still spinning! unplug the unit, let it stop spinning; usually about 10 to 15 secs, then move it, put it away etc! once they have stopped spinning the motor locks everything in place! it not a free spinning motor it has to be powered to function and spin the disks! so if your drive isnt spinning then it will take a considerable drop to jolt the internal mechanisms and cause any damage to your data!

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my pleasure!

i do this for a living; im actually in charge of nie on 300+ computers and laptops as well as building and repairing them for the last 16+ years! LOL

as for these "small" drives your all talking about:

a standard pc hard drive fits in an internal pc bay of about 5 inches...they come in a few "flavours": IDE, Sata and solid state. IDE is the old boy on the block, connected via ribbon cable and running up to quite decent speeds and sizes. The "teen" of the class are the SATA drives. Offering faster drive speed witha much smaller connection type that moves data faster and also uses a bit less power. Finally the new boy on the block is the solid state unit which in effect operates similar to SD cards and Memory sticks: ie: its all stored on a chip inside a drive with no moving parts; they are limited at present by their size; though the speed of data transfer can be considerably more than the previous two drives. Expense also comes into play with these units being very expensive still.

 

Now for the drives that are being discussed here: chances are anything thinner than an inch will have enclosed a 2.5 inch drive...a laptop drive. It will be either sata or IDE and there really is no way to tell without pulling the unit appart to see. if you go smaller then your looking at "memory stick" drives which are solid state: (usb pens etc)

if you can hear your drive humming then its NOT solid state!

as for banging and crashing them about. Most drive these days have built in impact protection and can take upwards of about 7g's of impact with no problem; providing that is, that the drive isnt spinning at the time!! and thats the real crunch!

If a drive is still spinning then avoid bumping it or moving it if you can! A standard drive operates a spindle of metal disks that are written onto my a magnetic arm.

Think of the inside of one of these looking like a record player using cd's!! you have a stack of cd's and a stack of needles that move across them, writing data to them magnetically. now if you jolt that unit as it moves; you skip the needle! you corrupt data!

so it really doesnt matter what drive you are using...if its not solid state, then the primary concern is jolting it when its in motion! Be careful moving it, dropping it, banging it when its still spinning! unplug the unit, let it stop spinning; usually about 10 to 15 secs, then move it, put it away etc! once they have stopped spinning the motor locks everything in place! it not a free spinning motor it has to be powered to function and spin the disks! so if your drive isnt spinning then it will take a considerable drop to jolt the internal mechanisms and cause any damage to your data!

 

Oh dear this is about the point I lose the will to live. I buy what is uptodate at the time, by the time I learn to use it, get used to it ,its already outr of date! :angry: I do know about the solid state drive ; I definitely don't have one. The last Seagate external hard dive I had probably died of fright because, out of ignorance, I was using it like a flash drive; taking it home to office and back ( not telling why in case Greek tax man is watching this thread!) suffice to say they don't like to move about much. My Trekstore is left standing and moved very gently when needs be... lesson learned the best way.. by hitting my pocket!.

I am beginning to think I want the life back that I had before I owned a PC!!

Riley

 

****************************************

The more people I meet the more I like my dog!

 

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Oh dear this is about the point I lose the will to live. I buy what is uptodate at the time, by the time I learn to use it, get used to it ,its already outr of date! :angry: I do know about the solid state drive ; I definitely don't have one. The last Seagate external hard dive I had probably died of fright because, out of ignorance, I was using it like a flash drive; taking it home to office and back ( not telling why in case Greek tax man is watching this thread!) suffice to say they don't like to move about much. My Trekstore is left standing and moved very gently when needs be... lesson learned the best way.. by hitting my pocket!.

I am beginning to think I want the life back that I had before I owned a PC!!

 

dont be like that, most of it is common sense LOL!

for a more advanced user there are even devices called NAS drives which are basically hard drives that sit on your network and back up data automatically for you etc....its a wonderful world of possibilities!

the issue isnt with you and any member of the public..the issue is with the mindset of the people selling pc's and the fact they let people think that a computer is like a slightly more advanced video recorder/dvd player....ie they are pretty much turn on and forget about!

that simply isnt the case and i encounter people on a daily basis who stare at me glassy eyed as i fix their computers with a bit of software and a few clicks as if im a magician of some kind....the simply fact is to truly use a computer you have to have a certain amount of knowledge and an understanding of the fact you have to perform some basic maintenance and upkeep to keep it all running smooth and nice!

most people who buy a pc are never told that, or shown it! and therefore all these issues arise!

still, keeps me in a job! LOL!

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;)

Yes i know. I have a rather addictive personality and my favourite word is WHY. My computer Guru, a man rather like you I guess, who just understands what the PC is telling him, hates me as soon as he sees that word coming! Once I start messing around on here hours go by and other jobs which should have been done stay undone.

 

I know lots of people hate Norton. It works for me, its much lighter than it used to be. The utilities, I have only just started using, hasnt slowed anything down and if it helps keep everything oiled and working thats fine by me, cos when it comes to registry etc etc I leave that to the experts. I would of course love to call upon your services but suspect the call out charge might be a bit excessive for Corfu!

I have just plugged the HD to back up ( Norton Ghost for now) Will certainly look into the other options shown above... bit unsure as what is safest now!

One more question for today....how can I, or just can I make a bootable disc from Ghost? (probably an answer on the cd I guess?! ;)

 

Thanks

Riley

 

****************************************

The more people I meet the more I like my dog!

 

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;)

Yes i know. I have a rather addictive personality and my favourite word is WHY. My computer Guru, a man rather like you I guess, who just understands what the PC is telling him, hates me as soon as he sees that word coming! Once I start messing around on here hours go by and other jobs which should have been done stay undone.

 

I know lots of people hate Norton. It works for me, its much lighter than it used to be. The utilities, I have only just started using, hasnt slowed anything down and if it helps keep everything oiled and working thats fine by me, cos when it comes to registry etc etc I leave that to the experts. I would of course love to call upon your services but suspect the call out charge might be a bit excessive for Corfu!

I have just plugged the HD to back up ( Norton Ghost for now) Will certainly look into the other options shown above... bit unsure as what is safest now!

One more question for today....how can I, or just can I make a bootable disc from Ghost? (probably an answer on the cd I guess?! ;)

 

Thanks

 

ghost will come with a piece of software that will create a boot fisk for you, or it will be in the tool/options of the software iteself..might be called something like "create rescue disk"!

will depend what version your using...all a boot disk does is load a "dos" version of the ghost software to allow you to connect your back-up device and restore your ghost image....its simply a quicker way of doing things than installing a fresh version of windows,installing ghost and then restoring your back-up that way! you dont NEED a boot disk..but it does make things faster and easier.

 

dont panic about the registry..if you use ccleaner then the registry fixing tool of that will ask if you want to create a registry bac-up..just say yes and save that to a folder somewhere...let ccleaner do its job.....if something goes wrong then just double clicking the regsitry back-up will restore everything ccleaner takes out!

but in ALL the times ive used ccleaner i have NEVER had it crash or corrupt the registry!! not once!

 

i honestly wouldnt suggest something i didnt think you could handle or i knew might not work perfectly...ccleaner is one piece of software i trust 110%

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