External Hard Drive 320gb portable

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I want to buy a portable external hard drive for back up purposes. I want 320gb USB 2.0 obviously must be Windows 7 compatible and have shortlisted IOMEGA Prestige
at just under £50 and the Western Digital My Passport Essential at about £52. It must not weigh more than 250 gms.

Do any members have any other suggestions or comments please?
 
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Did you know that Seagate/Maxtor has a freeware version of Acronis called "DiscWizard". A backup solution that works with only their drives. Western Digital also has a version they call "Acronis True Image WD Edition". I'm not sure if IOMEGA comes with a backup solution or has available one to download.

Here is a related thread for my post - https://www.w7forums.com/backup-your-hard-drive-acronis-t1489.html

However, you may have already known. Good luck with your purchase.

In my opinion all the drives perform about the same as far as performance and reliability. Everyone gets a lemon from time to time which tarnishes the name of that particular brand for them. Thats the price one has to pay in changing versions with hardware as well as software.
 
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catilley1092

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suenay, welcome to the forum! What you can do, and it may cost less than buying a pre-built one, is purchasing a SATA hard drive. A 500GB wouldn't cost much more than a 320GB one would. Then you can purchase a case to install it in. It's really easy to do. If you have an eSATA connection on your computer (an extra one), a case with that kind of connection should be purchased.

On the other hand, if you don't want to fool with building one, WD does make good ones, as well as Seagate. The reason I bring up 500GB is the extra cost is minimal, and you may one day need more storage space. Hopefully, this will help offer you other options, and I hope that you find the drive that meets your needs. Should you have any other questions about this issue, feel free to post anytime.
 

Nibiru2012

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catilley1092

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About $90 US dollars... should be able to get a decent external case and a drive for that much money. Probably a 500GB too.

Easy assembly, takes about 5 minutes.

This is from Amazon.co.uk
3.5" SATA HDD to e-SATA and USB Combo External Enclosure Caddy 15.47 British Pounds


Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATAII 16MB Cache 3.5 inch Internal Hard Drive OEM WD5000AAKS 39.59 British Pounds
I wished I'd have seen that case when I bought mine. Probably by year's end, I'm going to do some more upgrading, that eSATA connection would have been useful. c_c showed me a long adapter that will support up to five eSATA devices, I have the page bookmarked.

I plan to remove my hard drive from my computer, I'm going to run a cable to that part, and have three hard drives installed (in external cases). There may be a small bottleneck, but having three drives installed this way will be far better than one internal drive and two USB ones. In fact, I'll only be running one at a time, so I really don't see too much bottlenecking to be concerned with.
 
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Nibiru2012

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Nibs, I think the portability of a 2.5" drive was the goal. :)
My bad... but he didn't state that (I don't think?) in his OP.

I saw the portable, but my synapses didn't fire correctly! I hate it when that happens. LOL!
 
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They did say something about weight, how much is 250 gms anyway? I don't know how to compare grams with a hard drive.
 
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It is surprising how quickly a plug in hard drive can fill up with backups. I use a 1TB Toshiba. It did not cost the earth, look into it on line.:D
 

Fire cat

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I get all my external hard drives from Freecom and Western Digital. Freecom have a large variete of hard drives, which won't burn a hole in your wallet. WD has a nice software for backing up that comes with it. Samsung also have some nice ones.

For all other memory I go Kingston, but that isn't HDs. Only flash drives and RAM.
 
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Nibiru2012

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Seagate Momentus 5400.6 ST9500325AS weight 98.8 gramsaccording to their website. Click the link to view specs and such.

Newegg has it for $74.99, but its not available in the UK.Here's a 2.5" portable case, good looking too with a leather wrap and not too pricey.

INEO I-NA204Ue2 Aluminum Alloy 2.5" Black USB2.0 & eSATA External Enclosure

P.S.
I found my 2.5" external drive case at eBay. It's a CoolPod brand and a sharp looking case too with a leather carrying case and cables. I got it for $8 two years ago w/free shipping!

Check out eBay for the external cases, you'll find a much better selection and pricing on those there.
 
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One external drive is useless for backup - you may lose it or drop it; you need another backup source, and one of the best would be an internal hard drive, a 500GB SATA II model is cheap.
 

Fire cat

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One external drive is useless for backup - you may lose it or drop it; you need another backup source, and o
ne of the best would be an internal hard drive, a 500GB SATA II model is cheap.
Internal is even worse.

One of my friends got a virus a few months ago. It checked for hard drives and started erasing them. Luckily, my friend was able to turn off his computer before any major damage was done. Though, one of the drives was wiped (no important data on it, luckily) and some system files destroyed.

You mustn't think that because your backups and files aren't on the system drive, they're safe. Though, I agree that it is best to have multiple backup locations. I make a system backup every month and keep it in a safe place, as an addition to the automatic file backup.

So, what's going to be the OP's choice? :)
 
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TrainableMan

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I know several people that have external HDs used for backups that never move anywhere, in which case internal would be fine but the poster is specific about weight so it does sound like portability is key therefore obviously external. If you are going to be carrying it around you may want a wallet or sleeve to help protect it incase AK bumps into you.

If you have an original HD and a back-up HD then you are better than the 85% or so of people that don't back up at all. For a third backup you might follow FCs advice and backup monthly, this could be to DVDs.

If you are set on one of those two brands ... The IOmega is listed as lighter in weight than the Passport but both are in your goal weight. I have never used an IOmega drive so I cannot state to their quality but WD has always made a good drive IMHO. Also for about another £12 the WD can be upped to 500MB with no change in weight which I would recommend if you can afford the extra coin. The WD comes with backup software for the price, I do not know about the IOmega. One complaint I saw on the WD, it sets aside a VirtualCD area (small secondary partition using some of the overall space) and some people couldn't figure out how to delete it but, other notes say there is a solution to delete it listed on the WD website - if you want to delete this so you have one big partition I would encourage you to do this before putting any data on the drive.

As was mentioned you can buy these drives and a case and build one to get more space for less coin. Most of these 2.5" drives should be in your weight range but finding that weight spec may be harder to find. Also If you build your own it won't come with backup software.

If this is to backup your windows 7, there is a Win 7 backup feature. I currently back up mine automatically on a weekly basis, set with Control Panel \ Backup and Restore. Mine is taking 265GB of my 500GB drive; there would not be much space left if I had a 300GB HD. The Win7 backup is strictly for restore purposes and doesn't seem like a very nice interface. I'm afraid to click it to see if I can select individual files etc because the button just says "restore my files" and it may just restore everything with that click.

Crossthread Note: This may explain why AKs router broadcasts SSID even when broadcasting is turned off ... he drops things.
 

Fire cat

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I second Trainableman's suggestion. WD, or Western Digital, makes very good hard drives. Pretty nice looking too.

Even if you make your own backup drive, you can still use third party softwares to backup properly on it, but if you're on a tight budget, a new portable HD is best.

Another way to backup is to use a home server. That's something that shouldn't fall out of your pocket and that shouldn't get walked on by AK, unless you invite him to come and see your house....
 

Nibiru2012

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Virtually all of the 2.5" external portable drive cases are very lightweight. So reaching the 250 gram goal should be quite easy.

The entire setup will probably be a total of less than 200 grams.
 
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I have decided 500GB would be sensible and also I don't want to have to use a power cable....more to carry!
 

Fire cat

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I have decided 500GB would be sensible and also I don't want to have to use a power cable....more to carry!
That's a good amount of memory :)
Perfect for backups. Though, it will fill up faster than you'd think.
Have you chosen a make yet? WD, IOmega, Freecom, Samsung?

They're all good. By the way, have you thought of a home server? You can backup multiple computers on one, share files between computers, or just store files on it that you don't have the space for one your computer (eg: movies).
 

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I erase my old backup when I make a new one (thats all of C - the OS and Programs D backup space stays about the same.
 

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