You guys got any recommendations on external hard drives to be used to back up files? http://enuinc.com/index.php?l=product_list&c=423 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hard-dr...es/pcmcat186100050005.c?id=pcmcat186100050005
Something like this, but I've not used this one: http://www.amazon.com/Cloud-3TB-Per...97660950&sr=1-1&keywords=network backup drive If it's directly connected to your computer, it could get fried if your computer is. This device works over ethernet. You'd connect it to your wifi router or cable modem.
This is the new drive I put in my laptop. Works pretty well so far, slight performance difference. http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Solid-Hybrid-2-5-Inch-ST1000LM014/dp/B00B99JUBQ
I got 3 of those for my old laptop and they went bad really fast. S.M.A.R.T. failure, like what BoBoBrewski reported. If he has the money, this is a really good idea: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-2-5-I...TF8&qid=1397686393&sr=1-6&keywords=ssd laptop Slap his big hard drive in an external case (costs maybe $50) and use that for mass storage (videos, pictures, music, whatever) and the SSD for his apps and commonly accessed files. The SSD is really fast, and probably the best thing to buy to upgrade a machine.
I can't do SSD, I am already using 600GB of the drive. Its got a 3 year warranty. I've replaced drives on warranty and backup through time machine so its not that big of a deal if it takes a shit on me. Going to get an SSD for a older MacbookAir though. I'm waiting until the new Mac Minis are coming out though, hopefully at WWDC.
This is a bus powered USB3/FireWire external drive: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEF3MH5T1.0/ 1TB > 600MB. For my 2011 MacBook Pro, I took the DVD drive out and put in a 750G 7200RPM drive to go with the 256G SSD. It's plenty good enough for everything I do, and I'm a power user.
I'll address that when I get my next computer, either the mac mini or an imac. I'm definitely having external storage as I'm going to be doing more video and video editing. Don't know what I'll do for Time Machine backup, not sure how it works with external drives, especially restoring all the files. My current laptop is a 2009 macbook, its not worth doing much for it.
Is it a good idea to only plug in and power up the external drive when I do a back up? To prolong the life of the drive so its not always on/running?
If it's connected to your computer and it is hit by lightning or a power surge, it will travel through the cable to your drive. On or off. If you are only using it for backup, then ideally plug in and power on only to back up. The ideal is to keep a backup off site (in the cloud somewhere). Like dropbox.
I keep mine always plugged in (or connected). It doesn't matter all that much. Turning it on and off probably hurts the drive more than leaving it on constantly. I want my backups to be as current as possible and continuous with multiple save points. Plugging it in and out just is a recipe for forgetting to do it then having it crash and you lose important docs.
Modern operating systems spin down drives to save energy. He asked what was best. You describe something good enough. Perhaps. In any case, the first rule if backups is that you never know how really good yours is until you need to use it. The world is full of stories about backups not working. Dropbox for the real win, USB drive for big data you can ultimately live without.
I use dropbox but I also have a complete offsite backup service (Crashplan). The thing with Dropbox, especially when you're sharing drives, people will delete shit. Also, I was trying to free up space in my phone and cleared some Documents and Files settings and it randomly deleted a bunch of random shit all over my dropbox in multiple file locations. It was a bitch to get it all back. I tried to do a simple restore to undo everything that was deleted that day but each deletion was a separate event (thousands of files) and tech support was non-existant. I backuped whole folders from crashplan which worked a lot better.
A thumb drive works well these days to transport stuff from one machine to another. I have mirror images of data on multiple machines instead of backups. I just back up the C drive for each system and keep the C drive small, usually less than 8G, so a thumb drive will transport the backup to another machine which would be used to rebuild the C drive if needed.
1201 Computer Repair said I'm going to have to take it to the next level experts. They couldnt get any data off the drive. The guys at 1201 are really nice, recommended. http://www.1201.com/
