Does anyone use these so called one touch back up, external HDD? apparently they use firewire making the trf of data very very fast. If you're using something like this for back up, let us know how it is going as well as which model, make, $$, etc. TIA
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=186&Language=en i have one of these. it works slick. the first time you back up it takes half an hour. after that it takes just a couple min.
same here with "one touch" maxtor.. everything worked great.. until one day it crashed and I couldn't recover a thing
That's why I never use this 'ONE' button joke. You don't have a real backup procedure unless you first check your ability to restore. You should keep checking this periodically. (You normally need an extra partition to test your restore - don't try your 'good' partition)
Yeah, snooping around on the net, I've read that Maxtor's offering in this category is pretty much crap. But that doesn't mean that one touch back up is not a good way to go. Look at this: http://www.mirra.com/product/personal_server_features.html
I've had serious problems with the Maxtor OneTouch and I am not at all satisfied with their support. I've lost massive amounts of data twice. I don't think it handles large files very well. Norm
I'm personally planning to invest in an external drive at some point, but I think my backup methodology would actually be fairly simplistic - I would just copy the folders I need from my regular drive to my external backup drive, and cook a DVD once a month or so. If I lose a hard drive, it's not a terribly big deal for me to pop in a new one, reinstall Windows and reinstall a few apps; but my personal needs are fairly simple.
I think one of the best methods for backup is partition backup. I use Acronis TrueImage software on removable hard drives. While it is not actually a 'one touch' backup system, TrueImage has a scheduler that allows for pre-programmed backup activities. What is really useful in partition backup is that even if your HD crashes becoming totally useless, you can replace it with any other drive of >= size and restore all of your data in minutes, without reinstalling anything. It happened to me several times already. Today's drives are becoming larger, cheaper and less reliable than ever before. I'm at this point treating hard drives more as consumer products than devices you buy hoping they'll last at least a few years. For example, I recently replaced all of my computers and installed RAID systems on both my internet server and my main workstation, thinking that RAID would have reduced downtime in case of drive fault. Well, less than 1 year later one of the server's drive is gone, and its twin got logically damaged in the process and become unreadable as well. I didn't lost anything, because I had backups. But if you think that RAID will never fail as a whole just because it shouldn't, think again. I'm now planning to go back, turn raid off and use the spare drives as additional media for backup rotation. To say things exactly as they are, the RAIDs I had set were 'fake' RAID, using the mother boards embedded controllers and best defined as 'mirroring'. But I'm not Microsoft and can easily allow half an hour of downtime to recover. GS
RAID 1 has saved me many times. And, its very easy and you don't lose a step. I have to say that every forum or review of Maxtor, regardless of where you go, has the WORST ratings! They are so cheap and you get what you are paying for. Don't fall for the $49 hard drive deals. You'll regret it. Some of my computer techs won't even carry Maxtor anymore.