TSGL: External USB HDD for Backup??

[H Davis]

Lee,

Just got this in an ad from TigerDirect. I bought an NAS drive from 
SimpleTech and it's working fine. This looks like a pretty good price. 
Check the site for reviews of similar SimpleTech drives that have been 
available longer.

H Davis

Lee Bunyard wrote:
> Thanks to both Russ and H Davis for the comments.  I'm going to purchase 
> a 250 Gig USB external HDD today for backup purposes.  You're both 
> right, they are readily available for a lot less than $150 now.
> Lee in the Mountains of Northern California
>
> H Davis wrote:
>   
>> Lee,
>>
>> I agree with Russ, you can do better on price. I bought a 250 GB USB 
>> drive for $69.95 after a rebate at TigerDirect.com. It's been working 
>> fine since then. They still have the same drive (BeyondMicro) for $99 I 
>> think.
>>
>> If you've got an old drive around you can buy just the enclosure for $29 
>> or so and use your own drive.
>>
>> If you have multiple computers on a network you might consider a network 
>> drive for your backup. It'll be slower (assuming you have a 10/100 
>> Mb/sec LAN and not a gigabit LAN) than the USB drive (480 Mb/sec) but 
>> you can back up all your machines to the same drive and use it as a 
>> place to swap files between machines. These units are only slightly more 
>> expensive. I got a 500 GB unit for $149 at Newegg.
>>
>> I've found SyncBack (not SyncBackSE) to be a better alternative than 
>> Karen's Replicator. Both are free, but if I remember correctly, 
>> Replicator doesn't allow you to exclude complete folders from the backup.
>>
>> Both of these programs are only for backing up files you specify. If you 
>> need something that can completely restore a failed machine, including 
>> the OS, then you need Acronis or something similar, as Russ mentioned.
>>
>> H Davis
>>
>> Russell W. Coover wrote:
>>   
>>     
>>> For backup purposes, an external hard drive is excellent. Depending on the
>>> type pf backup you want to do, however, you may have to purchase software.
>>> If free software like Karen's Replicator is not sufficient, I suggest
>>> Acronis True Image http://acronis.com , which I use everyday (or should I
>>> say every morning at 4:00 AM) to produce an exact duplicate of my hard
>>> drive. They've just introduced a version 11.
>>>
>>> As far as $150 for 250 GB, may I suggest you take a look at http://geeks.com
>>> for much better deals than that. I just checked and found one 250 GB
>>> external drive at $84.99. Or for even a better deal, buy an external hard
>>> drive enclosure along with an internal hard drive.
>>>
>>> By the way, I am not an agent for either Acronis or Geeks.com (located in
>>> Vista, CA), just a satisfied customer.
>>>
>>> Russ Coover 
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: list-bounces at tsgserver.com [mailto:list-bounces at tsgserver.com] On
>>> Behalf Of Lee Bunyard
>>> Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 7:57 AM
>>> To: Tech Support Guy Mailing List
>>> Subject: TSGL: External USB HDD for Backup??
>>>
>>> I see where you can now buy a 250 Gig external USB HDD for around $150.  
>>> I have about 40% of HDD space still left on my desktop HDD but am 
>>> thinking that the external HDD would be good to use as a backup device.  
>>> Just wondered if there were any major downsides to using something like 
>>> this for primary backup??  Thanks for any thoughts.
>>> Lee in the Mountains of Northern California
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Tech Support Guy Mailing List
>>> http://www.tsgserver.com/list/
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Tech Support Guy Mailing List
>>> http://www.tsgserver.com/list/
>>>
>>>   
>>>     
>>>       
>>   
>>     
> _______________________________________________
> Tech Support Guy Mailing List
> http://www.tsgserver.com/list/
>
>   

-- 
H Davis   hdavis1 at gmail.com