external hard disk recommandation

Hi,

My hard disk is getting filled up.
Backing up stuffs to the dvd-r doesn't seem safe.

So, I am thinking to get an external hard disk.
I've seen some of them now is as large as 1 Tega.

But... lossing 1T of data seems worst than anything else.
So, how do you back up a hard disk that big?

It is pretty easy in the office. Just get a NAS server with a bunch of
disks in the RAID for just backing up. But... it is not possible to have
one of these NAS in my house.

Any take on this problem?

bz wrote:
Hi,

My hard disk is getting filled up.
Backing up stuffs to the dvd-r doesn't seem safe.

So, I am thinking to get an external hard disk.
I've seen some of them now is as large as 1 Tega.

But... lossing 1T of data seems worst than anything else.
So, how do you back up a hard disk that big?

It is pretty easy in the office. Just get a NAS server with a bunch of
disks in the RAID for just backing up. But... it is not possible to have
one of these NAS in my house.

Any take on this problem?

The fastest/cheapest solution is probably to just have another
harddrive containing the same data. I would be careful not to set them
to directly mirror each other, however. For instance, if something
deletes all the data on one, that change would be directly carried over
to the other one, resulting in your data still being lost. Connect the
backup one to your computer once a day/week to back things up.

wrote in message
oups.com...
bz wrote:
Hi,

My hard disk is getting filled up.
Backing up stuffs to the dvd-r doesn't seem safe.

So, I am thinking to get an external hard disk.
I've seen some of them now is as large as 1 Tega.

But... lossing 1T of data seems worst than anything else.
So, how do you back up a hard disk that big?

It is pretty easy in the office. Just get a NAS server with a bunch of
disks in the RAID for just backing up. But... it is not possible to have
one of these NAS in my house.

Any take on this problem?

The fastest/cheapest solution is probably to just have another
harddrive containing the same data. I would be careful not to set them
to directly mirror each other, however. For instance, if something
deletes all the data on one, that change would be directly carried over
to the other one, resulting in your data still being lost. Connect the
backup one to your computer once a day/week to back things up.


So basically, a back up of a backup of a backup?

bz wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...
bz wrote:
Hi,

My hard disk is getting filled up.
Backing up stuffs to the dvd-r doesn't seem safe.

So, I am thinking to get an external hard disk.
I've seen some of them now is as large as 1 Tega.

But... lossing 1T of data seems worst than anything else.
So, how do you back up a hard disk that big?

It is pretty easy in the office. Just get a NAS server with a bunch of
disks in the RAID for just backing up. But... it is not possible to have
one of these NAS in my house.

Any take on this problem?
The fastest/cheapest solution is probably to just have another
harddrive containing the same data. I would be careful not to set them
to directly mirror each other, however. For instance, if something
deletes all the data on one, that change would be directly carried over
to the other one, resulting in your data still being lost. Connect the
backup one to your computer once a day/week to back things up.


So basically, a back up of a backup of a backup?


I prefer using XCopy and only copying files that don't exist on the
backup or have been changed. This way if a file is deleted off the
master the backup still has a copy. If you are truly paranoid about
file changes you could create a new folder on the backup and copy all
the files to this folder. This way if you wanted to see what a document
looked like 2 months ago it is still there.

I bought a 500Gig Western Digital My Book from Costco.
Hope it works without any problem from the years come.



"bz" wrote in message
...
Hi,

My hard disk is getting filled up.
Backing up stuffs to the dvd-r doesn't seem safe.

So, I am thinking to get an external hard disk.
I've seen some of them now is as large as 1 Tega.

But... lossing 1T of data seems worst than anything else.
So, how do you back up a hard disk that big?

It is pretty easy in the office. Just get a NAS server with a bunch of
disks in the RAID for just backing up. But... it is not possible to have
one of these NAS in my house.

Any take on this problem?

I have a problem with saved newsgroup posts not copying over to an external HDD
if the subject line is over too many characters (120 characters or so). So I
have to isolate those posts and rename them a bit, which is painstaking over
thousands of posts that have to be double checked for subject line length.

Is your external drive formatted FAT 16, FAT 32 or NTFS?


If it isn't NTFS, you can convert it and not have data loss.


"Cymbal Man Freq." Don't g
wrote in message
...
|I have a problem with saved newsgroup posts not copying
over to an external HDD
| if the subject line is over too many characters (120
characters or so). So I
| have to isolate those posts and rename them a bit, which
is painstaking over
| thousands of posts that have to be double checked for
subject line length.
|
|