500GB external drive

[3223]

Does your motherboard have SATA ports?

i dont think so as its a 6yr old dell dimension 8200. so I should not use an external for backups?

[silent h3ro]

Does your motherboard have SATA ports?

i dont think so as its a 6yr old dell dimension 8200. so I should not use an external for backups?

Yes you can still use USB but using eSATA ports is much faster. I have eSATA on my mobo but I still use USB.

[3223]

i dont think so as its a 6yr old dell dimension 8200. so I should not use an external for backups?

Yes you can still use USB but using eSATA ports is much faster. I have eSATA on my mobo but I still use USB.

I was asking if using HDD for backups since they fail/break easily is a good idea.

[silent h3ro]

I'm not sure why I said that.

Using a hdd for backups is fine unless you really think you have a chance of dropping the drive. It will take years for the hard drive to fail but it still happens. If you are truly concerned, then you should use flash drives, DVD's, or Solid-state drives.

[clocker]

I've never had a HDD- internal or external- fail, so I consider them to be fine.*
Naturally, the possibility exists, so I'd also recommend burning any really critical files to disk as well.


*I upgrade components on a fairly regular basis and don't keep drives around for more than a year or two at most.
This probably helped my track record.

[3223]

I've never had a HDD- internal or external- fail, so I consider them to be fine.*
Naturally, the possibility exists, so I'd also recommend burning any really critical files to disk as well.


*I upgrade components on a fairly regular basis and don't keep drives around for more than a year or two at most.
This probably helped my track record.

wow that must cost alot of $. I guess i'll go with the my book then. thanks guys

[Broken]

I've never had a HDD- internal or external- fail, so I consider them to be fine.*
Naturally, the possibility exists, so I'd also recommend burning any really critical files to disk as well.


*I upgrade components on a fairly regular basis and don't keep drives around for more than a year or two at most.
This probably helped my track record.

It's just not mechanical failure. If it's an active, live hard drive there is always the risk that the data will be lost, possibly do to viruses, and that other "stupid" stuff that just happens by mistake.


As I said in my first post in this thread,
and Clocker just recommended, "I'd also recommend burning any really critical files to disk as well".

If this hard drive is just for general storage, I'd highly recommend that you consider buying an additional internal drive instead. You'd still maintain the ability to archive the data, but you'd have the flexibility and speed that goes along with an internal drive.

[clocker]

wow that must cost alot of $.

Hard drives are cheap while my time grows increasingly precious.
Also, I was in the business and didn't pay retail.

We used to get lots of older systems in for recycling.
Many of these had semi-decent drives that had died but the owner never pursued warranty replacement.
We would.

My buddy just found a PC with two dead 74GB Raptors, both of which were still under warranty.
For the cost of shipping, he now has two brand new, very fast drives.
Not bad for $10.

Most brand name RAM comes with a lifetime warranty, so the same procedure applies.

In general, people are uninformed, lazy and yes, sometimes just stupid, and you can benefit from their lapses if you take the time and do the research.

[Detale]

Damn! I'm in the wrong industry!

[clocker]

Nah, the computer biz sucks, especially at the retail level.
Then again, I suspect that anything at the retail level is pretty bad.