I have just bought two Seagate 2 terabyte expansion drives (Seagate STBV2000200 Expansion 2TB USB 3.0 desktop 3.5 inch external hard drive) and am wondering about the most effective way of using them.
What I want to achieve is the ability to store most of my photos and other files on one of the hard drives (Let's call it drive A), with the ability to access individual files to work on them/print them etc. This will free up space on my laptop.
I want to use the other hard drive (Drive B) to back up drive A and maybe back-up my whole laptop in case it crashes and I need to restore it.
I must admit I am getting a bit confused about disc cloning v disc imaging v your basic back up (where I suppose the files are compressed and can't just be accessed individually)
If anyone has any thoughts on the best way to go about this then I would really love to hear them.
Also, after a bit of reading I bought expansion drives rather than external hard drives (back-up drives), but don't really know what the difference is. Is this the best option (it's not too late for me to return them as they are still boxed?)
Jan I have two externals, I don't clone, but when I have finished my work or whatever, I save it on my hard drive, then save it on each of the backups. All the programmes I use are on disc, so that isn't a problem with crashes. If there is a programme that is not on disc, then I back it up on the external as well.
I used to have a small expansion drive like that but it seized up and I lost everything on it. And exactly the same happened to the one my hubby had.
So we ditched them and got externals. Unfortunately, Most of the best wedding photos were on it, and not being able to bring my pc over to England, I wiped it and sold it. (aaarrggghh)
So basically what I do is whatever files I have on my hard drive are mirrored on the back-ups. If I start a new photo-file, I start one on each back-up as well. The trick is getting into the habit of backing up every day before you shut down.
@sioux Thanks Sue. So do you back-up your whole system too, or just keep copies of your photos and documents? I assume that when you do a full back up it also keeps copies of your drivers etc.
In spite of some extensive Googling I still can't work out what the difference between an external hard drive and an expansion drive is.......
The usual differentiation, people often use the terms in different ways, "external" is powered by DC power separately from the laptop and the USB connection, "expansion" is powered through the USB port itself.
For another level of security, I'd recommend you back up to the "cloud" as well, whatever your strategy is for using the expansion drives. There are many services out there US$10 a month typically.
@frankhymus Thanks Frank. So it looks like they do the same job then, that's good. Your explanation ties in with some of the explanations that I have seen online but it is strange that the 'expansion drive' that I have bought has an external power supply. So long as they do the same job, I don't really mind. I would love to use the cloud more but where I live our download and upload speeds are currently about 0.3 mb/s, so it isn't very practical.
You need to have redundant backups and store them two different physical locations. If someone breaks into your house, they'll probably take your PC and all your backups. So it'd be good to have another copy at a friend's house so you can still recover from it.
Encrypted drives may not be a bad idea either if you have sensitive data on your PC / backups.
My laptop died a sad death in August and I thought my external harddrive had failed (Western Digital Passport). Luckily I use an online back up system too - $5/month and it saved everything - 40K photos, documents, even 'favorite' websites. Back blaze.com - can't recommend highly enough.
As it turned out, when my son was visiting for Christmas, he was able to 'find' all my pics on my Western Digital external hard drive - he said I had hidden them pretty well. I like having both the external drive and the online back up.
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I used to have a small expansion drive like that but it seized up and I lost everything on it. And exactly the same happened to the one my hubby had.
So we ditched them and got externals. Unfortunately, Most of the best wedding photos were on it, and not being able to bring my pc over to England, I wiped it and sold it. (aaarrggghh)
So basically what I do is whatever files I have on my hard drive are mirrored on the back-ups. If I start a new photo-file, I start one on each back-up as well. The trick is getting into the habit of backing up every day before you shut down.
In spite of some extensive Googling I still can't work out what the difference between an external hard drive and an expansion drive is.......
For another level of security, I'd recommend you back up to the "cloud" as well, whatever your strategy is for using the expansion drives. There are many services out there US$10 a month typically.
Encrypted drives may not be a bad idea either if you have sensitive data on your PC / backups.
As it turned out, when my son was visiting for Christmas, he was able to 'find' all my pics on my Western Digital external hard drive - he said I had hidden them pretty well. I like having both the external drive and the online back up.