Team-BHP - 1TB USB drive for a song

Just picked up a 1 TB WD My Book Essential for 5200/- Nett from SP Road.

My requirement was largely to backup stuff on the Desktop and the Laptop - Movies, Photo's,mails... a few work related files and such. Both the LAppy and the Desktop dont have eSATA ports.. hence thought the Essential version should be enough.

Dang! will have to give it back!

Turns out it does not come with back up software - only the the My Book Home version comes with it! Checked out Freeagent from Seagate - while that does come with back up software, it does not allow for incremental backups - which WD does - Anything you save is automatically backed up the next time you hook the HD on.

I found my 320 GB WD -7200rpm HDD quite reliable, I have been using it for the last 10 months on my 24/7 operating desktop.

I found that it quite reliable and never had any issue.
Moreover WD HDD’s are backed up by a 5 years warranty. Which I feel is quite good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tj123 (Post 1429933)

Moreover WD HDD’s are backed up by a 5 years warranty. Which I feel is quite good.

NOt any more -

The 5 yr warranty is restricted to their internal HD's only - all external HDs come with a 3 year warranty - albeit on-site !

Hi Guys,

My lappy is running out of memory and now i have to backup/copy around 200gb of data which includes pictures, videos of my kid. i do have plans to keep adding such videos to this disk frequently.

The 2nd priority goes to storing movies and songs. i dont intend to store the movies for long time and will be mostly overwritting it.

My assumption is that the flash based drives have longer life compared to hard drives.
please let me know which ones are better. all i want is permanent/years of storage of personal videos.

Based on these requirements please suggest me which external hdd to buy in bangalore?

Quote:

Originally Posted by chetans (Post 1459089)

My assumption is that the flash based drives have longer life compared to hard drives.

Flash based drives are extremely expensive when compared to its HD counterparts. Capacities are also limited at the moment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chetans (Post 1459089)

all i want is permanent/years of storage of personal videos.

If you want permanent storage, may I recommend that you burn multiple discs. Nothing else will not give the permanence that they can.

You can use HDs - at best - as backups. But you will need backup of the back of the backup and so on ... limited only by your risk taking ability!:)

Quote:

Originally Posted by kb100 (Post 1409485)

I picked up the same, but for 300 rupees more here in Pune.
I dont really need that much storage at the moment, 320 GBs would have been more than enough for my needs, but this seemed like a good deal, so bought one anyway.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kb100 (Post 1459116)

...If you want permanent storage, may I recommend that you burn multiple discs. Nothing else will not give the permanence that they can...

I'm no expert, but im not sure i agree with that statement.

I've read on more than one occasion that burned CDs tend to degrade between 3-10years and you can lose data.

Information kept on a HDD however should last longer (assuming no physical damage or mechanical failure occurs). And you can always easily transfer it over to the newer/bigger storage media when you upgrade.

If its important data - back up in two places for some redundancy. If its REALLY important data, make sure one of those backups is off-site.

cya
R

Surprisingly I find myself looking for a 1TB storage drive today. Checked out some options, I was actually looking for one with FireWire since my Mac supports it. The price difference is quite large between firewire and usb 2.0 based devices. Anyone here recommend is it worth going in for it or does it still depend on the 5200 rpm vs 7600 rpm (whatever) thingy?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rehaan (Post 1459718)

HDD are far better than CD/DVD. so what i got from here is if i am looking for 500gb or more capacity, then i have to go with external HDDs.
i had never that about HDD until now. so i have lost track of the latest developments HDDs. all i know is that some are usb powered and some require external power source. maybe the rpm is one of important factors to consider. but do note that my lappy is an inspiron 6000 one and i consider it to be very old :)
have been reading about WB here. but i donno the options.
can anyone give me the final word to choose a particular external HDD with minimum of 500gbs?