Portable external hardrives

[dullbird]

Hey guys

I reaslise that I have a lot of photos on my laptop which appears to be dying a slow death....I say that because it does really random things like I can type a whole sentence before the words appear, and often more and more programs are starting to not respond or taking a really long time to even open..

there is a number of others things too.....I think the whole laptop probably needs a good clear up and clear out to be honest but anyway thats a whole other story...


So I'm looking to buy an external portable hard drive....to get a copy of my photos before this potential death of the laptop may occur

min 500g, can anyone recommend a reasonably cheap but reliable one to use? the most I will be doing with it is transfering photographs however my photographs are a large file size so reasonable writing?/transfer speed would be good.:)

Any ideas?

I presume I cant use a 3.0 usb as my laptop is 4/5years old now so I only have the 2.0/2.2 or what ever it is USB

[Bushie]

Lou, If you think it is dying then get your photos off sooner rather than later, and don't use it until you do.
The longer you go the more chance of it corrupting the files on the drive, and when you copy them off they may be unreadable as images.

When my last drive started to fail I copied of the pics and thought I had got away with it. Not so, many of them were corrupt and whilst explorer could see them they couldn't be opened. Most luckily were able to be restored from my last backup, and lucky I noticed before backing up a corrupt set (I tend to rewrite over every third or forth set).

As for drives I have a 500gb Verbatim drive (3 yo) and a 1Tb western digital (abt 1yo) both have performed fine so far. Drive should be backwards compatible


Martyn

[dullbird]

what do you mean drive should be backwards compatible? compatible for what?

As for the laptop unfortunately I need to use it, so will have to take the risk. a number of my photos are on photobucket but I want a copy that has not been compressed to jpeg to store.

[Bushie]

That was reference to usb 3/usb 2 a usb 3 drive will work but be limited to usb 2 performance.

Martyn

[dullbird]

Thanks Martyn

[JDNSW]

Any USB drive you get will be speed limited by the USB2 rather than any differences between drives.

John

[Blknight.aus]

DONT rely on them....

they are fine for day to day work but they fail.....

I have 3 external HD backups of all my key data.

one is the daily user (2TB toshiba USB only unit)
one is the at home network backup drive (also cops the media player stuff) (a mybook live)
the third is the once a month back up of the network (currently a seagate 2TB powered External USB drive that uses a full size hard drive and not one of those small laptop HDs'

Every second year or so the daily user is taken to perth and then forgotten somewhere at dads place when it gets replaced with a new one for xmas.

unlike my sister.. I haven't irrevocably lost anything off of External drives yet.

[reachjatt]

LaCie Porsche Design 1TB 2.5in Portable USB3.0

LaCie Porsche Design 1TB 2.5in Portable USB3.0 [302000] - $99.00 : PC Case Gear (http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php'main_page=product_info&products_id=19704&cPath=67&utm_source=googlebase&utm_medium=cse&utm_campaign=export_feed&gclid=CNHPjZbU7L0CFYHwpAodxkUAzw#googlebase)

[dullbird]

I'm sure they do fail but so will my laptop so I'm seeing it as some back up with potential for failure is better than no back up at all

[Blknight.aus]

that was my sisters logic too.....

IMHO if you have a home network you are better off getting something along the lines of the mybook live that plugs into your network and you dont need to move it around very often.

about 1/3 of the failed external drives I get to see are from the USB connector getting damaged.

the rest are usually failed hard drive boards or head drivers.

[WhiteD3]

I use a desktop at home and (sync) backup (whenever I'm doing editing) to a 2nd internal HDD. Same deal with the laptop. I do a weekly (sync) backup for both to a 2TB WD USB-3 drive which I keep at work.

This way I have my original files, a local backup on the 2nd HDD and weekly backup offsite.

BTW I recently changed laptops and the one I inherited didn't have a 2nd HDD. I bought a optical drive caddy (ebay) and 500GB, 2.5" drive (Umart)for a total of $80. A cheap solution I think to getting piece of mind.

[Marty110]

Dick smith have some reasonably priced external drives - Seagate 500g for $79 or upgrade to a 1 terabyte for $99. They are powered off the usb port and are usb 3 which is backwards compatible with previous versions. That way if you end up upgrading your laptop you can take advantage of the faster transfer speeds. As an aside you should try to keep around 20% of your hard drive as 'free space' for optimum performance (your primary drive with the OS on it that is). I think Big W has Western Digital drives for $89 for 500 gig too. Hope that helps! Good luck p.s. you should try to have 2 backups of everything you value so maybe grab 2 drives. Try to keep at least one backup off site - eg I have a backup drive that lives in the car so if the house burns down while I am away at least I have a backup!

[dmclean1313]

Officeworks have seagate 2TB HDD for around $100, I have 3 and they haven't failed yet

[dullbird]

Marty I'm only using 212gb of my 500gb hard drive on my laptop....I dont think its my drive thats the issue...

I wonder whether its my Ram thats the issue...of maybe my motherboaard is going to give up...im not computer nut but the tell tale signs of everything slowing down taking longer to load makes me sure im on borrowed time.

[WhiteD3]

What OS do you have and when was the last reformat/reinstall?

[dullbird]

Windows 7

I have not reformatted or reinstalled....because I haven't done any backups (I also worry about buggering it up doing things like a reformat of the drive etc)

[isuzurover]

I have 8x Seagate Expansion Desktop 3TB HDDs that I use for work. Paid <$120 ea. No failures yet...

[dullbird]

I'm pretty sure the external I have here from my other computer 500g (which is full) is a seagate its about 6years old now but it didn't get turned on that often that's why I wasn't judging seagates reliability on my own experience

Because saying its never failed is not really a fair observation considering its minimal use :D

[dullbird]

that was my sisters logic too.....

IMHO if you have a home network you are better off getting something along the lines of the mybook live that plugs into your network and you dont need to move it around very often.

about 1/3 of the failed external drives I get to see are from the USB connector getting damaged.

the rest are usually failed hard drive boards or head drivers.

Dave I just looked at the mybook live

I like the features it has I might look at getting one if these as the 1T are not to expensive might even see if I can push to 2T

I like the remote access feature it has. Then I could get a smaller external to use just for a second back up of my raw files

[AndyG]

Going back to the symptoms is your virus software up to date and have you done a full scan? Plus a defrag of the drive ?
Regardless of the above get a backup device,

I got a 3 tb sea gate, very happy and my movie library is growing rapidly.
Regards
Andrew

[incisor]

Dave I just looked at the mybook live

I like the features it has I might look at getting one if these as the 1T are not to expensive might even see if I can push to 2T

I like the remote access feature it has. Then I could get a smaller external to use just for a second back up of my raw files

Don't buy one

Buy 2 and backup to both

External hard drives cause more pain than just about anything else...

[Bob Harding]

Sounds like your computer just needs a good clean out to bring it back to normal

I always put my photos onto a DVD much safer if files are large shrink them first that way you can get thousands of photos on to one dvd disk

[Bushie]

I have 8x Seagate Expansion Desktop 3TB HDDs that I use for work. Paid <$120 ea. No failures yet...


The only HDD failures I've had have been seagates.

Probably all manufacturers have bad patches from time to time. I remember IBM drives having a bad name around 15 years ago.


Martyn

[dullbird]

Sounds like your computer just needs a good clean out to bring it back to normal

I always put my photos onto a DVD much safer if files are large shrink them first that way you can get thousands of photos on to one dvd disk

Not a cost effective way Bob for me to be able to back up my raw files, I would be looking at about 130ish photos per disc with my currently camera as the files are around 30mb each...I currently have over 4000 photographs:D

the more I think about it the more the mybook fits the bill I think

[AndyG]

And if you have the bandwidth there are al those online backup options ,as a backup backup

[dullbird]

we have the upload/download data..unfortunately we have seriously slow internet and as soon as you upload something nothing else can use the internet it kind of grinds to a hault....so not really an option either

[solmanic]

I use a Western Digital MyPassport Ultra external drive & NAS for backups. Like Inc said, if you're just looking at external HDDs then get two.

[woody]

I cheaper way is to get a usb hdd dock and use good quality hdds. These docks are only $20-$30 for basic ones, but you can get ones with card readers and ones that can handle multiples of hdds.
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/imported/2014/05/1345.jpg

The dock can stay on the desk and the hdd can go away for safe keeping. We make sure that we have at least 2 physical copies of all photos and data (separate devices) at all times.
In the event of forced evacuation (fire, flood, disaster, etc.) these hdds are part of our evac kit and can be relocated quickly.

woody

[BMKal]

I run three Toshiba 1TB portable HDD's.

One of them (a Toshiba Canvio) is my "daily driver" that I take with me everywhere and plug into either my work computer or my own Windows 8 Tablet thingy - or plug into other people's computers when I go to site and can't be bothered carrying a computer with me.

I regularly back up everything to the other two via a docking station at work - one of these is kept in the office, the other is kept at home.

I save all of my work to these drives - I generally don't use the in-built HDD's on computers for much (though the solid state HDD in the Windows 8 tablet is pretty impressive and I have started using this a bit more, purely because of the speed it offers). I even have my e-mail pst files stored on the HDD's rather than on any of the computers, so that all of my e-mails are available to me anywhere on any computer.

Have been using the Toshibas for years with never a problem. Have had problems with Seagate in the past (though that was years ago) and the WDD units clash with our IT / security / firewall systems at work, so don't use them for this purpose - my music and movies etc at home are stored on a WDD unit though with no problems.

RAVE is on all of my drives, as are Hema maps and the Natmap Raster maps - so I've always got enough with me to hopefully get me out of trouble. :)

The new Toshiba Canvio HDD is a very compact little unit and solidly built.

[350RRC]

The only HDD failures I've had have been seagates.

Probably all manufacturers have bad patches from time to time. I remember IBM drives having a bad name around 15 years ago.


Martyn

I wasn't going to say anything till I saw this ^^^. Similar to what I read a few years ago............... I only use WD, and 3 different ones at that.

No probs at all..... oldest would be 5 years.

DL

[dullbird]

I went to buy a Mybook live today and could only find the external hard drive that links to the computer not the network...

however sighted plenty of Mycloud by WD

can anyone confirm if perhaps the mybook live has been superseded by the Mycloud i.e they do the same thing just different name?

[gavinwibrow]

As a basic only understander of pc magic, can I assume the external drives only store data, and don't have the standard MS Office type programs installed as well ie you still need to have a halfway decent pc and software to make everything work at reasonable speeds?

[dullbird]

Yes they only store data be it music, videos documents or what ever

I do have decent computers its just my laptop is on its way out

[Hoges]

You might be interested in this recent study by "Backblaze" who run an online storage business -they only buy consumer standard HDDs for their storage "pods" and their selection is generally based on whatever they can get for the cheapest price...we're talking a sample size here of over 25,000 HDDs where the failure interval from day 1 of service was logged for each drive. Backblaze Blog » What Hard Drive Should I Buy? (http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/)

FWIW it makes for interesting reading

[dullbird]

Update on my slow computer that I think is dying

so I think I may of possibly found what my issue is...

I have AVG flag some Malware on my computer....I have obviously downloaded something somewhere and found a program called search and protect (which I didnt download)

this also appeared to be attached to an exe file from Mozilla firefox so I'm wondering whether it has come in through that...

So I have a question now AVG has quarantined all the files (11) all have been healed and deleted ba 1 (which it hasnt been able to heal so has remained isolated in the vault) which I can only assume is possibly hidden somewhere in the system processes, but because its in the AVG vault its my understanding it wont cause any further issues.

My question is now....

am I safe to move all my files I want to back up on to my external storage?
would it be best to have AVG scan the folders (photos and documents) I want to send over before sending?

once i have sent them I'm considering reinstalling windows. (if I can work out how to do it)

I have rolled back my computer, removed mozilla and replaced with Chrome and also removed all files I could find in relation to that software that I didnt (to my knowledge) download.

I also went on another computer and changed my bank password just in case.

I just want to know about the backed up files....from what I could see from AVG (free version as my AVG paid run out about 2 months ago, yeah I know stupid)

I couldn't see that any of the files it removed were linked to my photos or anything..I just don't want to send them over to the cloud and risk sending something nasty to another computer if the other computer goes to access them.

am I safe to do it?

[AndyG]

Going back to the symptoms is your virus software up to date and have you done a full scan? Plus a defrag of the drive ?
Regardless of the above get a backup device,

I got a 3 tb sea gate, very happy and my movie library is growing rapidly.
Regards
Andrew

Hate to be a smarty pants, but :) Always check the obvious first.

[dullbird]

No your right Andy

I don't claim to be an expert...when it comes to computers. :)

I still had active antivirus, I have used avg free for years and never had an issue in fact this is the first virus issue I have had and it this is the first year that I had paid antivirus on this laptop in nearly 5years ironically.

Lesson learnt.

Hopefully I can resolve it.

[AndyG]

Ah we all get burnt at times, no single virus product will work 100% of the time, and occasionally they will sneak through, despite the best defenses.

I'm finding nowadays USB ports are the spawn of the devil :(

[AndyG]

Dullbird,
I would be:
Making sure my virus software is up to date
Do a full scan (of entire PC )
Empty the vault if you can
Go through control panel and look for anything strange & delete it. (Check the name with Google for some background)
Make sure no free toolbars have attached themselves, but you just did a new Chrome so that should be fine.
Run a registry cleaner (CCleaner freeware is pretty good)
Restart the PC
Redo a full virus scan,
Scan any USB or other attachable devices.
I would now be confident my machine is as clean as possible


I would not re install Windows if i could avoid it

Good Luck
Andrew

[dullbird]

Dullbird,
I would be:
Making sure my virus software is up to date I'm going to by another one
Do a full scan (of entire PC ) have done that twice
Empty the vault if you can I have bar the one that I can't which I think is linked in the processes somewhere
Go through control panel and look for anything strange & delete it. (Check the name with Google for some background) have already done this
Make sure no free toolbars have attached themselves, but you just did a new Chrome so that should be fine.
Run a registry cleaner (CCleaner freeware is pretty good) I read you have to be careful with these as these too can introduce nasty unwanted software
Restart the PC
Redo a full virus scan,did this and it came back with still two threats found which have been again resolved
Scan any USB or other attachable devices.
I would now be confident my machine is as clean as possible


I would not re install Windows if i could avoid it

Good Luck
Andrew


Is there any reason not to reinstall? I read that (not saying that its correct) that the only way to be sure of a clean machine is to format the hard drive and reinstall windows

[AndyG]

I have found cleaner trouble free,although I have been stung by others.
Yes a hard reinstall of windows is the ultimate, but a pain in the butt. Plus if you still had a virus it would probably be in your backups as well. And then you restore it.

The best virus cleaners IMHO were those you booted on into Dos or anothet os , but their name escapes me. I will have a look

[dullbird]

I wouldn't be doing a restore as such

Because I would be putting photos, videos, music and documents on to external and all other program's I can reload from scratch of a cd such as Microsoft office etc.

That's why I was asking whether it would be safe to move those files on to the network external hard drive...

[AndyG]

https://www.raymond.cc/blog/13-antivirus-rescue-cds-software-compared-in-search-for-the-best-rescue-disk/2/ these will check yor windows esp, kapersky ans Sophos have been good in the past.

Yes I believe your data e.g. Pics should be ok

[dullbird]

Just bought kaspersky so will load that on and run a heap of scans again...see how we go this time and look in to something the can clean up the registry

[AndyG]

Make sure you do the option where you boot off the disc or USB and not the installed windows.

[dullbird]

I have bought antivirus not the rescue cd if that's what your talking about

Otherwise I'm not sure what you mean

[AndyG]

Yes I meant the rescue disk, I thought they were a free download as per the link I sent,

Anyhow off to the club, good luck.

[dullbird]

I think I may of stuffed up here...can anyone confirm as im struggling to work it out

I bought Kaspersky Pure 3.0 can someone confirm to me that this is an antivrus software I know it sounds silly I thought it was looking at itbut I have got it home and now im not so sure..I mean it protects against all sorts and states that its total security etc but it just isn't clear because it doesnt actually say antivirus on there like it would detect trojans and all those sorts of things...

or is that how they are now...

when I bought my last Kaspersky antivirus late last year it said just that anti virus...

Edit: I think I have answered my own question looking on the net (it does do all the normal virus stuff), although it wasn't easy to find!! http://geekyproductreviews.com/antivirus-comparison-review/
looks like its not highly recommended but hey I had a choice of Kaspersky or Norton and I have used Norton in the past and found it horrifically slowed down my comp...

On the upside I did by my WD cloud today too hence why I picked up the pc security so willsee how that all goes once I get it set up.

[AndyG]

Yes I meant the rescue disk, I thought they were a free download as per the link I sent,

Anyhow off to the club, good luck.

Your ok, fairly good review
Kaspersky PURE 3.0 Total Security Review & Rating | PCMag.com (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416761,00.asp)

[Chucaro]

Dullbird, even if you are using an antivirus I recommend you to do a scan with Malwarebytes.There is a lot of nasty virus and malware that are not detected by antivirus software.

[dullbird]

I'm not using anti virus on its own now....

I have a complete PC protection...

and for what its worth I did a critical area scan, and then a venerability scan and fixed all those issues and then did afull system scan and came up with nothing..so hopefully all I can assume is that the AVG free actually did its job inremoving the mal ware before i put this pc protection on..will set up the cloud on the weekend when I have some time