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So I've been using a Vantec NexStar USB 2.0 external HDD enclosure for about the past 2 1/2 yrs. I've had zero problems with it until a few weeks ago it would not connect to my computer (the USB port on the enclosure side busted loose (I suspect it may have fallen during a party at my house when someone may have tripped over the cord)). I was in the BX today, and I picked up a <a href="http://www.mdmm.com/spec.php?productid=38">new enclosure</a>. It was only $45 in the BX, good price. I hook it up, turn it on, its starts to spin up, and then it stops and I smell something. WTF? I look on the bottom of the HDD.....
<img src=newicons/madani.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_shock.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/madani.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_furious.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_cussing.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_cussing.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_cussing.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_cussing.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_cussing.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_furious.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_cussing.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_cussing.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_cussing.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_cussing.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_furious.gif border=0 align=middle>
I got to see this beautiful sight:
<img src="http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c348/kaaooga3/exthdd.jpg" border=0>
Somehow, the HDD and the aluminum made contact and shorted out the drive. Apparently that little black chip is pretty important, because now the drive, a previously perfectly operational 250GB, is now a paperweight. Now I'm in the market for not only a new enclosure, but a new drive as well. Problem with enclosures, it's hit or miss. You find a good one online and some reviews are great, some say its crap. Why can't someone seem to make a good, solid, reliable one that doesn't have hit-or-miss problems? These things are so important.

I was so mad. I can't believe I reacted the way I did. Nice and calmly, I said god-dammit, and started packing up the enclosure. Took it back to the BX and the woman at the counter was like why aren't you mad? I told her it's building up. God help whoever's around me when I pop.

ANYWAY, The point of this whole thread, aside from venting and to serve as a warning to others to stay the F!@# away from that enclosure, is to take a survey. What external HDD's does everyone here use? I need some good reviews. USB 2.0 is all I need.


Liberalism is a mental disorder.

Jack, I've been using a HD enclosure from IROCK but for some reason one of my HD's decided to go tits up, the other one still works. As for a replacement, why not get a zip drive instead of a HD?

Faugh ah Ballaugh -Clear The Way

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Faugh ah Ballaugh ~ Clear the Way

Zip drives don't have the capacity I need (I have a minimum of 120gb I need backed up at all times, not counting the other things I used the ext drive for like copying really large things from one computor to another). Also, they are way too expensive.

I use the ext drive as a backup for everything on my computer (the only truly <i>irreplaceable</i> things are my digital camera pictures and a few other files. The rest (mostly mp3's, other pictures, programs and the such) while not <i>ir</i>replacable, there is just so much stuff and it would be so difficult and such a PITA that I would rather be sprayed with mace daily for a month than try to get it all again. I'm talking about 15 years worth of stuff in somes cases.

This has been a bit of a boot in my ass to have a second backup of my really important things. It will only take about 10 DVDRs to save my most vital stuff, and I haven't done a backup on disc in about a year. The disc backup is for my SHTF/TEOTWAWKI backup. The ext drive gets used pretty often, and I back up to it monthly or so, depending on how much stuff I've done.

Liberalism is a mental disorder.

Sounds like a Job for Boomer, Thug, or one of the other TECH-NO-GURU'S.

I was just thinking of asking a question on "Memeory upgrades" and Hard drives.

Goose

LIVE FREE OR DIE!

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You all need to evaluate what you are using your external disks for?

Static or active data

jackb has got the idea right, that they are a backup device.

But you all need to remember one thing about HDD's. They don't give warnings anymore. One minute it's fine and then fhut - lights out. Remember HDD's are designed to keep spinning 24x7. They don't like being spun up and down everytime we power up or down our PC's.

If your critical data either sits on a HDD or is backed up to a HDD you are playing Russian Roulette. One day it won't be there any more.

This is what I do for a living. I make sure big projects IS systems keep going. I'm not a tech - I'd probably struggle to fix my domestic PC, but I know about the fundemental principles of what to backup and how.

In our business only 50% of the available HDD storage is available for use. The rest is taken up with mirrors, stripes and on-line hot swaps.

The trick is to decide what is critical data (wedding photos, or pics of the first Hog you serviced), renewable data (mp3's you ca re-rip or dowloads from the web), static data (data that doesn't change in a long period e.g. photos) , dynamic data (emails, system config files) or a combination of all of these.

You then have a backup plan that addresses each data types specific needs.

DVD's are an excellent place to archive static critical data. But DVD's are a ball ache to access data from. You have to find them, load them into a drive, they are slow to access from etc.

You should then make an area on your main HDD for these types of files. Load all the photo's into here and then write a copy of this area to a DVD, then make the area on the disk read-only to prevent any changes that would make it out of sync with the DVD copy. Then store the DVD's somewhere else, they do not like house fires.

With emails, this is different. This data is also important, but changes daily. DVD's are not an option here.

Make a different area on your main HDD for this sort of data. Then use a external HDD to do a nightly incremental (only changed data) backup. There are lots of cheap bits of shareware to do this. I would be suprised if an incremental backup of data would be more than 50-100mb per day out of say 10gb of total data. This is not too much to backup daily.

Basically understand your data
Organise it on the HDD into two areas
Back each are up appropriately

If any of this was of any use and you want some more info drop me a line.

Or tell me to go pop peas out of my ass <img src=icon_smile_wink.gif border=0 align=middle>...

<img src="http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i277/44hollowpoint/diysuitwk1.jpg" border=0>
<b>You don't know how much it's going to hurt until you try...</b>

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>Or tell me to go pop peas out of my ass... <hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>
Corn, maybe, but I have my doubts about peas.<img src=icon_smile_shock.gif border=0 align=middle>

The Second Amendment: America's original homeland security.
Ya just can’t take life too seriously, because you aren’t going to get out of it alive anyway.

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oooohhhh, Jimmy crapped corn, and I don't care....!! <img src=newicons/anim_lol.gif border=0 align=middle>

sorry <img src=newicons/Whatever_anim.gif border=0 align=middle>
couldn't resist

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a GAU-8A at your side, kid...--Hawg Solo

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ROFLMAOOOOOOOO

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way I'm droppin Hamilton$

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I think Outpost has always had the best deals, especially if you buy somethign from there weekly specials section. Everything I've ever gotten from them has been great, and super-fast shipping as well. THat being said, I'm not surprised I wound up buyng my HDD replacment from Outpost.com. This is what I got:
http://shop2.outpost.com/product/4963641

It even ships free, but of course thats only to the lower 48. It was only $10 shipping for 2nd day to Alaska though. This will not be my only backup, I wil be burning discs this weekend of alot fo stuff, but this will definitely do the job I want it too.

And a head up for anyone in the market for a new HDD, they also have a <a href="http://shop2.outpost.com/product/4551327">500gb Maxtor for $160 free shipping, but no enclosure.</a>



Liberalism is a mental disorder.

Backups, backups, backups! Has anyone tried out those virtual hard drives they have now? I head about them on XM during my trip back from MI. It might be a good idea for those that travel alot and need to access data.

Oh and Jackb, the way flash drives are going, you might be able to get a 200GB flash drive in the near future. 64GB are for sale now. They just aren't very affordable ($2000 if I remember right).

I like TigerDirect.com for cheap (or cheaper) supplies.

Goose,
What are you looking to do? Is the RIAA going to be knocking on your door?

You might be a "Bulldog" if: You bend over and grab your ankles when you hear: "EXERCISE, EXERCISE, EXERCISE!"

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As soon as a backup-size flash drive is available at an affordable price, I will be one of the first people to buy it.

Liberalism is a mental disorder.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>I head about them on XM during my trip back from MI. It might be a good idea for those that travel alot and need to access data.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

Are you talking about storing backup information on the web?

Sounds nice, just don't put anything there that could be used against you.

It's all stored on a SAN somewhere that a techie can get access to. And a lot of folk will pay a lot of money for personal data that allows identity fraud.

It's bad enough protecting your data on your own PC, let alone relying on somebody else to protect it for you...

<img src="http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i277/44hollowpoint/diysuitwk1.jpg" border=0>
<b>You don't know how much it's going to hurt until you try...</b>

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>I head about them on XM during my trip back from MI. It might be a good idea for those that travel alot and need to access data.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

Are you talking about storing backup information on the web?

Sounds nice, just don't put anything there that could be used against you.

It's all stored on a SAN somewhere that a techie can get access to. And a lot of folk will pay a lot of money for personal data that allows identity fraud.

It's bad enough protecting your data on your own PC, let alone relying on somebody else to protect it for you...

<img src="http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i277/44hollowpoint/diysuitwk1.jpg" border=0>
<b>You don't know how much it's going to hurt until you try...</b>
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

I see your point about the security aspect.But with the right security measures in place that SAN can be pretty secure. But I wouldn't keep any really personal stuff there. A few DVD's and some time will have all of that saved in an hour or so.

You might be a "Bulldog" if: You bend over and grab your ankles when you hear: "EXERCISE, EXERCISE, EXERCISE!"

_________________
3 Branches down... 2 to go!
Put on your tinfoil hats, the black choppers are coming, and I'm calling them in.
Former DCC OA-10A T/N 80-278

Agreed,

Almost every web hosting service will have it's servers supporting it's website in a commercial data centre.

These data centres feed and water the servers on behalf of the customer.

One of the services the DC's offer is backup of the data on your servers to their spinning disk backup solution (usually a fibre attached SAN).

This sounds like a great offer because as we've all found out backups are a ballache.

BUT to take advantage of this you have to connect your backbone to theirs, open up your firewall ports to allow the backup to happen and install the backup agent on your servers.

You then have to accept that your data will be sat in native file format on their SAN volumes, totally visisble and accessable through a Windows interface to the DC tech staff.

If you are a customer of that web hosting service - your data is just a click and drag away...

We can't accept this because we work on secure contracts and have had to put our own SAN and LTO3 backup device in each DC we use.

<b>You don't know how much it's going to hurt until you try...</b>