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My 4-6 yr. old 120 GB Western Digital ext. HD died (unexpectedly) during my
absense, these past couple weeks. Looking back, I believe that it served me
well. 8^)

Now, I am on the search for a new one.......& find that they are usually
much larger than I Think that I need for back-ups of my home machine data.
I know from reading this list that Seagate is a good brand, but I Also know
that they have acquired Maxtor......which now offers the same 5 yr. warranty
that Seagate does on Most of their drives. Has Maxtor's reputation come out
of the deep dark hole?

Do all of today's ext drives come with backup software....or is it only
Seagate? How about Maxtor & the other brands?

As a side note: With the WD ext HD, I was simply copying my files to the
drive & not necessarily storing them on my PC HD. I want to get back in the
practice of having them on the PC & back up to the ext. drive.

Carol2

Carol2 <>, the farting-scumbag and ungainly
cuilón who likes exhilarating gum-jobbing with squids, and whose partner
is a woman of easy morals with a damp pudi, wrote in
<>:
> My 4-6 yr. old 120 GB Western Digital ext. HD died (unexpectedly) during
> my absense, these past couple weeks. Looking back, I believe that it
> served me well. 8^)
>
> Now, I am on the search for a new one.......& find that they are usually
> much larger than I Think that I need for back-ups of my home machine data.
> I know from reading this list that Seagate is a good brand, but I Also
> know that they have acquired Maxtor......which now offers the same 5 yr.
> warranty that Seagate does on Most of their drives. Has Maxtor's
> reputation come out of the deep dark hole?
>
> Do all of today's ext drives come with backup software....or is it only
> Seagate? How about Maxtor & the other brands?
>
> As a side note: With the WD ext HD, I was simply copying my files to the
> drive & not necessarily storing them on my PC HD. I want to get back in
> the practice of having them on the PC & back up to the ext. drive.
>
> Carol2
>


If you only need to back-up a small amount of data then maybe a usb data key
would be more suited to your need. Otherwise a couple of hundred GB extra
wont do you any hard and may pull you out of the **** one day.

You can use any one of several methods to simplify copying your data to the
drive, depending on which brand you go for you usually get some software
that might even do the job well enough for your purposes.

I have a Maxtor 750GB and it works pretty well.

I've set-up sync-tool for a friend to automatically backup his docs to a usb
key every 4 hours with an icon he can use if he wants to backup manually. It
works well and can easily be adapted as and when needed.


--
For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down
in words with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived
it. There is, however, a class of fancies of exquisite delicacy which
are not thoughts, and to which as yet I have found it absolutely
impossible to adapt to language. These fancies arise in the soul, alas
how rarely. Only at epochs of most intense tranquillity, when the
bodily and mental health are in perfection. And at those weird points
of time, where the confines of the waking world blend with the world of
dreams. And so I captured this fancy, where all that we see, or seem,
is but a dream within a dream.

"Gazwad" <> wrote in message
newsdt7vs$5wr$...
> Carol2 <>, the farting-scumbag and ungainly
> cuilón who likes exhilarating gum-jobbing with squids, and whose partner
> is a woman of easy morals with a damp pudi, wrote in
> <>:
>> My 4-6 yr. old 120 GB Western Digital ext. HD died (unexpectedly) during
>> my absense, these past couple weeks. Looking back, I believe that it
>> served me well. 8^)
>>
>> Now, I am on the search for a new one.......& find that they are usually
>> much larger than I Think that I need for back-ups of my home machine
>> data.
>> I know from reading this list that Seagate is a good brand, but I Also
>> know that they have acquired Maxtor......which now offers the same 5 yr.
>> warranty that Seagate does on Most of their drives. Has Maxtor's
>> reputation come out of the deep dark hole?
>>
>> Do all of today's ext drives come with backup software....or is it only
>> Seagate? How about Maxtor & the other brands?
>>
>> As a side note: With the WD ext HD, I was simply copying my files to the
>> drive & not necessarily storing them on my PC HD. I want to get back in
>> the practice of having them on the PC & back up to the ext. drive.
>>
>> Carol2
>>
>
>
> If you only need to back-up a small amount of data then maybe a usb data
> key
> would be more suited to your need. Otherwise a couple of hundred GB extra
> wont do you any hard and may pull you out of the **** one day.
>
> You can use any one of several methods to simplify copying your data to
> the
> drive, depending on which brand you go for you usually get some software
> that might even do the job well enough for your purposes.
>
> I have a Maxtor 750GB and it works pretty well.
>
> I've set-up sync-tool for a friend to automatically backup his docs to a
> usb
> key every 4 hours with an icon he can use if he wants to backup manually.
> It
> works well and can easily be adapted as and when needed.
>
>
> --
> For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down
> in words with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived
> it. There is, however, a class of fancies of exquisite delicacy which
> are not thoughts, and to which as yet I have found it absolutely
> impossible to adapt to language. These fancies arise in the soul, alas
> how rarely. Only at epochs of most intense tranquillity, when the
> bodily and mental health are in perfection. And at those weird points
> of time, where the confines of the waking world blend with the world of
> dreams. And so I captured this fancy, where all that we see, or seem,
> is but a dream within a dream.

Thanks, Gaswad. I hadn't researched externals in a long time & was
surprised to see the Maxtors on the Seagate site & priced similarly. I
remember hearing that they were pretty much the bottom of the line some
years ago. Things have, obviously, changed since I bought the WD......which
came with no software, which was fine for where I was At at the time. LOL

Carol2

"Carol2" <> wrote in message
news:...
> My 4-6 yr. old 120 GB Western Digital ext. HD died (unexpectedly) during
> my absense, these past couple weeks. Looking back, I believe that it
> served me well. 8^)
>
> Now, I am on the search for a new one.......& find that they are usually
> much larger than I Think that I need for back-ups of my home machine data.
> I know from reading this list that Seagate is a good brand, but I Also
> know that they have acquired Maxtor......which now offers the same 5 yr.
> warranty that Seagate does on Most of their drives. Has Maxtor's
> reputation come out of the deep dark hole?
>
> Do all of today's ext drives come with backup software....or is it only
> Seagate? How about Maxtor & the other brands?
>
> As a side note: With the WD ext HD, I was simply copying my files to the
> drive & not necessarily storing them on my PC HD. I want to get back in
> the practice of having them on the PC & back up to the ext. drive.
>
> Carol2
>


Carol

There is a wide range of external hard drives available these days.
From no frills bricks like the Maxtor Basic series to svelte pocketable
laptop drive based units complete with backup software like the WD 2.5" (Go
I think) series.

Personally I have found the included software with these drives 'ok' but
nothing to rave about.
The better drive/backup software offerings in my opinion are the ones that
you use the software to set the files to backup and a button on the front of
the drive to press when you wanted to do the backup.

As Gazwad says if you data capacity is modest a USB flash drive may be the
preferable solution.
Small, light, fast and generally reliable though I have had one or two Flash
drives die on me.
Certainly more reliable than hard drives though, (hard drives don't like
being dropped, going or not)

If you can handle shutting down all your open software before doing the
backup I would recomend the free version of Syncback as being a very
flexable little backup program. I have quite a few people using Syncback to
USB flash drives very successfully.
On the otherhand I seem to remember Microsofts Synctoy V2.0 beta (free) will
do shadow copy. This allows backups to be made without shutting Word or
Outlook.


Best
Paul.

"PeeCee" <> wrote in message
news:fpo8ef$b1k$...
> "Carol2" <> wrote in message
> news:...
>> My 4-6 yr. old 120 GB Western Digital ext. HD died (unexpectedly) during
>> my absense, these past couple weeks. Looking back, I believe that it
>> served me well. 8^)
>>
>> Now, I am on the search for a new one.......& find that they are usually
>> much larger than I Think that I need for back-ups of my home machine
>> data. I know from reading this list that Seagate is a good brand, but I
>> Also know that they have acquired Maxtor......which now offers the same 5
>> yr. warranty that Seagate does on Most of their drives. Has Maxtor's
>> reputation come out of the deep dark hole?
>>
>> Do all of today's ext drives come with backup software....or is it only
>> Seagate? How about Maxtor & the other brands?
>>
>> As a side note: With the WD ext HD, I was simply copying my files to the
>> drive & not necessarily storing them on my PC HD. I want to get back in
>> the practice of having them on the PC & back up to the ext. drive.
>>
>> Carol2
>>
>
>
> Carol
>
> There is a wide range of external hard drives available these days.
> From no frills bricks like the Maxtor Basic series to svelte pocketable
> laptop drive based units complete with backup software like the WD 2.5"
> (Go I think) series.
>
> Personally I have found the included software with these drives 'ok' but
> nothing to rave about.
> The better drive/backup software offerings in my opinion are the ones
> that you use the software to set the files to backup and a button on the
> front of the drive to press when you wanted to do the backup.
>
> As Gazwad says if you data capacity is modest a USB flash drive may be the
> preferable solution.
> Small, light, fast and generally reliable though I have had one or two
> Flash drives die on me.
> Certainly more reliable than hard drives though, (hard drives don't like
> being dropped, going or not)
>
> If you can handle shutting down all your open software before doing the
> backup I would recomend the free version of Syncback as being a very
> flexable little backup program. I have quite a few people using Syncback
> to USB flash drives very successfully.
> On the otherhand I seem to remember Microsofts Synctoy V2.0 beta (free)
> will do shadow copy. This allows backups to be made without shutting Word
> or Outlook.
>
>
> Best
> Paul.

Thanks, Paul.... I have a flash drive & would need quite a bit larger one
in order to use it for backup medium, I think. I will continue my search
for an ext HD for now & consider a larger flash drive as a secondary backup
in the future. Thanks for the recommendation of Syncback.....will look into
that, too.

Carol2