Some laptops don't generate enough power to run an external drive, and
some drives have multiple USB connectors for this purpose.
I don't like the smaller drives as they are prone to heat-related
problems and often get physical abuse as they are moved around.
I've had the best reliability from 3.5" drives mounted in quality metal
cases that you assemble yourself. Some of these pre-assembled drives
have cheap cases and/or proprietary connectors that prevent you from
replacing the drive in the event of failure.
All these drives fail eventually so any backup plan that relies on disk
drives should be supplemented with optical or cloud storage.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [PCBUILD] External HD
From: Tom <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, October 02, 2010 6:45 am
To: [log in to unmask]

I need to get an ext. HD for back up. Looking at a 2.5" model that gets
it's power from the USB. Primary use is auto back up of desktop. Also
want to manually back up wife's desktop and a laptop. I assume I can
auto back up my desktop AND create separate folders to manually back up
2 other computers.

I think the smaller, USB powered HD is more portable and limited use
backing up the laptop will not strain the battery (mostly use laptop
plugged in anyway)

I will do my own research and compare specs but thought I'd ask users
more familiar with ext HD's used for back up first. My concern is
reliability and access speed. Do the larger, powered 3.5" HD's tend to
be more reliable and have faster access times?

 

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                     visit our download web page at
                  http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml