Confused about external drive options

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walkman

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
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I'd like to get 2 external drives for backup. One connected to the computer for nightly differentials, and the other stored is a safe.

I'd like the drives to be small to fit in the safe, quick to change backup drives, and reasonably fast since I have a lot of data.


Would it be better to get something like 2 WD passports, or is there an external enclosure that is easy to hot swap drives?
 
Whats your budget, and storage/backup needs?

The passports are ok for what they are, that is a no frills, harddrive in a usb2.0 case, not sure if they feature eSATA, which would be recommended for its vastly improved throughput over usb, that is if your computer has an eSATA port.
 
If you have alot of data (over 500gb) that is important enough to put into a safe, then the WD passports is not an options due to the size restrictions. I would go with a matching pair of regular sized externals, and rotate them in and out after periodic back-ups. They will use the same power adapter, so you can easily just swap the drive in and out of the safe, leaving the connections at the workstation. Just a thought. I am by no means a pro, but i just thought i'd give my two cents. Thanks for reading.
 
I'm thinking 500 GB, but we all know how those requirements find a way to grow.

Budget is pretty much open since I have a business need for this.

Main thing is ease of use. My backup plans in the past have tended to fail because they were too much trouble. Like tape backup that always seemed to cause system instability.
 
I did the whole 2 drive backup solution. Now I have 1 external that i keep in the fireproof safe and use mozy. Easy as can be.
 
hot swap rack and two 1tb drives? Easily done and small. Keep anti static bags
 
unwanted: So you pull out the external drive for a periodic full backup and then use mozy online storage for your daily backups?

tgabe: does the hot swap rack just go in an optical drive bay in the computer case? Does the OS treat it similar to a thumb drive?
 
Yep, once a month i do a full image to the external. Once its done I place it in the safe. I use mozy for daily backups of my pics, vids and docs.
 
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