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Q's about my rig- Backups

Alright then. I'll have to take it out for backups of my laptop, but that's about it. Would storing it outside my PC a good idea too?

Also, what's this IEE firewire thing?
 
Mehta23 said:
Alright then. I'll have to take it out for backups of my laptop, but that's about it. Would storing it outside my PC a good idea too?
Click to expand...
Sure, as long as it is kept safe and clean. I store loose HDDs in the plastic "clamshell" protective packaging that they shipped in to keep dust and other stuff out, and to give them a reasonable amount of shock protection, then put them in a drawer, on a shelf, in a box...wherever. I've had zero problems doing it this way.

A Seagate HDD in the clamshell package:

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Also, what's this IEE firewire thing?
Click to expand...
IEEE-1394 a.k.a. Firewire is a serial interface that was developed by Adaptec and several PC hardware manufacturers after Apple abandoned it. Adaptec was one of the biggest names in SCSI host bus adapter cards back when SCSI was the King of the Data Center for storage. Apple wanted Firewire to replace parallel SCSI and other interfaces with a single universal serial bus, and Adaptec was instrumental in making IEEE-1394 highly compatible with SCSI drives. Although parallel SCSI went to SAS instead, IEEE-1394 has been a great way to attach external HDDs and RAID arrays to computers and have better response than USB2.

IEEE-1394a has a maximum throughput of 400Mbps (slightly less than USB2), and IEEE-1394b has 800 Mbps, which made it the best choice for people who needed to carry around lots of very large files, and use them on different workstations. IEEE-1394 is also used as a data bus for digital audio and video production equipment like DVCAM video camcorders, control surfaces and multi-channel audio I/O to/from computers.

USB3 has surpassed IEEE-1394b's throughput by a wide margin. But since none of my computers have USB3 ports, and I have plenty of IEEE-1394 equipment, I still use my IEEE-1394b external drive enclosures with my systems. You'll probably want to go with USB3.
 
Alright then. Most of the enclosures and docks I've seen are usb 3 and usb 2 or they have usb 2 and a esata.....

And my WD hdd shipped in electrostatic packing with some polystyrene in a cardboard box, unlike your hard drive :-( although the backup one will probably be a Sea gate
 
Is esata better than usb 3?

I don't know whether it's better to keep the drive in my pc and then use a sata to usb (usb 3?) adapter for when I need to make backups from my laptop... Or to just get an enclosure
 
Mehta23 said:
Is esata better than usb 3?

I don't know whether it's better to keep the drive in my pc and then use a sata to usb (usb 3?) adapter for when I need to make backups from my laptop... Or to just get an enclosure
Click to expand...
ESATA is a little faster than USB3, as long as the entire chain has SATA III (6Mbps) speeds going. Of course there aren't any drives that ever get that fast except in tiny bursts, so... It's been around for a while now, and I suspect there's some reason why it's not more popular.

My guess is that because eSATA is a direct connection between the drive and the SATA bus, if the drive should become unplugged or loose, massive data corruption can happen. The other serial bus topologies have protocols between the hardware that handle sudden disconnects more gracefully. Also the eSATA connector looks and feels weak and cheesy. I wouldn't want to use it!

If you plan on buying more HDDs to have more backup versions, then an external enclosure or good all-metal "hot plug" bay (usually does not support hot plugging) will be more convenient in the long run. If you don't plan on having more than the one HDD, you might as well keep it inside the computer's case. OTOH if your computer gets stolen, keeping the backup drive separate can save your data. If that ever happens, you'd be glad you did...

Tough choice.
 
With that, I think I'll buy another sata data cable and put the drive in my pc.... But, I mean, I - its too hard!
I think the extra cost of an enclosure and having to store that somewhere and not lose it isn't worth
 
Ahah

I'll be getting the sata cable from eBay probably (as I can get a matching Asus one), and I'll definitely order the hard drive without extended warranty tomorrow :-P

Thanks man for all the help!
 
Yeah, the Asus ones I have are locking ;-)

Need to see if I can get a usb 3/sata cable adapter for connecting to the laptop. I know there's usb2 ones...
 
Sorry, but I think I'm not gonna get that 3TB one. When I need the space, I could probably get the extra space on another hard drive for less than
 
No need to apologize, Mehta23. It's not like we have anything better to do here. :laugh: Don't worry about letting anyone here down; it's your life!
 
Yeah, I know what you guys are like :-P

Edit: Scan said the two drives are identical. Warranty difference is because of different suppliers.

Also I recently redid the windows rating thingy.. Score has gone up to 7.6 (score for cpu/ram) with everything else on 7. 9! Although I've just realised that that doesn't mean my hdd is any faster, just my ssd is faster than it. ^_^
 
The hard drive arrived today! So I'll start backing up some of my data soon.

At the moment I'll just keep it in the case, but I'll look to get a storage enclosure - I don't need a icy box enclosure with a usb port, and after a proper look, I'm not sure if the bay adapter looks a bit flimsy. Besides, it's not really too difficult to pop open the side panel and connect the cables. :-P


EDIT: oh no! I can hear a weird clicking sound again. Not really sure what it is, but I think it might be the PSU (again). I'll have a look later to see if I can pin point the source of the sound, and maybe clean out the PSU. All I know is that it's really annoying and goes away if I put my PC to sleep.
 
Got the drive setup, and slowly making backups of everything.

I noticed that the Seagate drive is much quieter than the WD, and also cooler, and perhaps a lil quicker too.
I also found a 1Tb barracuda on ebuyer for
 
Now that I've got Windows and my new backup drive all set up, I was wondering what the recommended things are to do for backing up data?

Most of it is simple enough, but for example, would a backup of photos from a sd card to the backup drive be sufficient? Or should I back them up again, onto the internal HDD/cloud?

edit: and would this be enough to protect it when out of my PC case?
 
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