Adrian F

One of my friends has a lap top with Photo's on and has never backed it up, she is now looking for a cheap portable drive any suggestions?

scoobyverysoon

iTrader: (1)

depends on what you want i just use a simple usb portable like this

http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/prod...668&r=20110527

bigsinky

could i suggest a 16GB pendrive. if she has more than that i would be surprised. back up, label and store safely. helluva lot cheaper than £62.

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

Totally agree, these things cost nothing and last forever. I've washed and dried mine about 4 times now

Saying that I have 26GB of photos ... all family too ..

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/30GB-Eee-Exter...a17511ffe56a0e

bigsinky

best buy had a 250gb external usb drive for £20, which i tried to get but they renegged on saying they had no stock. the storage is there to be had. the pendrive is just so small and even more portable than these "portable" usb hard drives.

sovietspybob

iTrader: (3)

never NEVER backup onto a pen drive

I work in IT and the amount of parents that come into me saying their kid lost all their GCSE/A level work because it was backed up on a pen drive is unreal!

If its just photos burn them onto a DVD as that'll last a good 100 years if stored properly!

Otherwise a cheap portable hard drive would be the 2nd best bet, just don't keep it constantly connected to the computer otherwise if you get a virus or spill a drink it can take it out aswell!

From a pro IT aspect you always want your backups to be on a non volatile media, IE something that can't get corrupted and lose data. So burning them to a disk or magnetic tape, anything else is only a short term solution as any drive will eventually die.

Hanley

All my photos, videos, data etc is stored on my NAS, also stored on a 500GB portable hard drive which is in my safe, I also have the pics and videos burnt to dual-layered DVDs which sit in a sealed plastic container in my loft.

If I ever lost our entire collection of pics and home videos, which details both our sons since they were born 6 years ago, my life wouldn't be worth living.

As sovietspybob rightly said, don't just put them on a pen drive and forget about it, also try to burn to a DVD or portable hard drive and put away for safe keeping.

sovietspybob

iTrader: (3)

Well said.

I've got a server at home with a RAID 5 array, every computer in the house has a drive mapped so everyones music and photos are stored centrally, the server is also in the garage just in case the house burns down. Then every night the server backs up to a NAS back in the house with 2x mirrored 2TB hd's in them. I also have the important pictures burnt to disk such as the wedding pics.

That might seem overkill to alot of people but just think everyones lives are digital now, how bad would it be to lose all your music, all your pictures of your kids growing up?

Hanley

My thoughts exactly.

The reason I have them on a hard drive in the safe and on discs in the loft is in case I get burgled.

Simply having them on a hard drive connected to your pc is useless if the robbing ******* steal your pc and take your external drive too.

Probably does sound overkill but as you say, our entire lives are digital now, I have pics and home videos of the kids going back 6 years and would be devastated if I lost them.

bigsinky

fair point guys, but as a semi responsible adult I think i can back up my stuff on a pen drive, label it and manage to keep it safe. I appreciate it might not be the best solution if you're a 13 year old with the attention span of a gold fish.

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

eh DVD's don't last that long do they? Or is it CDRs which don't last to well ? I always thought ramsticks were a better bet than dvds or CDRs! Additional hdd's can of course fail if they are used alot, always best to have several backups on different media imo, of course depends on how important the data is to you. Cloud storage is the way forward these days if you don't mind spending a bit for decent space.