I currently have two hard drives installed on my computer, a 300GB and a 500GB which are rapidly filling up with general detritus.

I'd like to have a massive clear out and archive a lot of stuff to an external drive, keeping the 300GB as an OS and essential app storage drive, the 500GB as a download and secondary app storage unit, and the 1TB external for stuff I'd like to keep.

The question is, which type of drive should I be looking at. I'd like something that's reliable, not overly expensive, and secure. Any suggestions?

I have a Seagate which is perfectly reliable.

£94 inc VAT here. Or you could get a Toshiba which is only £75 inc VAT.

One tip,

Dont use a Hard drive as a means of data archive, anything thats mechanical is liable to failure and if this is the only copy of your data it will all be gone.

A much better solution would be to have a single internal HD, say a 1TB drive, and then make regular backup copies to external HD's (at least 2). I use a rotation of 2 drives to do full backups of my system, keeping one at work. That way, I have the live working system and should something happen at least 2 other copies of the data should one copy not work properly.

Working in IT, I see it all to often where someone has lost years worth of photos / music and more due to the only copy of their data being lost due to drive failure.

PC World have this WD one pretty cheap.. Clicky

The PC world one is a good price, ill need another one soon, my 1TB is filling rapidly.

Be careful a lot of the 1TB units actually contain 2*500GB drives.

Acer Altos Easystore 2TB Nas Box - 4x 500GB SATAII Raid & LAN - Ebuyer

Not cheap. But gives you storage with RAID for security.

If your stuff is irreplaceable then desktop storage isn't a great idea. It just takes one elbow or a spill.

maplins have a 1.5tb one for 130 quid at the moment

i bought an adaptec 2610sa hardware sata raid card off ebay (45quid), stuck it in an old celeron rig and am running 4x500gb drives in raid 5 for storage at the moment - much cheaper than an off the shelf NAS box

1.5TB = 2*750GB drives.

Twice as much to go wrong and if formatted as a single 1.5TB device, if you lose one, then you lose all the data on both.

I've gonr off this idea now after all the scaremongering! How do you safely store your crap then?

Use a form of raid (anything but raid0) to guard against disk failure, and backups to recordable media such as cd/dvd or external drives like Manny does.

It all depends on how important the data is to you really.

Just get a couple of ext USB Hard Drives (say 500GB). If one goes down then you've always got extra data backed up on the other.

But you'll need to have a backup strategy - and stick to it :P.

I've gonr off this idea now after all the scaremongering! How do you safely store your crap then?

Most of it is on the PC hard disk. Digital photos are duplicated onto an external drive and written to DVD every so often.

Camcorder files are saved on the external drive (500Gb) and written to DVD before they are deleted from the camera.

At work we only use external HDs for backing up data that can be recreated. so if you are scanning documents, ripping MP3s you can back these up to the external disk. If you lose the disk it's a pain but you can recreate everything that is on it.

If your stuff is irreplaceable then you need to be more careful. Copy on PC, copy on external (maybe zipped) and a copy on DVD.

It all depends how valuable that data is, sentimentally or monetarily.

If it's worth £50k then it's not unreasonable to spend £1k on your back ups.

1.5TB = 2*750GB drives.

Twice as much to go wrong and if formatted as a single 1.5TB device, if you lose one, then you lose all the data on both.

as far as i can see its a single 1.5TB disc and not 2*750

same thing applies i suppose if a single drive dies though re losing your data

The other thing to think about is file encryption. Windows and NTFS encrypt files so that they are only accessible to a permitted user.

If your system crashes and you have to re-install, you may well lose permission to view, change or move your data. It is therefore recommended to back up to DVD as this removes NTFS permissions. Alternatively, make sure that your backed up data is not encrypted.

maplins have a 1.5tb one for 130 quid at the moment

If this is the one you've seen.. 1.5TB Maxtor External Desktop Hard Drive > Maplin

I have a feeling it will only be 1Tb in size. Maxtor Basics Desktop | Maxtor.com