SWMBO is getting anxious about backing up her laptop having seen my PC out of action twice recently following motherboard failure. I am also interested in backing up my PC in case the motherboard fails yet again. I am looking to buy a circa 250GB external HDD with USB and Firewire. SWMBO's laptop has USB 1.1 and a 4 pin Firewire connection, plus a USB2 adaptor card which recognises a 512GB memory stick but not a 1GB for some reason. My PC has USB2 and 6 pin Firewire. I am assuming that any USB2 drive will be backwardly compatible with USB1.1 if necessary.

I don't want to spend a fortune so gold-plated options are out. The LaCie 250GB Firewire 400/800 USB2 HDD looked good until I read user criticism on Dabs.com of its reliability and tendency to get very hot. The LaCie 250GB USB2 P3 which is PCPro recommended similarly gets slated for reliability. Other 250GB options include HDDs by Seagate, Western Digital, Freecom, Buffalo and Iomega - but I haven't a clue which are reliable and which aren't. Any first-hand expert advice would be most welcome.

Why not partition your hard drives and use that new partition for backing up your registry and other important docs. Then have a standalone backup hdd partitioned for each of you.

Failing that what about backing up to recoradable dvd?

I have a partitioned backup section on my hard drive, as well as backing up to dvd and seperate hdd. Nothing like belt, braces and string:)

ps..it does depend on what you want to backup though.

My PC has two 200GB HDs so plenty of backup capacity but, having had to return it recently to Evesham where motherboard failure was diagnosed, then had the replacement motherboard fail just 3 weeks later, I want standalone backup just in case. The engineer who fitted the second motherboard advised against using the second HDD for critical backup - he has seen plenty fail due to power surges. SWMBO's laptop has circa 20+GB of irreplaceable educational material on it so we want that safely backed up too. The laptop can back up to CD but not DVD. An external HDD seems to be cost effective and relatively straightforward - and I will continue to back up as much as I can to DVD.

My PC has two 200GB HDs so plenty of backup capacity but, having had to return it recently to Evesham where motherboard failure was diagnosed, then had the replacement motherboard fail just 3 weeks later, I want standalone backup just in case. The engineer who fitted the second motherboard advised against using the second HDD for critical backup - he has seen plenty fail due to power surges. SWMBO's laptop has circa 20+GB of irreplaceable educational material on it so we want that safely backed up too. The laptop can back up to CD but not DVD. An external HDD seems to be cost effective and relatively straightforward - and I will continue to back up as much as I can to DVD.

I see your point, but what about an external DVD writer?

Only problem with HDD is that when they go, so does all your stuff on it. Perhaps 2 extra partitions on your HDD for yours and wifes back-up, and then the DVD writer to copy things to individual dvd,s. At least then you will still have the stuff in the event of power surge or and HDD failure, plus the stuff can be copied over to where-ever you like.

ATEOTD, how many ways to back-ups is down to how secure you want to be or even how paranoid you are

rather than buy an external hard drive get an external enclosure and the hard drive of your choice, Seagate seem good and offer a five year warrenty, most ready made external hard drives have 1 or 2 year warrenties at best.

If you are going to use SATA make sure the drive enclosure is compatible, many are not.

I'm just about to order a couple of Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache @ about £78 each plus Icy Box External Enclosure IB-360AStUS SATA + USB Combo @35 each.

Have rigged up something similar for SWIMBO but using PATA drives and it works perfectly (on Linux anyway).

aj

Get four 250gb SATA drives and run two of them as a mirror in a Raid array.

Fast, reliable and not that expensive anymore.

Many thanks for the replies so far - keep them coming. Connectivity with the laptop must be straightforward. I haven't used the Firewire on it yet and don't even know if it works.

Have you got a network at home D? Cos if you do, I can strongly recommend a Bufallo LinkStation. I have the 250Gb version myself and it allows everyone on the network to access it (for sharing documents), or back up to it.

If you go the recordable DVD route remember a a dual layer DVD an store around 9Gb of data.

I've got the same as Quinten, Buffalo linkstation 250Gb, it has a print server and a backup utility too but prefer nsbackup. I think it was about £130 off amazon a month or so ago.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0007R6CF8/026-9635884-3990040?v=glance&n=560798

Get a e-sata card for your machine if it doesn't already have a port. You can then hook up any sata drive directly to the e-sata connector.

This makes an external case really cheap and in the future will be the way that external hard disks are connected.

PC World usually have some deal on external drives of varying sizes..

Tempted to invest in one to store HD content on, but can see me needing acouple

I'm with AJ. Get a USB/Firewire combo box and then sling the drive of your choice in it. Manufacturers of external drives tend to give a maximum 2 year warranty because they have to under EU law. Buy the bare drive over the counter and you get 3 or 5 years. Seagate and some Western Digitals have 5 year warranties. Firewire is faster than USB2 (ignore the headline figures).

External HDDs still aint bulletproof - I lost 20Gb of MP3s earlier in the week because the external drive I use with my Mac decided to lose it's file table. Luckily I copied it back off my iPod...

I'm with AJ. Get a USB/Firewire combo box and then sling the drive of your choice in it. Manufacturers of external drives tend to give a maximum 2 year warranty because they have to under EU law. Buy the bare drive over the counter and you get 3 or 5 years. Seagate and some Western Digitals have 5 year warranties. Firewire is faster than USB2 (ignore the headline figures).

External HDDs still aint bulletproof - I lost 20Gb of MP3s earlier in the week because the external drive I use with my Mac decided to lose it's file table. Luckily I copied it back off my iPod...

I'm not having a dig at Macs (although I prefer PC's) but is this file table issue common? I've ever heard of it before.

FAT used to do it all the time, but corrupting a file table is not something i have ever really heard of in any quantity for other File Systems. Certainly not seen it on a MAC.

FAT had two Master Allocation Tables for exactly this reason that if one went you could still get the data and rebuild a new second one.

Also just a thought you may well find that the 'X' year warrenty would be voided if you put the drive in an external enclosure since the T&C's are fairly tight. And yes you can tell how a drive has been used if you have the right equipment. Realistically though as long as you don't ever say it was used in an external case and just play the my hard disk is dead line, it's probably cheaper for them to send out a recon drive than waste time and money testing it.

I've got a few 160gb Buffalo 'DriveStation' USB2 HDDs that I use for backing up certain applications at the office. I chose them because they were cheap and looked reasonable enough (not very technical I know, but I needed them quick). IIFC they were pretty good value from Ebuyer.com

I've got two external HDDs, one for my work machine and one for my private one.

One's a Maxtor and the other's a Western Digital. Touch wood, not had any problems with either, although neither are as large as you need (mine are 80Gb & 120Gb).

Seagate have about the best reputation for hard drive reliability , so I bought one of these.

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/105774