BleepingComputer.com: Looking For An External Hard Drive

I recently bought a new pc for my business, (cisnet w/vista premium) we finally are using a computer to run and organize our business (which took years of convincing) which is owned and operated by my grandfather and uncle, and myself. My grandpa was very weary about the transformation and still insisted on the 4 giant heavy file cabinets. The business is run out of my grandpa's shop/office behind his house, well after about 4 months of storing names, numbers, addresses, etc. I got to work Tuesday 12-18-07 morning and my grandpa said he "tried" to get on it and it had alot of white lettering atop of a black screen. Apparently he didn't know what to do (he is computer illeterate, aside from what I taught him) so he just turned the switch off on the surge blocker until I got there. When I got there I tried to log-on and it spent about 15 minutes configuring updates and when my desktop apperaed I only had 2 icons opposed to about 10-12. The previous day I just for the hell of it checked to see how much free space was on the harddrive (internal) and there was 165gb of free space. Well after seeing only 2 icons on the desktop I check the hardrive and there was 208gb of free space. well I wasn't really sure what to make of it so I restarted it and the same thing 15 minute of configuring updates and then 2 icons. But this time when my desktop appeared a message popped up "this computer may have been subject to software counterfeiting" I got on the phone with the manufacturer and tried to explain the problem and he told me in his terribly broken english that everything was gone unless I wanted to spend a bunch of $ for recovery. well since then I restored the pc to its original factory settings. can anybody shed some light on what the hell happened. Oh and buy the way I was planning on buying myself an external harddrive for christmas, just my luck (would an external back-up have saved me?) . But I need some advice on what harddrive I should look for that is reliable, and affordable about 250gb. I've read alot of reviews and I'm going into this blind so anyone who may have some good advice would be a godsent beacuse the computer guy at curcuit city says any of these are going to do hwat you want it to. But that's not what I've read in the reviews. Please help, any advice would be much appreciated.
Dennis

You might want to read http://help.lockergnome.com/windows/quot-v...pict520710.html

As for hard drive, it becomes a matter of user preference.

Some external harddrives include backup software as part of the installation package, some users have their own backup software and don't need it to be included.

Louis

Hi dennisthemenace and welcome to BleepingComputer.

Installing a second hdd would provide you with a backup storage system and it is a common practice. You have mentioned that you purchased a new cisnet computer but didn't mention what model it is so I can only guess that it is not a laptop. Because the computer is new you should be able to use a SATA hdd. As for what manufacturer to go with I like Seagate and Western Digital, Seagate has the longest warranty.

There are two other considerations that you may want to think about, I back up all of my important files on either CDs or DVDs. If the information is stored on good quality media and stored properly that information will be available for years. The second consideration would to be to use three hdd in a RAID5 configuration, if one of the hdds die you will not loose any information, to repair the configuration simply install a new drive and your on the road again.

Your computer should have a product code proving that the operating system in genuine, I'm not familiar with cisnet but most manufacturers will place the product code somewhere on the case. If you can't find it call the manufacturer and find out where it is. With the product code you can check with M$ to see if they recognize it as being genuine.