 External H D D, for Acronis |
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  Mar 26 2007, 04:53 AM
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 Just enough info to be armed & dangerous...  Group: Members Posts: 2,009 Joined: 18-March 06 From: St Kilda, Dunedin. South Island. NZ Member No.: 59,805  |
Are there any pitfalls or anything else I should be aware of? Cheers. -------------------- |
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Mar 26 2007, 09:27 AM
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 Bleepin' Night Watchman Group: BC Advisor Posts: 1,762 Joined: 5-December 05 From: The City of Saint Francis, by the western sea Member No.: 43,307 |
None that I can see.
The only gripe I have about my external drive (and making backups thereupon) is the speed. USB 2.0 is great for medium sized stuff. But when you're backing up >100GB at a time, you'd better block out an hour or two. I hear firewire is fast but I don't know. As for other problems, I can't say I can think of any. --------------------  |
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Mar 26 2007, 09:31 AM
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#3
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 Bleepin' Cynic Group: BC Advisor Posts: 5,235 Joined: 11-November 06 Member No.: 94,959 |
There are freeware alternatives to Acronis.
Freeware Replacements For Common Commercial Apps -------------------- Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.
—Albert Camus |
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Mar 26 2007, 10:10 AM
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#4
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arachibutyrophobia Group: BC Advisor Posts: 4,844 Joined: 4-March 05 From: Northern CA. Member No.: 13,532 |
I have a couple of friends that use Drive Image and love it.
-------------------- Lord, may we please have a little more chlorine in the gene pool?
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Mar 26 2007, 02:47 PM
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#5
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 Forum Addict Group: BC Advisor Posts: 1,875 Joined: 25-November 04 From: Finland Member No.: 5,870 |
Yes the interface is worth giving thought. There are essentially five different interfaces used for external hard drives. You need to know what you have, and in case you have several, which is faster.
This post has been edited by Mr Alpha: Apr 1 2007, 09:03 AM -------------------- "Anyone who cannot form a community with others, or who does not need to because he is self-sufficient [...] is either a beast or a god." Aristotle
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ | ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe | 2GB Corsair TWINX2048-3500LLPRO | Gigabyte GeForce 8800GTX | Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS | ASUS PhysX P1 | Logitech G15 | Logitech MX Revolution | LG Flatron L2000C | Logitech Z-5500 Digital Stubborn attempts to think clearly |
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Mar 26 2007, 10:41 PM
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#6
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Just enough info to be armed & dangerous... Group: Members Posts: 2,009 Joined: 18-March 06 From: St Kilda, Dunedin. South Island. NZ Member No.: 59,805 |
Thanks all.
My machine is a new HP Pavilion and has plenty of USB2 ports and also one Firewire marked as IEEE 1394. I purchased a Firewire cable to download from my vidcam. It is marked IEEE 1394 on both ends and has a PC connection at one end, and a DV connection at the other. I doubt if this would be useable for an external HDD. Time is not really an issue as the process will be done at night. This machine is on 24/7 to maximise my F@H work units. Acronis TI will cost me about $NZ75 which I am happy to pay if necessary. Browsed thru the freeware replacements but the only thing I could see was Ghost 2003. I downloaded it but it wants to write a batch file to floppy and I don't have a Drive A: now. Any other recommendations that members have tried and like for complete disk imaging. I was thinking of doing a complete backup once a week and overwriting the files on the external HDD - does this sound like the way to go. I now have XP Pro. My previous machine ran XP Home and melted down twice last year - getting everything back to normal is a real PITA which is why we are discussing this now. (PS. Just remembered  that I have Nero BackItUp which came with a new DVD Writer. Does anyone have experience with this?)Any and all comments much appreciated. Cheers 
This post has been edited by rowal5555: Mar 26 2007, 11:17 PM -------------------- |
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Mar 26 2007, 11:36 PM
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#7
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 Bleepin' Mod Group: Moderator Posts: 4,606 Joined: 18-March 06 From: B.C. Canada Member No.: 59,826 |
Hi rowal5555,
After I crashed and only had my Windows back up, I too decided to get set up properly. Only thing to to keep in mind, and I hate to be a pessimist...is that your external hard drive can crap out too! Having said that, keeping something on a DVD or CD is better than nothing. FYI, I paid $45Cdn...whats the exchange rate? --------------------  Join Bleeping Computers Folding@home Team and Help find a cure. I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose. ~Woody Allen |
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Mar 26 2007, 11:45 PM
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#8
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Just enough info to be armed & dangerous... Group: Members Posts: 2,009 Joined: 18-March 06 From: St Kilda, Dunedin. South Island. NZ Member No.: 59,805 |
Hi TMacK
Have just been checking locally and may be able to get clearance stock of Acronis 8 for $NZ48 (about US36) at Dick Smith Electronics. It appears to do all I need as well as the latest V10.????? Cheers -------------------- |
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Mar 27 2007, 12:06 AM
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#9
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Bleepin' Mod Group: Moderator Posts: 4,606 Joined: 18-March 06 From: B.C. Canada Member No.: 59,826 |
Yup, latest version is 10. Hope it comes with a real user guide, not one in PDF format like Version 9.
I am in the process of printing mine out....all 79 pages!!!! Looks like our $$ is about par. -------------------- Join Bleeping Computers Folding@home Team and Help find a cure. I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose. ~Woody Allen |
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Mar 27 2007, 12:27 AM
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#10
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Bleepin' Cynic Group: BC Advisor Posts: 5,235 Joined: 11-November 06 Member No.: 94,959 |
The reason Ghost wanted to write a floppy is because if your HDD craps out you will need to boot from something in order to restore the saved image. I'm guessing Acronis will let you write a bootable CD. I would check this out before you purchase it.
-------------------- Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.
—Albert Camus |
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Mar 27 2007, 03:16 AM
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#11
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Forum Regular Group: Members Posts: 236 Joined: 28-February 07 From: Western Australia Member No.: 114,445 |
(PS. Just remembered
that I have Nero BackItUp which came with a new DVD Writer. Does anyone have experience with this?)I have that on my computer and used it to do the backup to CD. It's pretty straightforward. -------------------- Feel free to assume that I won't know what you are talking about...
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Mar 27 2007, 04:34 AM
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#12
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Just enough info to be armed & dangerous... Group: Members Posts: 2,009 Joined: 18-March 06 From: St Kilda, Dunedin. South Island. NZ Member No.: 59,805 |
OK. One more question - I understand the backups are compressed. What would be the minimum size of the external drive needed to back up a 200GB HDD. (There is very little on it yet but I guess that will change).
TMacK. I was reading the Acronis 10 instructions onsite last night and I'm afraid they are still PDF, over 100 pages,  will take a lot of paper and ink  .
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Mar 27 2007, 04:43 AM
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#13
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Bleepin' Cynic Group: BC Advisor Posts: 5,235 Joined: 11-November 06 Member No.: 94,959 |
If you want to back up a 200GB HDD then you really need something close to a 200GB external drive. This is because the compression ratio depends on the types of files you are trying to compress.
MP3, GIF and JPEG formats do not compress much at all because these formats already contain compression. On the other hand Word, Excel and Text formats achieve high compression ratios. -------------------- Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.
—Albert Camus |
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