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Wednesday December 12, 2007
External Hard Drives: Your Best Computer Investment (But Still Not Perfect)
Categories:
PC Hardware
Tags:
Backup, Hard Drives, Storage
Whether you're getting a new computer for the holidays, or just dealing with an existing machine, I'm convinced the best investment you can make for your computer is an external hard drive you use for backup.
For years, I've been imploring friends, colleagues, and readers to backup their systems, but too often I've heard from people who just weren't backed up. Today, the information we have on our machines - from business files and tax records to digital music libraries and priceless collections of digital photographs - is more important than ever. The good news is that with external hard drives, backing up is nearly painless.
Until a couple of years ago, I backed up on CDs and later writable DVDs. That was both time-consuming and a bit difficult, because I needed multiple disks to store all the data on my computer. Today, external hard disks are both easy and relatively cheap (I've seen 160 GB external drives for under $100).
You have a couple of choices in buying external drives. The first is capacity. You'll find larger capacity (up to 750GB or 1 TB) in 3.5-inch drives, which typically require their own power supplies. These typically have USB 2.0 and/or Firewire connections. Mac users may prefer Firewire 800 since it's a bit faster, but I usually recommend USB drives, because they work with just about anything. These are good for continuous backup, if they are always plugged into your machine.
Alternatively, you can find portable hard drives offering up to 250GB of storage; these generally use 2.5-inch drives and are powered off of the USB port. While some people are skeptical of the reliability of 2.5-inch drives, for most people, these are just fine. I tend to use a bigger drive for daily backups at home; and regularly make a manual backup on a portable drive that I keep at the office.
(Of course, for the most reliable data storage, network drives with RAID storage or a SAN are the right choice in many business solutions; and online backup may make sense if you want to get to your data from multiple locations, though prices can add up for a lot of data.)
Lately, I've tried out a couple of drives that come with software designed to make backing up easier. Seagate's FreeAgent Pro series is notable for being available with an eSATA interface, which is considerably faster than USB or Firewire (if you have the hardware that supports it, and buy the right cables, etc.) It comes with Memeo's AutoBackup software, which can backup a set of files every day. It generally worked, but the software isn't well integrated with the drive, and isn't very flexible. Some files it just never backed up - when you check for messages it tells you they have file names it doesn't support. In addition, it offers a trial version of an unspectacular Internet backup (500 MB free for 6 months, 1GB for $5.95 a month afterward), a link to Shutterfly for photo backup, and an unremarkable system rollback feature. In general, I found the software package adequate, but not as good as I would have liked.
On the other hand, a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus I used didn't have eSATA support, but the software seems much better integrated; and gives you more control about which files and folders are backed up, and the schedule on which you do this, although you can only have one backup scheme at a time saved. It also has a nice sync feature, which lets you synchronize multiple computers (assuming they all have the Maxtor software installed); and Safety Drill makes a complete disk image (including all your partitions, etc., which can be a great way to make sure you can easily restore a whole computer). There are a few security features: you can password protect the whole disk (though this doesn't encrypt it); or create an encrypted folder.
In general, I have been quite happy with the Maxtor software. (Similar versions are also on the OneTouch 4 Mini, though note you may need two USB ports to power it, unlike most other USB-powered drives.)
However, there are a few things to note: unlike some older backup software (such as Dantz Retrospect, which used to be included in earlier Maxtor drives), neither of these packages backs up open files. To me, that's a big issue, as I often have a mail program open - and backing up mail is crucial. If you use these, I recommend making sure you close your mail file and back it up regularly.
One thing to note about all these drives: the software is really designed for 32-bit Windows, either XP or Vista. If you have 64-bit XP or Linux, you'll need other software, and if you're a Mac OSX user, you'll need to reformat the drives to make them work with Leopard's Time Machine. (In general, Time Machine has a prettier user interface, but offers considerably fewer options.)
Of course there are plenty of other options. Some HP machines now even come with a single button backup, and that's a nice idea. And I've also used small portable drives from Western Digital (the Passport) quite successfully. (WD also now has software on most of its external drives, though I've been using an older version.)
As much as I love computers, I don't completely trust them. And the same goes for backup programs and external drives. While I do a daily backup with one of these drives on my main home desktops, I regularly do a manual backup to a portable drive of my most crucial files. And I'm glad I did - the one time I needed to restore files in real life recently (as opposed to for test purposes), I found that the backup program on the Seagate had failed to back a couple up. My manual backup, though, worked.
So while I'm a big fan of external hard drives, the software that goes with them still has a way to go.
