I pleaded with the spouse to spend $ 140 on an external storage HD, and

[truedelphi]

that was in April. He agreed. And our files were transferred, seamlessly, each day at the end of our work.

Then about two weeks ago, the main computer, the Windows XP machine, crashed out with a fatal error message.

As frustrating as it is to have to deal with the expense of getting it repaired, and having it down while we need it, knowing that the external storage with all our files on it has made us both a bit saner than we otherwise would be.

If you can afford to get an external HD, do it. It is one of the cheapest and best insurance items you can have. Ours did not copy the actual programs, but anything else was copied and is in our possession.

[TheBigotBasher]

1. Be aware that they do not have great reliabilty

I lost over 400gigs of music on one external drive. (YeahI should have had another to back that one up).

[truedelphi]

2. Sorry to hear about that.

I was surprised to hear the tech guy doing our computer repairs saying that Hard Drives in general have no assurance of working for even six months!

I guess all the major computer firms have outsourced their manufacturing to China.

The old adage, you get what you pay for, comes to mind. I mean, it is amazing to pay only $ 140 for an external HD with tons of gigs of storage, but if it doesn't last very long?!?! - what good does it do?

[Betty88]

5. 6 months is crazy

I mean anyone can have the bad luck to get a drive DOA or have it die after a short while but personally I have never had a hard drive go bad in less than 3 years. The thing to remember is that anything can go bad so have two backups and you should be good to go. I have two internal drives in my computer, one is the main and the second is where I back everything up to. I also have an external for backing up the backups. The fist hint of a drive going bad I replace it, now I have probably jinxed myself and expect a total meltdown of every hard drive in the place :)

[trud]

8. I lost all the data on a (HP) hard drive also.

Never again. I back up with flash drives now. Perfectly happy with 32 GB. I have several and rotate them. I only back up once a week or if I've stored something important, but that's fine for the way I use my laptop.

[hobbit709]

3. $140? how big was this drive.

[truedelphi]

4. Two terra bytes or something?

I am clueless about the new terms. I think we managed to get most the Milky Way galaxy stored on it.

I learned data entry on computers way back in 1983. And people would move to Los Angeles from Silicon valley (and vice a versa) just to get some extra 60 K (not a typo - 60K!) to use.

It is really unbelievable about how much storage these things provide.

And for all I know, we got ourselves a bad deal!

[Jazzgirl]

6. I wondered how big it was too.

I figured at that price it had to be 2 terrabytes. Good thing you have it. It wouldn't hurt (especially if this is business data) to invest in a second one. Two is better than one. I have three.

[hobbit709]

7. Around here you can a 2TB external for about $85.

The only problem I've had with externals is the power/interface board has crapped out on more than one. I just crack open the case and remove the drive and the drive works fine when connected to a computer with my $15 IDE/SATA to USB adapter.

[lazarus]

9. I got worried when my 1TB drive

got mostly full, and I suddenly realized I didn't have it backed up.

So I bought an NAS and two 2TB drives, and set up a RAID1 configuration. I've mostly been happy with it.

The only annoying thing is, when I add new media to it, I have to do a manual refresh, which takes several hours. Since I add new media every day....

I asked tech support about it, and they recommended updating the firmware. And said I'd need to back it up, because the update might trash my data. :eyes: So that's not happening.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[LiberalFighter]

11. I just have a 2nd internal hard drive.

And save most of my data on that drive instead of the boot drive.