USB external backup strategy

Our son is leaving for Germany - for a year - with his Dell M1210 laptop -
He wants to take an external drive,
but we can't decide on what, or how it might be used.

I have Acronis installed for when we swapped drives for larger sizes,
but don't use it for backups - yeah I know -
We used it with our Dell C610's when we upgraded drives,
and just put the drive in one of the modular bay cases.

Anyway... with so many USB external products on the market,
it's hard to determine if he would just use the external drive
to store photos & videos taken while in Germany,
or actually use it to backup the laptop... it has USB 2.0 -

Some external USB drives come with backup software,
but not sure if we want one more software product to support.
Also - it seems like the Seagate Freedom GO - is really trying
to make it a portable computer, vs an external drive or total backup.

SO - thoughts, comments, etc ???

--
----------------------------------
"If everything seems to be going well,
you have obviously overlooked something." - Steven Wright

ps56k wrote:
Our son is leaving for Germany - for a year - with his Dell M1210 laptop -
He wants to take an external drive,
but we can't decide on what, or how it might be used.

I have Acronis installed for when we swapped drives for larger sizes,
but don't use it for backups - yeah I know -
We used it with our Dell C610's when we upgraded drives,
and just put the drive in one of the modular bay cases.

Anyway... with so many USB external products on the market,
it's hard to determine if he would just use the external drive
to store photos & videos taken while in Germany,
or actually use it to backup the laptop... it has USB 2.0 -

Some external USB drives come with backup software,
but not sure if we want one more software product to support.
Also - it seems like the Seagate Freedom GO - is really trying
to make it a portable computer, vs an external drive or total backup.

SO - thoughts, comments, etc ???

Does your son not speak English?

Daddy

Daddy wrote:
ps56k wrote:
Our son is leaving for Germany - for a year - with his Dell M1210
laptop -
He wants to take an external drive,
but we can't decide on what, or how it might be used.

I have Acronis installed for when we swapped drives for larger sizes,
but don't use it for backups - yeah I know -
We used it with our Dell C610's when we upgraded drives,
and just put the drive in one of the modular bay cases.

Anyway... with so many USB external products on the market,
it's hard to determine if he would just use the external drive
to store photos & videos taken while in Germany,
or actually use it to backup the laptop... it has USB 2.0 -

Some external USB drives come with backup software,
but not sure if we want one more software product to support.
Also - it seems like the Seagate Freedom GO - is really trying
to make it a portable computer, vs an external drive or total backup.

SO - thoughts, comments, etc ???

Does your son not speak English?

Daddy
How helpful is your question? I personally would rather get a more
precise description of the intended strategy for this USB storage.

--
John Doue

ps56k wrote:
Our son is leaving for Germany - for a year - with his Dell M1210 laptop -
He wants to take an external drive,
but we can't decide on what, or how it might be used.

I have Acronis installed for when we swapped drives for larger sizes,
but don't use it for backups - yeah I know -
We used it with our Dell C610's when we upgraded drives,
and just put the drive in one of the modular bay cases.

Anyway... with so many USB external products on the market,
it's hard to determine if he would just use the external drive
to store photos & videos taken while in Germany,
or actually use it to backup the laptop... it has USB 2.0 -

Some external USB drives come with backup software,
but not sure if we want one more software product to support.
Also - it seems like the Seagate Freedom GO - is really trying
to make it a portable computer, vs an external drive or total backup.

SO - thoughts, comments, etc ???


Well, one downright simple way to do unautomated backup is to
drag-and-drop folders from the laptop hard drive to the external one.

.... Ben Myers

"Ben Myers" wrote in message
...
Well, one downright simple way to do unautomated backup is to
drag-and-drop folders from the laptop hard drive to the external one.

... Ben Myers

my quandary is -
do we just go with simple file copies - of main things -
or perform and create a system backup "file" -
or do we look for a full backup with bare metal restore -
or even a USB bootable backup -

He will need to do an image backup of the OS partition and a data backup of
any data partitions. If his HD fails he will lose "the lot" unless it's
backed up.

These backups can be stored on his external HD.

You are making this far too complicated.

An external USB drive is just ***A*** disk drive (any kind) inside a
case with an adapter card. For 2.5" drives, you can buy the case
(meaning case, adapter card, cable, everything except the drive itself)
for less than ten dollars. For a 3.5" desktop drive, the price is a bit
higher because the case now needs a power supply (2.5" drive cases are
normally powered by the USB port), so a 3.5" case is about $20 to $30.

Look for a good deal on a suitable drive and buy the case separately and
make this yourself .... or buy one factory made, it's up to you. The
point being, there really is no difference in the products, but if you
buy the drive yourself you have knowledge and control over what drive
you get (so, for example, if you want a Western Digital "Black" drive
(their best, premium mainline desktop drives), you can get one). If you
buy a factory made external drive, you probably pay more and you have no
knowledge of what drive is inside until after you have bought it (and
then only if you take it apart).

[The slight exception to this is that some cases come with backup
software that is activated by a button on the external drive.
Personally, I'll pass on that since it requires that software be
installed onto the host computer which is ALWAYS running, and the less
crap of that kind on my system, the better.]

You have the right software .... the two good choices being Ghost or
Acronis. So somewhere on this external drive, create a folder called
"Image Backups", then under that a folder for each drive [drive =
partition] to be backed up (you may have only a Drive C:, or you may
have others) (don't forget the possibility of hidden maintenance and
restore partitions created by Dell), then whenever you go to make a
backup, create a folder under that with the date (e.g. \Image
Backups\Drive_C\2009_05_29) and put the image file(s) into that folder.

When you create the backup, break the backup up into pieces no larger
than 4GB. This will allow them to be burned to DVD media if you have a
desire to do so (leave a set back in the USA, or in a safe deposit box,
or anywhere else off-site). Even if the media will hold larger files,
there are issues with files larger than 4GB.

Separately from the image backups of the entire drive, I would [much
more frequently] make plain, ordinary copies of important "stuff" simply
by dragging and dropping files from the laptop to the external drive
using Windows Explorer. The image backup is primarily for restore your
entire system if the hard drive itself fails. That's fine, but it's
just as common to just need to restore a specific or a few specific
files, and it's much easier to work with a "plain old" copy of the file
than to try to extract one from an image backup of the entire drive.
Also, really, you may only need to backup the drives 2 or 3 times per
year, but for really important data files, you may want to back those up
much more often.


ps56k wrote:
Our son is leaving for Germany - for a year - with his Dell M1210 laptop -
He wants to take an external drive,
but we can't decide on what, or how it might be used.

I have Acronis installed for when we swapped drives for larger sizes,
but don't use it for backups - yeah I know -
We used it with our Dell C610's when we upgraded drives,
and just put the drive in one of the modular bay cases.

Anyway... with so many USB external products on the market,
it's hard to determine if he would just use the external drive
to store photos & videos taken while in Germany,
or actually use it to backup the laptop... it has USB 2.0 -

Some external USB drives come with backup software,
but not sure if we want one more software product to support.
Also - it seems like the Seagate Freedom GO - is really trying
to make it a portable computer, vs an external drive or total backup.

SO - thoughts, comments, etc ???

Agreed and that is a primary strategy, but you still need an image
backup in case the drive itself craps out (in which case you lose
Windows and all of your installed programs, which cannot be easily
restored via simple "drag and drop"). But you don't need to do the full
drive image very often; probably only 2-3 times a year at most.


Ben Myers wrote:


Well, one downright simple way to do unautomated backup is to
drag-and-drop folders from the laptop hard drive to the external one.

... Ben Myers

BOTH.

You do a full image backup in case you need to do a "bare metal"
restore, and then simple "drag and drop" copies of important files for
less serious (but more common) situations.


ps56k wrote:
"Ben Myers" wrote in message
...
Well, one downright simple way to do unautomated backup is to
drag-and-drop folders from the laptop hard drive to the external one.

... Ben Myers

my quandary is -
do we just go with simple file copies - of main things -
or perform and create a system backup "file" -
or do we look for a full backup with bare metal restore -
or even a USB bootable backup -

"ps56k" wrote in message
...
| Our son is leaving for Germany - for a year - with his Dell M1210 laptop -
| He wants to take an external drive,
| but we can't decide on what, or how it might be used.
|
| I have Acronis installed for when we swapped drives for larger sizes,
| but don't use it for backups - yeah I know -
| We used it with our Dell C610's when we upgraded drives,
| and just put the drive in one of the modular bay cases.
|
| Anyway... with so many USB external products on the market,
| it's hard to determine if he would just use the external drive
| to store photos & videos taken while in Germany,
| or actually use it to backup the laptop... it has USB 2.0 -
|
| Some external USB drives come with backup software,
| but not sure if we want one more software product to support.
| Also - it seems like the Seagate Freedom GO - is really trying
| to make it a portable computer, vs an external drive or total backup.
|
| SO - thoughts, comments, etc ???
|
| --
| ----------------------------------
| "If everything seems to be going well,
| you have obviously overlooked something." - Steven Wright
|
Get a "portable" not just an "external" hard drive. Many manufacturers make
them - I've had success with the ones made by Buffalo Technology. Their
MiniStation is available in a 500 GB size and is usb powered. See it here
http://tinyurl.com/nd5el8 . Fry's Electronics has it for $120 but it often
goes on sale.

If you already have a newer version of Acronis, it will do automated backups
as well as disk imaging. One of the nice features of Acronis, if you're not
using your laptop all the time is it will allow you to schedule backup for
when you shut down your laptop. For intermittent laptop use, that may be the
most effective way of saving changes you make during infrequent sessions. If
you're just backing up documents and pictures and the laptop has an sd slot
builtin, then get a largish SDHC card say 8 or 16 GB and just keep it in the
SD slot to receive backups. Of course that will not protect against theft of
the laptop and would be too small for video storage, so the 500gb portable
usb drive would still be warranted.