second external hard drive

[Lowner]

I need advice about adding a second external hard drive to my PC.

Currently I'm using 320gb Western Digital via a USB2 port without any added software and just save to files stored in it. This very simple system has been a total success.

But because I've got all my eggs (images) in one basket, I've been thinking about a second external HD and have found a 1Tb Western Digital WDHIU10000E selling at £81.60 plus postage & packing.

That's the background. But should I consider anything else? software maybe, or problems having two external HD's?

All this may be obvious to you, but computers to me are just metal boxes with lots of wires everywhere. I know absolutely nothing about them.

[tonylong]

There are no problems connecting multiple external drives -- just make sure you preserve your high-speed I/O (USB 2.0 ports and hubs, in fact, powered USB 2.0 hubs will allow you to connect slower devices without slowing down the faster ones).

I have 4 USB drives running off of my PC -- two for my running library and two for backup, with an additional networked drive as additional backup. Backup will become increasingly important as your library grows, and external drives are an excellent "first line" of backup. Some people go further by things like internet storage services or off-property storage of external drives -- how far you go depends on you and the work you do, but external drives are definitely good for your library to free up your system resources and good in case of a system crash. I also have Lightroom's catalog backup storing to one of my current drives.

One TB drives are pretty affordable, or as an alternative you could get two 500 GB dirves and use one for backup until they are full.

[ChasP505]

Richard,
I keep 2 identical 500gb WD External USB HDs. I don't do anything complicated with software, only using Microsoft SyncToy 2.0 to copy from my second internal drive to the backup external drives. Unless my house gets robbed or burns down, what's the probability of losing all three drives at once? I'm not a professional photographer, so I don't have a business depending on this basic setup, but I still always keep at least one drive off premises at my office.

My web provider (http://www.fatcow.com/fatcow/fatcow.bml?page=features) is now offering 2gb of Carbonite online backup as part of the package I subscribe to, so I'm going to start using that too.

[Bobster]

Rich, i only have 1 external drive connected 90% of the time, the others are kept on a shelf waiting for when i need to grab a job, when someone has placed an order for a year or so later..

1TB (1000 GB) Western Digital WD10EADS Caviar Green, SATA 3Gb/s, IntelliPower, 32MB Cache, NCQ £65.15

[Lowner]

Thanks for the words of reassurance fellas.

I'm away next week sailing, but as soon as I get back I'll place an order.

And thanks Robert for the cheaper link.

[tim]

Get two and mirror them, keep one offsite in case your house burns down. If you can do eSata it's MUCH MUCH MUCH faster. I just have an adapter for my computer, it plugs into my motherboard and provides an eSata port on the back of the machine. I can't hot swap it like USB because of my motherboard (Asus P5Q I think), but I plug it in, activate it in disk management, then when i'm done I turn the computer off, take away the external drive, then reboot. Some motherboards let you hot swap, and there's software that sometimes works to let you hot swap esata disks.

[Bobster]

Thanks for the words of reassurance fellas.

I'm away next week sailing, but as soon as I get back I'll place an order.

And thanks Robert for the cheaper link.
www.scan.co.uk

sorry forgot to put the link in

[Lowner]

Tim,

I'd assumed that I'd need additional software to allow the drives to be mirrored. True or False? Being a simple soul, I'd like to keep things as straightforward as possible, even if it means a little more work.

Robert,

Cheers for that!

[egordon99]

For them to be truely MIRRORED (in real-time) you'd have to set something up with RAID (or DRBD) but you really don't need that.

I just wrote a batch script which uses xcopy to copy over any new/modified files from the main drive to the backup drive. I use MS-Scheduler to call this script every morning at 3 AM.

So the secondary drive has the exact same files/directory structure as the first. I don't wipe any CF/SD cards until the next day so should my primary fail, any pictures just imported to the main drive (and not yet backed up since it's not 3 AM yet) would still be on the cards. Knock on wood, I haven't had a hard drive failure yet, and I hope I won't ever have one, but I'm prepared....

[sue.t]

My main backup (an external Maxtor) does an automatic backup each evening of one of my internal hard drives ... the internal drive that has all my files & photos. The other internal hard drive is just for operating system and programs so can be recreated from original software.

Also have two 320 Gb Western Digitals, one dedicated to photos and the other for when we are travelling to backup photos from camera & laptop. The WDs don't do an automatic backup though.

[ChasP505]

I just manually (with MS SyncToy) backup to one external drive, then do a redundant backup to the second.

[blssdwlf]

+1 on SyncToy 2

http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/synctoybeta.aspx

You can setup schedules and such and it tracks renaming/deleting ops. Pretty good for the price (free.)

Make sure you download and read the whitepaper as it gives you some insight on how to use its three modes.

[jvmanolis]

+1 on SyncToy 2

http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/synctoybeta.aspx

You can setup schedules and such and it tracks renaming/deleting ops. Pretty good for the price (free.)

Make sure you download and read the whitepaper as it gives you some insight on how to use its three modes.


I can never get my SyncToy schedules to run--they always Fail. Could not figure out why so I merely do a manual backup using Sync whenever I think of it.

[blssdwlf]

I can never get my SyncToy schedules to run--they always Fail. Could not figure out why so I merely do a manual backup using Sync whenever I think of it.

Well that's a bummer. Have you tried the MS Forums? There is a thread that might be applicable to you just started. http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/synctoy/thread/05ac583e-0a63-4835-a7e9-5c384f7e6cef

[tim]

If you use xcopy to do it automatically that means it's always attached to the machine, which doesn't protect you against viruses, fire, or stupidity. Synctoy manually and keeping the drive offsite is what I meant.