External HD backup question

[jakesnake76]

Hi all - new member here...

Hoping for some advice on how to do this...

I shoot RAW with a 400D. I have a desktop with Windows XP.

I've been storing to a Western Digital 320GB external hard drive that is acting up (CHKDSK is running at start up and finding bad clusters). I used it straight from the box with the FAT32 format. It is approximately 50% full.

I just bought a new Western Digital 500GB external hard drive to replace the seemingly dying 320GB.

I've read lots on the advantages of NTFS and would like to format my new 500GB drive in NTFS.

My question is this: will I run into problems when I transfer all of my files from the old FAT32 320GB drive to the new NTFS 500GB drive? Are there any sort of compatibility issues I need to know about before beginning?

Once I get everything on the new 500GB drive, I plan on purchasing a 2nd Western Digital drive to use as a backup.

Anyway, I'm trying to give you all the facts in hopes of some good advice/feedback. Please let me know if there are any missing pieces to the puzzle...

Thanks,
jakesnake76

[In2Photos]

You shouldn't have any issues formatting the new drive to NTFS and transferring files.

[jakesnake76]

Thanks Mike - it's all very scary when you start moving around every picture that you've ever taken of you kids! I've been BEYOND remiss in responsibly backing up my files and such - trying to get it all tied up now...thank you again...

[In2Photos]

Thanks Mike - it's all very scary when you start moving around every picture that you've ever taken of you kids! I've been BEYOND remiss in responsibly backing up my files and such - trying to get it all tied up now...thank you again...
"Your data is only as good as your last backup." Make sure you have more than one if you can. I have an internal backup and an external backup. An offsite backup would be good as well. But at least take the first step of backup numero uno! :)

[wlescall]

"Your data is only as good as your last backup." Make sure you have more than one if you can. I have an internal backup and an external backup. An offsite backup would be good as well. But at least take the first step of backup numero uno! :)

+1
Can't be said strongly enough.

[DennisW1]

Hi all - new member here...

Hoping for some advice on how to do this...

I shoot RAW with a 400D. I have a desktop with Windows XP.

I've been storing to a Western Digital 320GB external hard drive that is acting up (CHKDSK is running at start up and finding bad clusters). I used it straight from the box with the FAT32 format. It is approximately 50% full.

I just bought a new Western Digital 500GB external hard drive to replace the seemingly dying 320GB.

I've read lots on the advantages of NTFS and would like to format my new 500GB drive in NTFS.

My question is this: will I run into problems when I transfer all of my files from the old FAT32 320GB drive to the new NTFS 500GB drive? Are there any sort of compatibility issues I need to know about before beginning?

Once I get everything on the new 500GB drive, I plan on purchasing a 2nd Western Digital drive to use as a backup.

Anyway, I'm trying to give you all the facts in hopes of some good advice/feedback. Please let me know if there are any missing pieces to the puzzle...

Thanks,
jakesnake76

nope, a simple copy operation will move them all over. NTFS formatted drives only cause problems when you're trying to read them from DOS, which cannot read the NTFS format, or if you're trying to transfer files from a Mac. If you're planning on using a portable drive to transfer files between Mac and PC it should be FAT32 formatted.

[jakesnake76]

Another thought - should I partition and format the new 500GB drive? Never done this before, but since I keep my music library and pictures on here, does it make sense? Thanks in advance for bearing with my "newbie" questions...

[DennisW1]

Another thought - should I partition and format the new 500GB drive? Never done this before, but since I keep my music library and pictures on here, does it make sense? Thanks in advance for bearing with my "newbie" questions...


I dunno, there's a lot of pros and cons on partitioning large drives but I've never done it. My desktop drive(s) are two 500gb running in a Raid array and the external backup drive is a 1tb WD MyBook, neither of them partitioned. In days of old you had to partition big drives as earlier FAT systems wouldn't support huge drive sizes. Personally I don't think its worth the bother to do it, you can just put your different libraries in seperate folders.

[tim]

Another thought - should I partition and format the new 500GB drive? Never done this before, but since I keep my music library and pictures on here, does it make sense? Thanks in advance for bearing with my "newbie" questions...

No. There's no need.

[sawdust_128]

I'm travelling with a laptop and an Ultra drive docking station with a card reader. I download originals from my cards to a terabyte drive. When I have a chance, I write everything off to DVD. When I return to my home base, I have additional hard drives which supply permanent storage and these are stored in fireproof locking boxes.

I don'tpartition the terabytes. Just straight file systems. I have a directory for each day of shooting with a subdirectories, one for my wife and one for me. We both shoot 40D raw and jpeg.

[peterbj7]

I use these drives myself. No need to partition (in fact it's a damned nuisance) but you do want NTFS as otherwise file sizes are limited to around 4gb. Most of your pictures won't be that big (!) but I keep DVD ISO images on mine and they're too big for FAT32.

Make sure to format the drive before you use it. And whatever you do, have three generations of backup. If you only have two and you have a failure during the process of copying one to the other you can lose both. I have some mains powered drives as my secondary backups, and two WD-500 USB-powered drives for primary backups (I maintain four or five versions at all times). I also installed a 500gb drive in my computer. I live in an area prone to power outages and having drives that don't fail as soon as the power goes off is critical to me.

There's an extremely useful utility on the net, BeyondCompare, that will greatly ease the problem of maintaining these various versions of your files up-to-date. Just arrange things so that you are never working with your only two versions of your data at the same time. And keep at least one set off-site - my house was burgled a few months ago and some hard drives were taken. Luckily I had a complete data backup at a friend's house.

Another useful utility is Easy Duplicate Finder, which enables you to weed out redundant copies of files. Just make sure you use it very cautiously, and ensure you have a full backup that you can refer back to in case after a while you discover you deleted files you didn't want to.

I don't backup to DVD any more as they're way too small. I may try using BluRay when they become available and affordable.

[tim]

PeterBJ, it sounds like you're making problems for yourself. With a system like that I know i'd make a mistake, backups would be out of sync, and it'd take a lot of time and organisation. Instead of the incredible hassle and inevitable problems having lots of backups to protect against power problems just buy a UPS. A small one will do, they're not expensive, you only need a few minutes power to shut off the backup and shut the computer down.

With that you can have a copy of the images on your computer, and have a copy offsite on a portable hard drive. Refresh it weekly, and use online storage as interim storage if you're paranoid.

You might find RoboCopy and Synctoy useful too, far easier than manual compares.

Your post is also confusing, the first paragraph says don't partition, the seconds says to partition.

[peterbj7]

Tim - I've been through lots of permutations, and what I've settled on works for me. It's absolutely reliable. I do use a UPS, though I disagree that they're not expensive - down here everything is expensive, often isn't available, and decent ones actually do cost a lot of money anyway. The problem is that it's not just a question of power outages - we also have wild voltage fluctuations that a normal UPS can't protect against. Most people here do use UPS's and they certainly help, but even with a UPS running I've lost hard drives, mother boards, modems, and one laser printer. I (and others) have even lost laptop power supplies. For example, a few months ago my UPS was itself destroyed by a voltage surge that also took out my refrigerator. When I checked, it seemed that the domestic supply had briefly (until it tripped automatically) been connected to medium voltage. I also lost a mains-powered external hard disk during a backup - lost all data on the other disk and lost the power supply of the mains-powered disk.

I had a brain fart when I wrote "partition" in my second paragraph. I obviously meant "format".

Incidentally, I have tried without success to format flash drives to NTFS. One USB drive, one SD-HC card. Each 32gb. On both the device became unusable, though luckily reformatting FAT32 worked. Any ideas?

I'll have a look at the two utilities you recommend, but I'm very wary of any automatic process that I can't control. I have completely lost files that way.

[tim]

You can get a UPS from US$100 or so here, a decent brand just not a huge battery, and maybe not all the features. Sounds like you need a fairly decent one though. Does the power company take any responsibility at all?

That software I mentioned is semi-automatic, once you run it it copies any new or modified files from the source to the target drive, and optionally removed files you've deleted on the source drive.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Another thought - should I partition and format the new 500GB drive? Never done this before, but since I keep my music library and pictures on here, does it make sense? Thanks in advance for bearing with my "newbie" questions...

No need for multi partitions here.
Format to NTFS and COPY files from old Drive... while you can!


and Go get a 2nd 500GB drive now and do it again...

[peterbj7]

What I'd like is a totally DC power supply, using a couple of massive boat batteries. Recharging them as a separate exercise when I think the power will be stable. So I'd be totally isolated from mains.

Someone here (a dealer) was selling a UPS-style mains protection device recently. Far from US$100 it was over US$5k. I asked why and was referred to the Wikipedia article on UPS's. Made me understand why a regular UPS just doesn't work here.

No, the power company doesn't accept any responsibility. People have tried suing them, but they have far more resources than most individuals or businesses and just send up a semi-permanent smokescreen.

[jakesnake76]

Thanks to everyone for the advice - I formatted the new drive to NTFS (which took a while), then copied everything over from the old drive to the new drive (which took even longer). Everything is working like a charm!

Now what to do with the old 320 GB drive that I thought was dying? Any hope for using it in the future?

[peterbj7]

Only you know how you've used that 320. They're fairly robust so long as you remember what's going on inside and handle them gently, especially when they're running. If it's developed bad sectors due to physical damage it doesn't have long to go. Reformat it (NTFS) and run CHKDSK before you do anything else.

[jakesnake76]

The 320GB drive is physically in great shape - it has never been moved from its current location on my bookshelf.

I zero-filled the drive using the WD Data Lifeguard utility, with the intention of re-formatting in the NTFS file system.

When it gets about one-fourth of the way through, it "freezes up" and continues no more. I can't run CHKDSK or any other utility because the PC isn't "recognizing" the drive.

Have I made a big boo-boo by zeroing the drive out?

Thanks to all for your guidance - I am learning tons - it means a lot.

[Moppie]

Throw it away.

There is clearly something physically wrong with the drive, either the platter, the heads, or the control board.

[peterbj7]

Is it seen by "Computer Management"?

As they're so cheap now I think I probably wouldn't go to too many lengths to salvage this one, but I would at least try. Have you tried both "Quick Format" and "Full Format"? Have you tried formatting to any other file system? Solid state drives can and do fail in the way you're describing, but it's uncommon for dynamic drives.

And have you tried asking WD? I once did on another matter, and I found them very helpful.

[twofruitz]

I give an external HDD to a trusted friend so that if the house burns down or has its contents stolen, my data is safe and ready to go back onto my new computer :)

[basroil]

Is it seen by "Computer Management"?

As they're so cheap now I think I probably wouldn't go to too many lengths to salvage this one, but I would at least try. Have you tried both "Quick Format" and "Full Format"? Have you tried formatting to any other file system? Solid state drives can and do fail in the way you're describing, but it's uncommon for dynamic drives.

And have you tried asking WD? I once did on another matter, and I found them very helpful.

Actually not uncommon at all (well, not common at all either, but definitely not unique). Just means the read is fine but drive can't write. Happened to a three year old WD I have, and it's actually the most graceful failure I've ever seen. Mine started to "die" about 8 months ago (first write became slow, 200kb/s or less, then really slow, then just gives a timeout error), and it still reads at 25mb/s+ and without problems. Only thing is massive disk corruption of large fragmented files, but if it's just photos you should be able to recover 99.99% (out of about 20k shots I had there (already backed up anyway), two maybe three were corrupted, but those shots sucked anyway ;)). If OP had data there to begin with, we could see if it's just a very accelerated version of my issue or just complete disk failure.

[joeseph]

if you've got all the data off and confirmed the files are intact on the new one, do not waste your time/data by trying to use the orig drive again.
By all means take it apart & play with the platters but it's only an ornament at this point.

[Moppie]

As they're so cheap now I think I probably wouldn't go to too many lengths to salvage this one, but I would at least try.


Try and save it again so it can fail again?

This isn't a classic you can rebuild. Its failed once, it is junk, throw it away.

[basroil]

This isn't a classic you can rebuild. Its failed once, it is junk, throw it away.

By all means take it apart & play with the platters but it's only an ornament at this point.

Moppie, I think joeseph is right on this one. Old hdd+solder = great techno butterfly or angel ornament. If you are lucky, you might even have enough pieces to put it on a chirstmas tree (or you can probably make a menorah, pointer to the mecca, etc). It's not junk yet, unless you aren't creative enough ;)

[peterbj7]

Try and save it again so it can fail again?

This isn't a classic you can rebuild. Its failed once, it is junk, throw it away.

No, I think he may have produced this problem himself by zero filling the drive. I've never done it myself but I have heard of others who have had problems. All I'm suggesting is that he try to get back to where he started from. If there really is a hardware fault then without doubt he should get a replacement drive.

[Moppie]

I've been storing to a Western Digital 320GB external hard drive that is acting up (CHKDSK is running at start up and finding bad clusters).


No, I think he may have produced this problem himself by zero filling the drive. I've never done it myself but I have heard of others who have had problems. All I'm suggesting is that he try to get back to where he started from. If there really is a hardware fault then without doubt he should get a replacement drive.


Sounds like something went wrong with the drive during regular use backing up photos.

I've been storing to a Western Digital 320GB external hard drive that is acting up (CHKDSK is running at start up and finding bad clusters).




You might be able to get it working again, only to have it fail 2 months or 2 years later.
It is simply not worth the risk.