Need to buy more disk space....how much and where?

[daltonandclairesmom]

I am currently backing up on a Seagate 500GB but my internal only has 4% availability left on it and I have a ton of RAW files that I need to keep on there right now plus some I haven't even finished editing yet. Needless to say I have to buy more space!!! Where can I buy it, how much should I get and how much should I look at spending?
Thanks,
Heather

[footballdude2k3]

i would look into western digital internal drives with a dock, the new seagates are having bad bad failure rates. i would say get 2 1tb drives so you can put the same thing on both, can never be too careful, if you find a good deal you should be able to get all that for around $200

[pwm2]

Remember that storing everything on two connected disks protects from one disk failing. It doesn't protect from an evil software formatting all attached drives.

[Wilt]

Consider an externally connected harddrive, perhaps one which is a network accessed drive which is connected on ethernet LAN. Expansion via USB is not the only way to do it.

[DennisW1]

I am currently backing up on a Seagate 500GB but my internal only has 4% availability left on it and I have a ton of RAW files that I need to keep on there right now plus some I haven't even finished editing yet. Needless to say I have to buy more space!!! Where can I buy it, how much should I get and how much should I look at spending?
Thanks,
Heather

Just picked up two Seagate 1TB SATA 7200rpm drives at Best Buy for $99/ea. I run them in a Raid1 array so I needed a matched pair.

I'm sure somewhere else might have 'em a few bucks cheaper but that seemed like a pretty good deal to me.

I also so a weekly full backup to a WD MyBook external 1TB drive, Raid1 protects from a catastrophic failure of one of the disks, but not from software disasters or malware or viruses.

If I do an important project during that week I run another backup just for safety's sake.

[daltonandclairesmom]

Ok...another question about external drives. Mine is suppose to automatically back-up everyday. Honestly, I haven't tried to pull anything off of it since I bought it so I have never checked it. I went to try and do so today and can't figure anything out! Am I suppose to do something (ex: encryption- decryction) everytime it backs a file up? If not, why can't I seem to find anything on the Seagate?

[Jon]

Remember that storing everything on two connected disks protects from one disk failing. It doesn't protect from an evil software formatting all attached drives.Or from a controller failing, taking out both disks, or from a user inadvertently deleting the wrong file from the wrong place. I use multiple HDDs, most of them off-line. As I retire a camera, I'll archive the RAW files from it to still another drive, leaving the JPEGs on the main volume(s) for search purposes.

[daltonandclairesmom]

Ok...another question about external drives. Mine is suppose to automatically back-up everyday. Honestly, I haven't tried to pull anything off of it since I bought it so I have never checked it. I went to try and do so today and can't figure anything out! Am I suppose to do something (ex: encryption- decryction) everytime it backs a file up? If not, why can't I seem to find anything on the Seagate?



ps- plz use non-techy terms if you can. I am so not a computer minded person!!!!!

[pwm2]

A number of harddisks are sold with a backup feature.

Some comes with a program you can install and configure to automatically do a backup every night. If you don't install the program and set up the scheduler, you will not get any backups.

Some disks has a little button on the disk. Whenever you press the button, the computer starts a program that performs a backup. If you haven't installed that program, the button will not do anything.

You don't have a backup unless you have proved that you can restore the data from it. This in addition to all the other requirements, such as having multiple copies of the data on multiple media, and having copies at different locations so a fire doesn't destroy everything.

[pwm2]

Or from a controller failing, taking out both disks, or from a user inadvertently deleting the wrong file from the wrong place. I use multiple HDDs, most of them off-line. As I retire a camera, I'll archive the RAW files from it to still another drive, leaving the JPEGs on the main volume(s) for search purposes.
Or the dreaded power-supply failure, where a lot of things powered by the computer gets smoked by a too high supply voltage. I only killed a motherboard and a memory card reader when a high-quality PSU decided that 7V was better than 5V...