budget hard drives as backup

As of late my computer is starting to run slower then usual. I've used up 74.4gb from my hard drive with just about 27gb left. A good portion of the space used is all my photo's i have on the computer. What I want to do is get a seperate hard drive or whatever is recommended to take all my photo's out of my computer and put them on this drive to free up space.

I'de like to spend no more then $150 (saving for wedding/house). I've looked at b&h and get confused one what to get, Portable Drivers?
Desktop drives?

I have one of those lil usb2 drives from sandisk, but I honestly dont feel comfortable using just that. I will use it as a secondary backup. I hate using cds/dvd's. Sister likes to just throw them around looking for her stuff.

And yes I searched, but just got really confused reading about different types of backup solutions.

Your computer doesn't run slower because you have anumber of GB of pictures on it. It runes slower because you have more programs installed now than previously, and because you have not defragmented the hard drive.

Never store the data on just one media. If you buy an external box, look at for example Seagate - they give 5 year warranty. Do not be too tempted by Maxtor or Lacie units - I have seen quite a lot of posts about people overheating their drives.

The little USB2 drive you have is no worse than any other. It's just that you need to duplicate your images to more media. Do you have a friend that can store a couple of CD/DVD for you? That would give you one copy that is protected from fire.

pwm2 is absolutely correct. You have 27 gig left. You don't have a space issue at all at this point. I would back up all your photos to the external drive, then run a defrag on your internal drive.

I also 2nd the Seagate drives. You should be able to get a 500gb usb drive for under $150. Try www.newegg.com. I didn't find anything decent for a decent price at B&H the last time I looked there.

Define "running slower than usual". There could be 10 things causing your pc to run slow.

I work for a company that stores (archives) medical images, trust me, you don't want all your photos in one spot. Removable media can also be suspect. To many things can effect a CD/DVD.

2005GLI wrote in post #3578148
As of late my computer is starting to run slower then usual. I've used up 74.4gb from my hard drive with just about 27gb left.

As mentioned, make sure you do a spyware scan (ad-aware is a good one, free too), and then defrag your HD.

Storage has become less expensive lately. I just bought a 500Gb external storage to free up my 200Gb HD. Western's Digital MyBook is one of the more reliable external storage series. You can get one below $150.

At Staples
At newegg.com
At Buy.com ($122 with Google Checkout)

Hope that helps.

thanks for the tips on the backup guys. As for defraging the computer and running spy/adware. My sister is pretty good at doing that atleat every 2 weeks to once a month.

The only way to describe the computer running slower is, upon initial startup taking forever to finally get done loading. I have yahoo im automatically sign on upon start up. It takes nearly 6+ minutes for it to finally popup and ready to go. Downloading some pics or movies not to keep on the computer but just to view are taking longer. Hell even saving them takes forever now. Overall performance is down.
Im sure some of this had to do with my stupid/horrible/cant stand it timewarner broadband cable internet.

Are you low on memory?

Have you a lot of auto-start programs?

If you open the task manager and looks at the third page. When you don't do anything with your machine, is the CPU bar close to zero percent?

If you look at the box "Commit Charge (K)" - what are the three values?

2005GLI wrote in post #3581355
The only way to describe the computer running slower is, upon initial startup taking forever to finally get done loading. I have yahoo im automatically sign on upon start up. It takes nearly 6+ minutes for it to finally popup and ready to go. Downloading some pics or movies not to keep on the computer but just to view are taking longer. Hell even saving them takes forever now. Overall performance is down.
Im sure some of this had to do with my stupid/horrible/cant stand it timewarner broadband cable internet.

That sounds like my AMD 300mHz K6-2 128Mb RAM box . If your computer is better than that, you should enjoy more speed. I seriously recommend you download Ad-awarefrom Lavasoft and do a full scan. It is free and it is a non-invasive piece of program. I have used it on several friends who complained about their computer speed, and have seen huge improvement.

Another thing, as pwm2 mentioned, make sure no program is auto-started unnecessarily. Go to Yahoo IM Preferences. Turn off the "Start YM when Windows starts". I have seen people's system tray is a mile long when Windows loads but 3/4 of the programs don't need to start automatically.

Based on what you described, i don't think it is your Time Warner broadband internet's fault. One way to find out is, go to www.speedtest.net and log your download and upload speed. You should not experience that kind of sluggishness if the speedtest reading is 256kb/s download and 128kb/s upload, or faster. Give it a try and let us know the speed you find out. Plus the specs of your computer.

500GB USB 2.0 eSATA External Hard Drive w/ Panda Software : $79 After Rebate

Ripped from Fatwallet.com

OR
Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - WDG1U5000N : $133 Shipped (No Rebate), $123 Shipped if new to google checkout

http://www.buy.com …202418917.html?​adid=17662

Also ripped fromfatwallet.com

or do you mean on the go? something like this then?

INOi HD182-20 USB 2.0 20GB Portable External Photo HardDisk

http://www.microcenter​.com ….phtml?product_​id=0260160
After rebate about 40 dollars for a USB 2.0 250 gig . Can't get much cheaper - if you don't mind the hassle of rebates .

Another thing that can slow you down are cookies in browser . If you visit a lot of sites , you have a lot of them
BE FORE WARNED - IF YOU EMTPY YOU BROWER CACHE YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOUR PASSWORDS .
Emptying it will speed up start-up time . when you get another drive , backup entire drive to it , restart off new drive and time it . Now empty cache and restart - if it's your problem , you will know right away if not - try more memory - but get another drive first .
Try norton system works . It will / can check for programs you have not used in weeks - months - years .
Talk to your sister - she may know someone who has a tune up program she can borrow - if it works by one - if it doesn't - you haven't lost anything --
BUT BACK-UP EVERYTHING BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING .

If the problem is slow start up then it's probably a lot of (unnecessary) programs starting up and running in the background.

If you or your sister know what you are doing, then take a look what's running and the resources its using in Task Manager and you can probably find some stuff to turn off at start up via MSCONFIG.

If you've got a dreaded Dell with DVD player then there will probably be a process running called PCMService.exe, which is related to Dell's Media Experience. This uses a ton of memory and you should configure it off at start-up (if you use a DVD it will auto run anyway).

Another piece of useless bloatware is OutlookAddinSetup (supplied with Dell's with Outlook) which can use 100% CPU. You can remove this Add/Remove Programs.

Also windows update (wuauclt.exe) is notorious for using up to 100% CPU at start up, but is a necessary evil

External hard drives continue to drop in price. I have two western digital drives, which I really like. One is a My Book (250gb) and the other is a portable Passport (120gb). I back up to both. The portable drive travels with my laptop in it's case, and the My Book stays at home.

Since you only have $150, I recommend getting a 500 gb My Book which should fit within your budget. When you have some more money, buy a second drive.

For now, I have to agree with the others that it's the programs you have in your computer that is slowing it down. Keep your photos in there and back up to the external drive you buy.