USB Storage and Backup

[midlandmorgan]

Howdy...I am running 2 100g HDs and am running out of room...Does anyone know if there is a reliable USB-based hard drive system? My two existing units would do all the work, so all I need is something that will act as a storage/archiving system only (speed not necessary...accuracy and reliablity are).

I do not have any PCI slots left, and I really have no interest in firewire at the moment.

Thanks in advance!

[TeeCee]

Well, you can get USB based CD-recorders and hard drives. If the USB hard drives use regular drives in USB cases or if USB to IDE adapters exist, you could buy commodity hard drives and use them for archiving by just copying files.

[David Klausner]

You've got 200 GB of material on your drives? I would strongly suggest getting some sort of backup/archival system in place. That's an awful lot of data to be lost if something catastrophic happens.

[TeeCee]

David Klausner said
You've got 200 GB of material on your drives? I would strongly suggest getting some sort of backup/archival system in place. That's an awful lot of data to be lost if something catastrophic happens.
Now come on Dave! He's coming here for assistance in backing up his data and you're telling him about the problem he's already identified. Your a solution provider. Help this man find a solution ;). I, too, was strongly tempted to reprimand him for having almost 200MB of non-backed up data, but I resisted.

By the way, how does one in Midland accumulate so much data?!? I mean, you're in Midland ;).

[Justin]

kanguru and some other companies make empty ide chassis that connect to a pc using usb or usb2.0 connections. You could then buy a case of empty drives and transfer the data, and then put the drives in a safe place. They wouldn't be fast enough to edit on, but perfectly fine for backups.

Rule of thumb for backups though, 2 types of media, always. Hard drives go bad, CD's get scratched. Make 2 copies of everything and put them in seperate locations.

I'd recommend that anyone w/ your amount of data invest in a cd-burner and a safe or safe deposit box, make sure that you have archives somewhere just in case murphy's law takes effect.

[midlandmorgan]

Don't have 200G yet...that's what I am trying to avoid....the Kanguru looks to be just what I am looking for...linking up shortly....CD copies have been made but because of the failure rate of reimporting CD audio backups I want to make double sure that there is another hopefully usable version floating around...hence leaving stuff on my audio drive for now...

Living in Midland is not as droll as you might think...Shooooooooooot, we got 'lectricity AND plumbing, right here in the same building! :cool:

Most of what's in temp storage are commercials I've done for local and regional radio airplay...I keep the masters on disc (and hard drive), then drop in the voiceovers as needed...it would be pretty tough to re-do those if the clients wanted the same song but with a slightly different mix (happens a lot!) to give listeners the impression of a whole new campaign.

Thanks for the info!

Hyuk-hyuk-hyuk! Now where I leave that dad-blastit horse? Oh yeah! Right next to my dozen or so oil wells...:D

[VINYLWILLY]

I just bought a Maxtor 120GB external USB2.0 harddrive a couple of weeks ago. Added a USB2.0 card to the computer and was up and running in about 30 minutes. With USB2.0 the backup transfers are real fast. 900 MB files in seconds. Get a couple of those and start archiving and don't forget the CD backups as well.

willy

[TeeCee]

Tom's Hardware just did a review on a few Firewire and USB drives: http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/02q3/020827/index.html. You may want to take note that they do not recommend external drives as backup due to the possibility of mechanical failure. Their words not mine.

[Justin]

yeah, you definetly want your backups on a media that is archival, drives can break, and magnetic media can be unstable at times. CD's and DVD's would probably be safest, but be sure to make more than one copy and keep them somewhere away from light, dust, and heat.

Many large businesses make it a policy for insurance reasons to have their backups taken off - site each day or week and so that if there is a fire or burgulary at least one copy of the data will survive.

[TeeCee]

CompUSA is having an online blowout of some external Que products. I can't verify just how good a deal they are.