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I've liberated a hard drive out of an old PC and the wife wants to use it to backup some photos.
I've had a look on ebay but there are many available and many price ranges.
What is decent and reliable without spending loads on?
Hi Alan, any would do, im using a cheap one what i got from a computer repairs store. Its just housing to insert hdd and the usb lead and connector. Reliability its fine and not any brand just plain case and connectors works fine for using the hdd for external. Hope that helps.
Cheers DM I'll have another look based on that info.
As above, I've always just gone for whatever correct interface is cheapest and not too unpleasant looking, if the interface fails it's easily replaced. That said, USB3 is worthwhile if you're shuffling a lot of data about frequently and if the device you're backing up supports it. IME the reliability will be down to your HDD - don't forget it's probably got a fair few miles on the clock already.
I've had several of different brands and all had issues with USB dropping and causing disk corruption. Usually when transferring a large amount of data. One has an eSATA socket also and tried that (as my desktop has a socket for it), but still the same problem.
Yet I've got dedicated external USB drives and no problem at all with them.
I wonder if it's the drives though. The ones I've tried in enclosures are fast spinning hi speed SATA drives, whereas the dedicated portable drives tend to be lower speed eco drives.
They're mostly generic rebranded things anyway. As above USB3 makes the initial back-up much quicker.
Thanks all.
will look for USB3.0 compatible and see what drops out.
Is the drive that good or that big? You can buy a 2.5" usb drive pretty cheaply now and it will be powered from usb so more convenient. Even if your current drive is a good one I'd be tempted to buy a NAS case for it [i]and[/i] buy a 2.5" usb drive. That'll give you two good and easy easy back up options. More is definitely better.
Could you not just put it inside your new PC?
Could you not just put it inside your new PC?
That wouldn't be a very good backup. It needs to be in something else stored somewhere else.
IF you want a bit more reliability, try Antec - had a nice enclosure with USB3 , eSATA and cooling - ran full time with no issues for a couple of years so far
Could you not just put it inside your new PC?
Already checked that option - not enough room in the case to fit it so going down the back-up route instead, could also possibly just use as an external drive to port around.
Spend £10-15 .. will search for a link for you later
If your backups are sporadic, you could plumb it in and just have it sitting on top of your pc while it transfers, then store it away after the transfer is complete. On a side note, "Karen's Replicator" is excellent, minimal, free backup software (for Windows).
More pricey option but you can get a NAS which will take hard drives, and use that as your backup over the network plus will do loads of other things (media, photos server etc). Good ones will also sync up with cloud storage as well so you have off site backup.