External Hard Drives (EHD)

[Mr-H]

Thing of buying one of these for two reasons – added security and increased storage. However – before I do, I wonder if I might get answers to some questions please. There seems to be two physical sizes – 2.5 and 3.5 inch. Why, and which is recommended? As far as the size of the disk, my laptop has a hard drive of 250GB; I assume that the EHD should be greater than this, do I need to consider 350 or 500GB or even greater? Should it be totally portable (i.e. powered via the USB of the parent pc, or does it need its own power source? I seem to have read somewhere that even the Operating System should be moved/copied to the EHD – is this correct? I have an Advent laptop, and had to create restore disks etc. I never received a System Disk. Finally (I think) which EHD would you recommend please?

[ChuckFickens]

Wow lots of questions..... and take a deep breath!

2.5 inch drives are based on laptop drives, they are physically smaller and don't require a separate mains power supply as they will be powered from the USB ports. 3.5 inch drives are based on desktop drives and are larger physically and will require a mains power supply.

For size, get as large as you can afford but there is not need for it to be larger than your internal hard drive (though you probably won't get one smaller than 250GB these days)

Which is recommended depends on if you want portable or not.... 2.5s are more portable than 3.5s

No you can not put your operating system on the EHD and you should not install any programs onto it either, you can only store your personal data files on it (music, films, pictures, documents etc etc)

and to be honest, brand isn't a huge concern for an EHD... look at Tescos, they are doing some good deals on EHDs at the moment.

http://direct.tesco.c...26&btnResultSort.y=10

[Mr-H]

Thanks Chuck. Lots of my AB questions have been answered by you - here's another - How good a likeness of you is your AB pic?

[society]

Chuck, you're a nice intelligent guy, and I read just about all your post because they are mostly informative and educational But, now I can't because this one of your avatars is horrid and might give me nightmares if I look at it. Please, please change it. The gentleman before this was quite nice.

[ChuckFickens]

LOL...Mr-h... it looks a little like me on a very bad day :)

society, OK I've changed it back to the previous pic, Which is really me.

[society]

Thanks Chuck. This one is nice!

[VHG]

You only need to buy a 2.5" portable EHD drive if you expect to be using a laptop and the EHD outdoors, or on the move, or where there is no mains socket.

If you expect to be near a mains socket most of the time buy a 3.5".

Generally 3.5" are cheaper than 2.5" so you can get a 1Tb 3.5" for about £50, but for the same price on a 2.5" you may only get a 500Gb.

I would go for a 1Tb 3.5" assuming you will mostly be based by a mains socket.

To be honest nowadays it is worth having more than one EHD. An EHD can easily be dropped and stopped working so having a couple of EHDs and backing up to both is added security.

[VHG]

You ask about moving or copying the Operating System to the EHD.

Chuck said no, but he meant no you should not INSTALL the operating system to the EHD.

But some people do "backup" their whole operating system to the EHD.

But you say you have Windows recovery disks, and as long as you make sure all your personal files are backed up to the EHD then you should be OK.

But if you fancy backing up your operating system then a product like Acronis True Image will do it for you.

[anotheoldgit]

Is there any way one can store personal data files on both disks at the same time?

For example if one was working on a document and clicked to save it onto the computer's hard drive, could it also be stored at the same time on the portable disk?

So in the end everything was duplicated.