DVD Writer or Ext. Drive? Decisions!

[Ant]

Good afternoon! I have a question....

At the moment, I have about 60GB worth of ghost images sitting on our server at work. Now ideally I'd like to put them somewhere else!

In your experience, what works out the better option? Going for an external DVD writer, and chucking them all on DVDs or getting an external hard drive? (If you hadn't guessed it needs to be external!)

I have a couple of worries: If I go for the hard drive, what happens if it crashes and I loose my images? But it will be quicker! If I go for the DVD option, it will be much slower and will require more effort to just quickly restore or create images!

I was looking at the Lacie range of external drives, and any old external DVD writer, using USB2...

What you reckon??

Cheers

Ant

[tommylittleboy@]

An external harddisk will certainly be the quicker of the 2, however I managed to backup 40GB on my 16xDVD R all in 1 evening, so I doubt 60GB will be too much of a problem.

EDIT: I should have mentioned...once a dvd-r or dvd+r is burnt, its unwritable any more making it the perfect candidate for backups. A hard-disk can become corrupted, may be damaged if it is dropped. Yup..go for the DVDR option, and get some decent dvd/jewel cases as well if the data has value.

[Ant]

An external harddisk will certainly be the quicker of the 2, however I managed to backup 40GB on my 16xDVD R all in 1 evening, so I doubt 60GB will be too much of a problem.

EDIT: I should have mentioned...once a dvd-r or dvd+r is burnt, its unwritable any more making it the perfect candidate for backups. A hard-disk can become corrupted, may be damaged if it is dropped. Yup..go for the DVDR option, and get some decent dvd/jewel cases as well if the data has value.

Yeah, exactly! I think a hard disk would be the best option when it comes to speed and ease of use, but like you suggested, if something goes wrong, I'm stuffed!

I guess one option is to go for the external drive for day to day use, but burn the images to DVD once for a permanent backup! Going to go tell the boss I want both now!

Cheers

Ant

[Marcos]

External HD, I made a similar decision a year or two ago. I filled up my laptop and decided to get a DVD writer to back up the not so necessary things. But i found that i could not be bothered to hook up the drive and look through my disks in order to find a certain file, inconvenient.

Get an IcyBox and a Samsung drive (my preference ), and a dvd writer for permanent, occasional back ups,

[Jonny M]

I'd say 1 DVD per image.

[Steve]

Get an IcyBox

As much as I like my Icy Box, I cannot recommend it. The PSU for it has, over time, decided not to power larger hard drives.

[Marcos]

As much as I like my Icy Box, I cannot recommend it. The PSU for it has, over time, decided not to power larger hard drives.

So has it degraded, or was it not powerful enough in the first place?

[dodgybob]

what size hard drive did it have problems with? The 200gb seagate i have in one runs fine.

[Firelord]

As others have said, get an external drive for everyday use but take regular backups to DVD so that if a drive fails you have a backup on DVD

[Ant]

Thanks for all your input guys!

Well it turns out my boss has already got an external DVD writer for me! So thats handy!!! So I will use that to create a permanent backup of my images!

That also means I can go get an external drive for everyday use!

Durability wise, whats better? Going for an enclosure and seperate drive? Or something dedicated, like the Lacie drives? I won't be transporting it much, but it would be good if was quite tough!

How good are these enclosures like the iceybox? I've not used one ever...

I'm quite liking this...

Ant

[Firelord]

I have used the IcyBox 2.5" drive enclosures and they are great comes with a little pouch to carry it around in safely and becuase it is 2.5" drives doesn't require an external power source other than USB.

A 80GB Toshiba MK8026GAX 2.5" Notebook HDD - 5400rpm, ATA-5, 16MB Cache ( I like tosh laptop drives) and a IcyBox caddy is £105 inc VAT

[Ant]

I have used the IcyBox 2.5" drive enclosures and they are great comes with a little pouch to carry it around in safely and becuase it is 2.5" drives doesn't require an external power source other than USB.

A 80GB Toshiba MK8026GAX 2.5" Notebook HDD - 5400rpm, ATA-5, 16MB Cache ( I like tosh laptop drives) and a IcyBox caddy is £105 inc VAT

These IcyBoxes seem to be very popular!

I like the idea of not having to have a seperate power, but realistically portability is not a requirement.

I really need quality and reliability... Cost is not really a problem either, and size is not a huge deal, but if I can get a 160GB drive for the same price as a nice compact 80GB, I'd rather go for the 160GB.

I will see what else I can dig up...

Cheers

Ant

[Timmy!!!]

Go for the hard drive opotion, it is way easier and faster.

It is really unlikely that your server hard drive and your back up hard drive will both die at the same time, so if one dies you have the other one to recover information from

[Steve]

what size hard drive did it have problems with? The 200gb seagate i have in one runs fine.

200GB Maxtor

[Matt1eD]

Just get a 20 quid external (IDE not for performance but backups) drive caddy and a 40quid 60 gig quid drive. And you've got your backup solution - of course, use the DVD option occasionally as as you say drive would be faster and could get corrupted or die.

I do the just HD option as a backup; takes under an hour to backup my vital stuff (about 40 gigs) - USB2.

[Marcos]

A 80GB Toshiba MK8026GAX 2.5" Notebook HDD - 5400rpm, ATA-5, 16MB Cache ( I like tosh laptop drives)

I have a toshiba 40GB laptop drive in my laptop right now, but because the rest of the system is silent i have to listen to the drive's seek noise every couple of seconds. It can actually get quite loud and "crunchy" when it's moving stuff around.

Bought the MK40somethingGAS because the reviews said it was the quietest, nowhere near as quiet as the silent IBM travelstar that was in there to begin with, nor quiter than the Hitachi I bought afterwards (which i believe is originally an IBM