After reading the "Can u run BIAB from a flash drive?" thread on the main BIAB forum I started looking at external non-SSD hard drives that are USB 3.0 compatible. Looks like prices are very nice for 500 gig 5400 RPM drives (it's a slower drive). Prices are now down in the $40-$50 range.

What I see these kind of drives being useful for is for backing up your main PC/laptop periodically. It would be good for offsite backup of your music. The slower speed is not a factor if you're just using this to backup important files.

A couple of the low-cost PC hardware suppliers I use:

Micro Center Search Results

New Egg Search Results

The lowest price drive I see on both sites is the Matsunichi Inc. 500GB Portable SuperSpeed USB 3.0 External Hard Drive. It's cheaper at Micro Center, about $5 less.

I'll let you guys know if I pick one up. For saving your data, these prices are very affordable.

Thoughts, comments?

Agreed. I was just looking at these 3.0 drives last night (and 3.0 flash drives). I would also need a PCIe USB 3.0 card to run one at full speed. Or maybe an SATA adapter? Haven't looked at this part yet.

Always had great service from NewEgg.

Yeah, the PCI card would do it. These should work on PCs that are USB 2.0. It will just run at the USB 2.0 speed if that's what your PC is. In my case I am still on USB 2.0 but wanted an upgraded external drive so that it will be ready whenever I upgrade the PC.

Also for the computer geeks here, I use my own .BAT scripts to do backups to my other hard drives. I don't like re-copying an entire music directory or drive from one to another, it takes too long. I use xcopy commands that just look for changes to the files in the directories and it only copies those over to the backup.

To create your own, simply copy and paste the text between the lines into Notepad and name it YourFile.bat. Of course you'll need to change the directories to make it relevant to your PC. To find out what the commands mean, type xcopy /? in a command prompt window and you can also run each line of the file in a command window.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
D:
cd "\ADataFolders\Documents"
xcopy *.* "F:\Documents" /y /r /e /d

pause
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The D: command is there since the window usually opens to a C:\ drive folder. If your source is the C: drive, just use C:. So the F:\ is my external drive and I'm copying everything from the folders I 'cd' into. The *.* after xcopy means to copy everything that's in the 'cd' command. Once those files are copied to F:\, the next time I run this .BAT file, it will only copy the files that have changed. The one thing this doesn't do however is remove old files if you delete or rename them on the source drive. The pause command simply holds the command prompt window open for you to see the summary of the copy process. It will display "Press any key to continue". So after you read the files copied, hitting enter will close the window.

If you have more than one folder you want to copy, simply repeat the 'cd' and 'xcopy' lines in your .bat file for each extra copy process you want to add.

For anyone that wants to mess with this on their own PCs, feel free to ask me any questions if you need help.

That was fun. I taught DOS batch files back in the 80s.

Yeah, it's nice to know we can still use our old skills in these modern times of Windows 8.1 and beyond.

wd 2tb my passport red


http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=wd+2tb+my+passport+red&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Awd+2tb+my+passport+red

Sexy little beast fits in the palm of my hand

Yeah, prices on the larger sizes aren't too bad either. Thanks!

I dusted off my dos batch skills about 6 months ago for the first time in probably 10 years.

I do trade shows for my employer a few times a year and instead of handing out paper brochures that are sure to be tossed, for those that seem truly interested in our products, I hand out 2GB USB flash drives with show-appropriate materials loaded. Since I don't know how many I'll be giving out, I bring the unused sticks back with me and reformat and reload using a DOS batch routine.

-Scott

Just cut loose money on the 1 TB Matsunichi. Now that its been a few months since I posted the original thread for the 500 GB, the 1 TB was down to $59 at Micro Center.

After the 3TB was full I use a 4TB drive now for backup. Both are a Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive USB 3.0. They come with a backup softare installed. I do an incremental backup each week that takes usually less than 10 minutes, a full backup takes several hours. The advantage of the new backup software generation is that files are no more compressed. Each file is directly accessable. So if you destroy one of your files -- or even an entire drectory -- it is quite simple to restore that one.

I also have a portable USB 3.0 drive Toshiba "S-3600 - A" that was given to me. I use this one as a backup for my laptop. All the necessary softare is installed to run my installations using another laptop if mine fails. (I know some people who do have a second laptop for backup purposes. I'm not there, yet.)

Especially for backup purposes I do not recommend cheap drives. I prefer to use reliable drives from manufactureres with a good reputation. There are tests and reviews out there. And often it takes a while until a manufacturer with a bad reputation builds up a good reputation.

Guido

Thanks for the info Guido. I do incremental backups as well to save a little time.




I feel differently on this one. As long as my main PC drives are from a reliable manufacturer, I don't want to spend 4 times the money on a backup drive. Odds are that backup drive will run just as long as an expensive one. In the unlikely event that it does fail, I go out and grab another, it's a backup. Although Matsunichi drives do not have a long history like some of the others, they are gaining market share in the external drive world.

I've had that. The drive on my laptop, the computer I used to work with, -- some 12 years back -- quit. After I had a new drive and all software was back I went to my backup drive with all files copied to that drive and that one quit that very moment when I needed it. Some of the files I already had printed out, some I could recreate by doing the work again, some are lost forever.

Backups are a waste in time and other ressources -- until you need the access to a backup.

To me backups are way to valuable to trust sources without a history of reliability.

Guido

If you open up the external drives you will probably find the drive itself is from one of the well known manufacturers despite what it says on the outside. I've had good drives fail from firmware probs, and cheapos that run for ever. It is a game of luck, so don't depend too much on one backup drive if it is important.

I've used a Seagate external drive to backup files. Can an external drive hold everything that's on your PC, including the OS? Can the info then be downloaded to a new blank PC? Later, Ray

Yes. A lot of companies rely on that mechanism. When you start a new job, you'll be given a new pc with all the necessary software installed. That is done via "image copy".

A very quick internet search "image copy" and taking the fist link:

http://www.acronis.com/en-eu/personal/pc-backup/?adpos=1t1&creative=37604271414&device=c&matchtype=b&network=g&gclid=CJ2OyaH0xr4CFfQQtAodNVIAPQ

There are many more. If you have a stable running system that is free of malware, an image copy on an external disk freezes that system for later use.

Another possibility is to have two hard disks in your system connected via RAID. There is an option to constantly mirror your working disk on a backup disk.

Guido

Wow, it's been 3 1/2 years since this post and the prices for the 1 TB drives are still about the same. What gives? I guess we're in a holding pattern on the technologies here since then.

I've maxed out my 1 TB drive and it still runs great every week for backups.

I'll start shopping for a 2 TB replacement external USB 3 drive. Looking like good drives in the $65 - $80 price range....


EDIT: Ooh, found a deal here but it expires at MIDNIGHT tonight. 2 TB drive listed for $69 but when today's promo code is entered, $59. So I guess I spent about the same as I did on the 1 TB a few years ago.

Seagate 2TB Expansion Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0

Steve, does the 3.0 standard run appreciably faster than 2.0? I hate using USB externals because they spin so slow. Are the newer drives that run on the 3.0 bus much faster?

My machines are still on USB 2.0 so I couldn't tell you on 3.0 performance.

I do incremental backups so each week when I backup it doesn't take too long. Typically less than 1 Gig of copy each time and it only seems to less than a couple of minutes on that.

Yes. USB 3.0 is 10 times faster than USB 2 see here:

https://www.diffen.com/difference/USB_2.0_vs_USB_3.0

How much changes on your computer between backups that you even move a gig? If it's incremental, it only copies what has changed, right? I stopped running those when I started storing my data on separate drives, though I guess in a sense I DO back it up because after each session I copy F: to G: and the 2 are mirrors. As little as I go up there anymore, it's a small matter to do it manually that way.

I have really gotten lazy about music over the last year or so.

My new hobby of drone video footage. 4K HD Video runs about 1 Gig per 1 minute.

That's the main reason I'm full on the 1 TB backup now.

Yep. That'll do it, for sure

Raw footage on this one was 10 Gig.... ...which was about the complete hard drive space on the 1999 PC I used to have.

2017-09-24 - Breezy Island Flight (YouTube)

So I guess you could say your new hobby drones on and on?

I'd love to have a creative spurt again and write some songs. My life right now is pretty much consumed by trying to get this house ready to sell. I finally got the living room laminate flooring installed (to match the kitchen). In fact he finished that today. Now to start hard and fast thinking about the nightmare that is my bathroom which I hope do do just after the 1st of the year. I can do a lot of the prep during the time between Thanksgiving and New Years to keep my mind off how much I hate the holidays. Then to go into major debt to finish the RV and off I go, on a tour of PG Music forum member's driveways!!!

That is WAY cool. Does it take long to learn how to fly one of those? If you let it fly out of range does it just fall out of the sky? Does it record that video or send it back to your phone? Seems like adding any kind of storage would weight it down so I'm guessing you record it back at home base? Though I have never even seen one up close so I could be wrong by 180 degrees or so. I looked at a few of these things you have posted and they look really good.

--Does it take long to learn how to fly one of those?

Older models 3+ years ago, yes. Those would not hover in place, you had to continuously hold the sticks. Today's drones just start up, take off and hover until you grab the controls. Let go of the controls, the drone returns to hover. Lots of collision avoidance sensors too.

--If you let it fly out of range does it just fall out of the sky?

All the long course stuff I do like over the river is programmed by a Google Maps-like interface (Beginning of that video). Once you do your course design on the map, you download it to your phone and when the drone starts, it downloads the map to itself. If you lose range from controller to drone, it doesn't matter. The drone knows the rest of the route. Of course you program it wrong it can drop when it runs out of juice when you can't find it.

Also, if you are flying manually and it flies out of range of your controller, it will RTH (Return to Home) automatically.

--Does it record that video or send it back to your phone?

BOTH! Records it to a microSD card on the drone, no weight. My card is 64 Gig. That's the 4K video. It also records a lower quality video to the microSD that it simultaneously transmits to your phone screen.

Keep us posted on that. For some reason I thought you were already on the road.... Good Luck!

Spring, with any luck. Just finished the living room. Now on to the bathroom and then I can list.

I'll hit your driveway at some point! Of course, you'll see me coming via the drone....

That is way cool Steve. YT is just amazing isn't it? I happened onto a guy who lives aboard a 50 foot sailboat in the Caribbean and he's posted a whole bunch of drone vids. Breathtaking. Oh, that was his girlfriend, the boat was nice too...

Yet another use for drones was him navigating passages through nasty reefs into a small anchorage. She would pilot the drone about 50 feet above the boat looking down and you can easily see the very dangerous coral heads right next to the boat. With the drone he's looking at an iPad and driving right through middle of those as if the water had painted lines like a parking lot. Good stuff.

Bob

That's cool Bob.... I haven't invested in an iPad with the drone. The larger screen would be nice though. Just using the Samsung cell phone for video while piloting.

UPDATE: Prices are getting awesome for more storage..... 4TB drives have now dropped to $99 at most online retailers now like Amazon and New Egg. Oooohhh, 8TB.... I could back up my PC and both laptops with that.... DROOLS...

New Egg
Amazon - 4TB Western Digital WD - $99 - Just got this one for my DVR
Amazon - 8TB Seagate - $159