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THE HCP

THE HCP

NorthEastPortland'sFinest
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Just dropped my WD My Passport 500gb external hard drive on the floor. Fuckin' thing won't mount and the warranty is up on it of course. I have always just gone to BestBuy for stuff, but where do you guys recommend I buy my replacement? I use it on the road, so a small one similar to it would be best.
 
amazon is the cheapest usually. sometimes office depot or staples has good sales, best buy rarely does.
 
I saw a WD 1.5TB drive there also, but have never heard of bumble buy before.
 
Has anyone here ever done a full restore from a backup drive? It just seems too much for me so I still have a Seagate backup drive waiting to be restored.
 
HCP said:
Just dropped my WD My Passport 500gb external hard drive on the floor. Fuckin' thing won't mount and the warranty is up on it of course. I have always just gone to BestBuy for stuff, but where do you guys recommend I buy my replacement? I use it on the road, so a small one similar to it would be best.
Click to expand...

I got one of these for my macbook pro:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/EliteALmini/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

Do NOT get a USB drive. The USB ports on the MacBook are USB 2.0, which is half the speed of FireWire 800.

The OWC Mercury Elite Pro is about the size of a mouse and plugs into your Mac's FireWire port and doesn't need a power cable. It gets its power from the Mac via the FireWire cable.

SSD is fast, but expensive - and limited in space.

The 7200 RPM drives are faster than the 5400 RPM ones.

When connected to your laptop, the external drive will be as fast as an internal one.

I got the 750G 7200RPM version for $169 a couple months ago. Looks like they upped their price. I partitioned it (with disk utility) to 250G and 500G, and use the 250G for time machine backup. The 500G 7200 RPM one is $169...

You will love it since you don't need to plug it into the wall and your computer, it's tiny so it fits in your luggage or laptop bag easier, it's fast, etc.

It's also brushed aluminum so it matches your laptop.

My second choice would be a bus-powered LaCie drive (powered over firewire). I don't think they come in brushed aluminum though.

When you start shopping for bus powered firewire drives, the choices really drop to a few really good ones.
 
I suspect that no average guy in history has ever totally succeeded doing a full restore, and we are all being fooled into buying these things.
 
Remember when I used to cite stats in my posts? And give links to those stats? That ended 6 months ago because my Favorites/Bookmarks are in a small backup hard drive, gathering a layer of dust next to a crashed computer. It'll take a year to build up my basketball stat Favorites again.

When you read reviews of backup drives, all you see is the speed or the ease of initial installation. You never read about whether it's easy to restore from them, because no one ever does. They just give up like I did. because picking through a hundred gigabytes and 10 years of stuff would take me a year.

Even if you have Seagate Replica which I did, you cannot just tell it to restore the whole drive unless the new destination is identical to the crashed hard drive and in the same computer. What normally happens is that you buy a new, different hard drive to put into your old computer. No, what really happens is that since your computer is a few years old when it crashes, you buy a new computer, with a new version of the operating system like Windows. The format of the files is now different from those in your backup drive. The only way to restore is to pick through each of the million files in your backup, trying to batch system files from data files.

So you don't do it. Well, I just wanted to make you feel good about buying your new backup hard drive.
 
I've restored from time machine backups (Mac OS). It's pretty slick.

I've restored from regular backup files too many times to count.

Generally, you don't need to back up your whole machine, just your documents, music files, etc. If you have those on an external drive, you can reformat and reinstall your operating system and applications from CD.
 
In 10 years I saved many kinds of word processor documents in many different folders. In many utilities and games, many data files were automatically saved in the folders created by their installation. For example, Sims maintains many files of ongoing games. A world atlas utility has your preferences saved and history of cities searched. This is true for a hundred utilities and games I had.

It gets worse. In 10 years they had to reformat my hard drive a couple of times and everything to that point was saved into a folder each time. Also, I converted from ME to XP and added a second hard drive. It would be like merging several hard drives into one new one.

When you talk to someone like the Best Buy Geek Squad they say, "Oh it's easy, just restore your one Documents folder, which includes your one Pictures folder and your one Music folder. Do you have one or two other files you want to restore? That'll be $150." I know they'll lose most of what I consider valuable, so no sale. It would take my personal loving care to examine each folder to separate system files from data files, and then move the data files into the new computer in which I have already installed the system files of each utility and game.

When I look in a search engine for tips and experiences from people who have restored, I find nothing. I think only experts do this, and they probably miss 99% of what the computer owner values and wants restored. I don't think regular people even try, once they realize it will take them hundreds of hours and they'll probably still screw it up. I hope you'll tell me how I'm wrong.
 
Denny Crane said:
I got one of these for my macbook pro:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/EliteALmini/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

Do NOT get a USB drive. The USB ports on the MacBook are USB 2.0, which is half the speed of FireWire 800.
Click to expand...

But is the speed boost really worth it for a backup drive? The initial backup can take some time, for sure, but you can just start it at night and it will be done by morning. After that, the incremental backups rarely take more than 10 minutes, and they just run invisibly in the background, so the benefit of the extra speed afforded by Firewire is negligible. I've never picked up a FW drive, for the very reasons you listed -- they're harder to find in bus-powered, portable forms. USB may be slower, but there are a ton of options at half the cost of their FW counterparts.
 
TripTango said:
But is the speed boost really worth it for a backup drive? The initial backup can take some time, for sure, but you can just start it at night and it will be done by morning. After that, the incremental backups rarely take more than 10 minutes, and they just run invisibly in the background, so the benefit of the extra speed afforded by Firewire is negligible. I've never picked up a FW drive, for the very reasons you listed -- they're harder to find in bus-powered, portable forms. USB may be slower, but there are a ton of options at half the cost of their FW counterparts.
Click to expand...

I think the speed is worth it. I only use 1/3 of the external drive for backups.

I specifically went for the FW drive so I wouldn't need to plug two things into the wall to use my laptop.
 
Denny Crane said:
I think the speed is worth it. I only use 1/3 of the external drive for backups.

I specifically went for the FW drive so I wouldn't need to plug two things into the wall to use my laptop.
Click to expand...

My external USB drive is bus-powered -- you don't need FW for that particular feature.
 
TripTango said:
My external USB drive is bus-powered -- you don't need FW for that particular feature.
Click to expand...

Right. If you have USB 3, then you get a fast transfer of, say, your music collection, too. But the MacBook Pros only have USB 2.
 
Denny Crane said:
Right. If you have USB 3, then you get a fast transfer of, say, your music collection, too. But the MacBook Pros only have USB 2.
Click to expand...

I still don't quite follow... I have a MBP as well, and my external USB drive still requires no power cord. Are you just talking about speed here?
 
TripTango said:
I still don't quite follow... I have a MBP as well, and my external USB drive still requires no power cord. Are you just talking about speed here?
Click to expand...

"fast transfer" implies speed.

A USB 2.0 hard drive is suitable for backup (not so fast, though) and for secondary storage that you don't care about the speed. The firewire drive at 7200 RPM is like having a drive built in to your system - it's that fast.

If your use for the external drive is to store and view lots of photos or for video storage and manipulation, then the USB is going to be noticeably slow.
 
Denny Crane said:
"fast transfer" implies speed.

A USB 2.0 hard drive is suitable for backup (not so fast, though) and for secondary storage that you don't care about the speed. The firewire drive at 7200 RPM is like having a drive built in to your system - it's that fast.

If your use for the external drive is to store and view lots of photos or for video storage and manipulation, then the USB is going to be noticeably slow.
Click to expand...

Got it -- we are agreed on that point, then. USB is great for backups, but less than ideal for media that you use actively. I was just confused by your earlier statement that you went with FireWire so you "wouldn't need to plug two things into the wall" to use your laptop. There's no reason to have anything plugged into the wall with portable USB drives...
 
TripTango said:
Got it -- we are agreed on that point, then. USB is great for backups, but less than ideal for media that you use actively. I was just confused by your earlier statement that you went with FireWire so you "wouldn't need to plug two things into the wall" to use your laptop. There's no reason to have anything plugged into the wall with portable USB drives...
Click to expand...

I was speaking of the specific drive I recommended. And suggesting he get a bus powered drive.
 
Thought, I'd just bump this thread instead of starting a new one. Anyone know where I can get a PS3 the cheapest?
 
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