OT- External hard drive advice/ recommendations needed

Mom_To_5

HOLY CRAP!!

i go run on my treadmill for an hour and come back to see if there is anymore info in this thread and come back to 2 pages!!! I will have to read them in a bit to see what everyone else has said, for right now my shower is desperatley calling me!!!!

Phoenix_Rising

HOLY CRAP!!

i go run on my treadmill for an hour and come back to see if there is anymore info in this thread and come back to 2 pages!!! I will have to read them in a bit to see what everyone else has said, for right now my shower is desperatley calling me!!!!

Git outta here, stinky! The info will still be here upon your return!

AJCM

FYI lauryn, if all you want to do right this second is transfer the files to the new laptop, you can go to Bestbuy or something, and ask them if they have a "direct USB transfer cable" (wallmart wouldn't have this, it's too technical for them). Then you can use the Vista easy file and settings tranfer to do it. The cable should only be about 35 bucks, and it will allow you to shop online and find a FAR better deal and find something you really want instead of something that just works for you. Here is the link for microsoft's easy file transfer.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928635

It's pretty easy, there is a wizard to walk you through it. Especially if you really wanted to save your favorites, emails, settings...etc along with your pictures and music and stuff.
you just plug the cable into the new and old PC, then walk through the wizard, I used to do this all the time for customers.

Side note, this eliminates the need to copy the files twice.

Banks - Question if I may...

Is there anyway to back up my e-mails on Yahoo? And the address book? I use Yahoo for my business e-mailing, and losing all of that has crossed my mind.

Thanks for any advice!

SHBoss1673

FYI lauryn, if all you want to do right this second is transfer the files to the new laptop, you can go to Bestbuy or something, and ask them if they have a "direct USB transfer cable" (wallmart wouldn't have this, it's too technical for them). Then you can use the Vista easy file and settings tranfer to do it. The cable should only be about 35 bucks, and it will allow you to shop online and find a FAR better deal and find something you really want instead of something that just works for you. Here is the link for microsoft's easy file transfer.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928635

It's pretty easy, there is a wizard to walk you through it. Especially if you really wanted to save your favorites, emails, settings...etc along with your pictures and music and stuff.
you just plug the cable into the new and old PC, then walk through the wizard, I used to do this all the time for customers.

Side note, this eliminates the need to copy the files twice.

Banks - Question if I may...

Is there anyway to back up my e-mails on Yahoo? And the address book? I use Yahoo for my business e-mailing, and losing all of that has crossed my mind.

Thanks for any advice!

Good question, I think yahoo offers pop connectivity, if it does, you can download it to any email client (like outlook express or thunderbird, then you can save the folders any old way you like, copy them, zip them up...etc) I'll check, back in 5

SHBoss1673

ok, Yahoo mail doesn't do pop connections, but if you buy the mail plus option, it's 20 bucks a year, and you can. Basically they allow pop connecitons and forwarding. Which would allow you to do what you asked. Well worth it IMHO if you need protection for your email. One thing though, unless you're worried about deleting mail by accident, I wouldn't worry about Yahoo losing your mail, they have like 50 redundant servers, all of which are backed up, in various locations throughout the world. It would take a global disaster to fully lose Yahoo.

Phoenix_Rising

Maybe I should have entitled this thread "Ask Banks: The Digital Question and Answer Thread"

fatstrat

See, if you were bold, you would build a linux box out of one of your old computers, plug in all your old hard drives, software RAID them, build a giant 3 TB array out of all of it, throw it up on the Wireless N with Samba, and use an automatic free backup software to copy your main computer every 8 hours, that's what I do. LOL, I know I know, I'm such a nerd. But never once have I ever lost data!

No file encryption? Tsk, tsk. You obviously have no porn. I don't use encryption either, but I'm proud of my collection. You seem normal though. :laugh:

msarro

Worked in the industry about 12 years now. I personally always reccomend Western Digital products, simply because I've always had great luck with them and terrible luck with everyone else. However their warranties aren't what they used to be, and the other manufacturers have pretty well caught up. I got my western digital mybook for 90$, for 1TB of storage at staples.

By the way, check fatwallet.com and pricewatch.com for deals. Also, cruise staples, best buy, frys (if you have them) and other office stores. Usually someone somewhere is having a sale. Just make sure that you call and verify that they have them in stock before you go. Staples is notorious for saying they have them and then when you get there they've "just sold out but have this model thats only 30$ more." Stupid bait and switch.

SHBoss1673

See, if you were bold, you would build a linux box out of one of your old computers, plug in all your old hard drives, software RAID them, build a giant 3 TB array out of all of it, throw it up on the Wireless N with Samba, and use an automatic free backup software to copy your main computer every 8 hours, that's what I do. LOL, I know I know, I'm such a nerd. But never once have I ever lost data!

No file encryption? Tsk, tsk. You obviously have no porn. I don't use encryption either, but I'm proud of my collection. You seem normal though. :laugh:

nah, why? I don't have anything on here I care about, if someone wants to hack my netscreen (no small feat) they will be surprised to find nothing of much value. Plus I do packet analysis every couple of weeks to make sure there's no extra communication going on. If someone hacks my network, I'll find out about it eventually, and I really don't care, all I have is legal music, pictures, and some random document type stuff.

I have plenty of security at work, and use SSH or IPSEC for anything that goes over the VPN's at my office, I don't feel like slowing down my home network for security on something I really don't care about (plus it's a pain in the *kitten*!)

SHBoss1673

Worked in the industry about 12 years now. I personally always reccomend Western Digital products, simply because I've always had great luck with them and terrible luck with everyone else. However their warranties aren't what they used to be, and the other manufacturers have pretty well caught up. I got my western digital mybook for 90$, for 1TB of storage at staples.

By the way, check fatwallet.com and pricewatch.com for deals. Also, cruise staples, best buy, frys (if you have them) and other office stores. Usually someone somewhere is having a sale. Just make sure that you call and verify that they have them in stock before you go. Staples is notorious for saying they have them and then when you get there they've "just sold out but have this model thats only 30$ more." Stupid bait and switch.

see, now I find Seagate to be much more reliable than WD. Although seagate is much more of a business product then WD is. Dell uses Maxtor which I find amusing since maxtor HD's have a horrible track record. Seagate has far faster cache access times then the others. Seagate Barracuda's are kick *kitten* if you get the 15K versions of SAS, course that requires a SCSI controller, which is 200 bucks if you get a raid LSI card (the cheapest), but still far faster then SATA versions. Far more reliable too.

AJCM

ok, Yahoo mail doesn't do pop connections, but if you buy the mail plus option, it's 20 bucks a year, and you can. Basically they allow pop connecitons and forwarding. Which would allow you to do what you asked. Well worth it IMHO if you need protection for your email. One thing though, unless you're worried about deleting mail by accident, I wouldn't worry about Yahoo losing your mail, they have like 50 redundant servers, all of which are backed up, in various locations throughout the world. It would take a global disaster to fully lose Yahoo.

Thanks Banks! :flowerforyou: I've asked my webmaster (manages my business site) this question, many times, and he couldn't answer it!!! (He charges me $100 an hour - which I guess is the going rate, but I think he should be able to answer these questions at that rate!).

I basically print my address book every few months, save attachements to my computer, and I figure I am safe!

SHBoss1673

Thanks Banks! :flowerforyou: I've asked my webmaster (manages my business site) this question, many times, and he couldn't answer it!!! (He charges me $100 an hour - which I guess is the going rate, but I think he should be able to answer these questions at that rate!).

I basically print my address book every few months, save attachements to my computer, and I figure I am safe!

Hehe, that's cuz I'm BETTER then 99% of webmasters out there .

Seriously though, webmasters perform a very specific limited task, where I have what you would define as a wide set of skills with regards to computers and networking. I run an enterprise level, 24x7x365 dynamic access web portal for our fortune 500 clients, and they expect NO downtime ever. Plus I am a MS Certified DBA, I know IIS, Apache, MySQL, SQL server, many flavors of linux, I'm MCSE certified, I know Cisco routing, Layer 7 switching, WAN tech (BGP, OSPF), I'm certified in network security, I can build and breakdown a Checkpoint FW1 firewall, I know TDM switching, I'm currently part of the team building our VoIP application platform so I know SIP and H323 pretty well (I'm no programmer, but I know the ins and outs of VoIP). Why tell you all this junk? Cuz I know I suck at a lot of stuff, but there are 3 things I know I'm really good at, 1 is rollerblading (I was a certified Inline skating instructor in college), 2nd is Pitching (I'm a lefty pitcher, and have been for a very long time), and 3rd is Business computers and networking.
Do I know everything, hardly, I know plenty of guys smarter then me at this stuff, but I'm up there.
So if there is one subject you can trust my opinion on, it's computer technology (minus apples, blech!).

AJCM

Thanks Banks! :flowerforyou: I've asked my webmaster (manages my business site) this question, many times, and he couldn't answer it!!! (He charges me $100 an hour - which I guess is the going rate, but I think he should be able to answer these questions at that rate!).

I basically print my address book every few months, save attachements to my computer, and I figure I am safe!

Hehe, that's cuz I'm BETTER then 99% of webmasters out there .

Seriously though, webmasters perform a very specific limited task, where I have what you would define as a wide set of skills with regards to computers and networking. I run an enterprise level, 24x7x365 dynamic access web portal for our fortune 500 clients, and they expect NO downtime ever. Plus I am a MS Certified DBA, I know IIS, Apache, MySQL, SQL server, many flavors of linux, I'm MCSE certified, I know Cisco routing, Layer 7 switching, WAN tech (BGP, OSPF), I'm certified in network security, I can build and breakdown a Checkpoint FW1 firewall, I know TDM switching, I'm currently part of the team building our VoIP application platform so I know SIP and H323 pretty well (I'm no programmer, but I know the ins and outs of VoIP). Why tell you all this junk? Cuz I know I suck at a lot of stuff, but there are 3 things I know I'm really good at, 1 is rollerblading (I was a certified Inline skating instructor in college), 2nd is Pitching (I'm a lefty pitcher, and have been for a very long time), and 3rd is Business computers and networking.
Do I know everything, hardly, I know plenty of guys smarter then me at this stuff, but I'm up there.
So if there is one subject you can trust my opinion on, it's computer technology (minus apples, blech!).

Banks, I'm enamoured! All that techy language....

I pretty much trust everything you say anyway.

So, do you think I'm getting ripped off at $100/hr? I think I figured out part of the financial crisis problem - everyone is charging so darn much for services! (or I'm out of touch!). My cleaning lady charges $30/hr, my webmaster $100/hr, and a guy came by offering to clean my windows and wanted $200 and said it would take him an hour!?!?! What is happening these days!?

SHBoss1673

Thanks Banks! :flowerforyou: I've asked my webmaster (manages my business site) this question, many times, and he couldn't answer it!!! (He charges me $100 an hour - which I guess is the going rate, but I think he should be able to answer these questions at that rate!).

I basically print my address book every few months, save attachements to my computer, and I figure I am safe!

Hehe, that's cuz I'm BETTER then 99% of webmasters out there .

Seriously though, webmasters perform a very specific limited task, where I have what you would define as a wide set of skills with regards to computers and networking. I run an enterprise level, 24x7x365 dynamic access web portal for our fortune 500 clients, and they expect NO downtime ever. Plus I am a MS Certified DBA, I know IIS, Apache, MySQL, SQL server, many flavors of linux, I'm MCSE certified, I know Cisco routing, Layer 7 switching, WAN tech (BGP, OSPF), I'm certified in network security, I can build and breakdown a Checkpoint FW1 firewall, I know TDM switching, I'm currently part of the team building our VoIP application platform so I know SIP and H323 pretty well (I'm no programmer, but I know the ins and outs of VoIP). Why tell you all this junk? Cuz I know I suck at a lot of stuff, but there are 3 things I know I'm really good at, 1 is rollerblading (I was a certified Inline skating instructor in college), 2nd is Pitching (I'm a lefty pitcher, and have been for a very long time), and 3rd is Business computers and networking.
Do I know everything, hardly, I know plenty of guys smarter then me at this stuff, but I'm up there.
So if there is one subject you can trust my opinion on, it's computer technology (minus apples, blech!).

Banks, I'm enamoured! All that techy language....

I pretty much trust everything you say anyway.

So, do you think I'm getting ripped off at $100/hr? I think I figured out part of the financial crisis problem - everyone is charging so darn much for services! (or I'm out of touch!). My cleaning lady charges $30/hr, my webmaster $100/hr, and a guy came by offering to clean my windows and wanted $200 and said it would take him an hour!?!?! What is happening these days!?

depends on what he is doing for you. If he's just hosting a site, adding a few odds and ends to the site, and maybe keeping your code for you, I know students that will do it for $20. But if you have a very dynamic site with a lot of moving parts, saved users with logins, or any kind of sensitive information on it, then $100 might be a good deal. Can you PM me a link to the site, and how many hours you are being charged for every month? I can give you an idea. Give as many details as you can on what he does and charges for. I hate seeing people get ripped off cuz their tech guy thinks he can get away with it because of the general publics lack of tech knowledge. It makes us all look bad!

Phoenix_Rising

Got the WD 1TB from Walmart for $119. I am sure I will use that space as my photo collection continues to grow.

Started my transfer at 10am-ish. Still running at 5pm-ish when I left the house. Will check on it tomorrow evening, I suppose. I was copying roughly 60gb of photos, music, etc.

Thanks again everyone for all the advice!! :flowerforyou: