Topic: OT (a little): Backup Disk Storage (Read 4158 times)

TimB · « **on:** July 02, 2004, 01:41:44 pm »

I'm running out of backup space

I've been backing up to my old PC (running Win98SE) over a network for the past 18 months and I'm running out of space on its 120gig D: drive.

I've been thinking of getting a Maxtor OneTouch and attaching it to my old backup PC (the isolation intended to decrease the risk of my new PC crashing and taking the drive with it). Does it mount like a regular drive? What are other people's experience and advice.

Thanks!

-=Tim=-

LonWar · « **Reply #1 on:** July 02, 2004, 02:23:28 pm »

I have the 250gb one.... You never notice that it's external.
Works just like any internal.... Retrospect is also really good!!

I think King Sparta has the 300gb version.

The 250gb is 7200rpm, 300gb is 5400rpm

Alex B · « **Reply #2 on:** July 02, 2004, 02:28:57 pm »

I bought a Maxtor One Touch 250 GB Firewire+USB2 model some months ago. It's working well with my rather new Pentium 4 PCs. The drive mounts like a regular drive in Windows XP. Not sure about Win 98 SE. I think there is support for USB 1.x only. You should have a firewire card too, otherwise it is going to be slow.

My laptop has a 30 GB internal drive. With One Touch drive I can take the whole Media Library with me when travelling.

My only problem now is that it is getting full. I think I must buy another one so I can have one set of backups in safe while making new backups.

Chris Shaw · « **Reply #3 on:** July 02, 2004, 05:28:08 pm »

I've got the Firewire+USB2 300Gb Onetouch. Generally, it's really nice. Very occasionally, my machine refuses to wake up from standby, which never happened before I got the drive. I'd recommend it, despite that.

edbro · « **Reply #4 on:** July 02, 2004, 06:03:25 pm »

I have an external HD (USB) hooked up to my laptop. I am very pleased. I had an spare 80GB HD laying around so I simply bought an external case for it. It only cost me $25 (for the case) and it works perfectly.

I wouldn't be too worried about putting in another internal HD. I can't imagine too many scenarios where a problem with another component would take your HD out too. If a software glitch was going to ruin your HD, then it won't matter if external or internal. Internal will be cheaper and take less desk space. But, an external is portable.

UrfTheWog · « **Reply #5 on:** July 02, 2004, 08:31:42 pm »

I bought one of these; http://www.byteccusa.com/product/enclosure/ME-350.htm

Works great - quiet - plus you chose which hard drive you want to use. Some of the enclosures don't allow you to change the hard drive which was the biggest selling point for me.

TimB · « **Reply #6 on:** July 03, 2004, 06:10:32 am »

Quote from: UrfTheWog on July 02, 2004, 08:31:42 pm

I bought one of these; http://www.byteccusa.com/product/enclosure/ME-350.htm

Works great - quiet - plus you chose which hard drive you want to use. Some of the enclosures don't allow you to change the hard drive which was the biggest selling point for me.

Ordered! Thanks!

Now to find a new HD.

-=Tim=-

Jakester · « **Reply #7 on:** July 03, 2004, 12:43:19 pm »

TimB -

I just bought one of these: http://shop1.outpost.com/product/3700356 to store my 600+ CDs in lossless .ape format. Works great, easy install, quiet. It was $20 less just last week, though!

TimB · « **Reply #8 on:** July 03, 2004, 02:40:13 pm »

Quote from: Jakester on July 03, 2004, 12:43:19 pm

TimB -

I just bought one of these: http://shop1.outpost.com/product/3700356 to store my 600+ CDs in lossless .ape format. Works great, easy install, quiet. It was $20 less just last week, though!

I've looked at that drive but I'd like to move the price lower.

-=Tim=-

modelmaker · « **Reply #9 on:** July 04, 2004, 03:51:25 am »

After having just lost 120gigs of mp3s & cover art due to a HD failure, I learned my lesson the hard way. Fortunately, I still had my full 80gig HD and was waiting for my new 200gigger (it arrived 2 days after the failure - pretty bad timing!), so the net loss was about 30gigs.

I bought a hot-swap slide out HD tray and a couple of extra trays and can now quickly swap out drives as needed. The tray/receptacle was about $20 and the additional trays are $10.

This system also allows me to swap drives with some friends of mine that are also running MC. We rip/record different CDs/LPs/Tapes and periodically swap the drives to update our individual libraries which saves us a ton of time.

Listening to: 'I don't even know your name' from 'Read my lips' by 'Fee Waybill' on Media Center 9.0

Alex B · « **Reply #10 on:** July 04, 2004, 09:13:21 am »

I just wrote this to another thread:

Quote from: Alex B on July 03, 2004, 06:28:26 pm

Data backup is important. I think that the biggest problem for most of us is to keep backups up-to-date. In MC you are constantly making changes to your music library files. I would love to see an internal MC solution to this (there is already a library database backup). Files are rarely corrupting, but hard drives are not very good nowadays.

What do you think about the next feature request?

A user startable tool for updating backup copies of all media library files and the directory structure on another drive(s). There could be options for the first time backup and only for new or modified files since the last update.

MC already keeps track of the last modified times and can build the directory structure when files are renamed. Backup system could use the OS archive flag or even better if a Last Backup Time tag or an internal archive flag is added so MC backup could be independent of other software and OS operations.

LonWar · « **Reply #11 on:** July 04, 2004, 09:17:35 am »

That would be neat, But that can already be done by a lot of other programs,

I use retrspect for that.

Alex B · « **Reply #12 on:** July 04, 2004, 10:23:22 am »

Retrospect is a great backup tool. Anyway an integrated solution could be good for the most of us.

I think that the situation here is comparable with the image handling situation. I have been using ACDsee for years and I am not going to easily change it to MC. But many users are obviously happy with the recent image handling and cataloging tools provided with MC.

Jaguu · « **Reply #13 on:** July 04, 2004, 12:08:59 pm »

I don't feel that an integrated backup in MC is a real necessity. It would mean that you would have to backup your media files and all other files of your Home Folder separately, but I prefer to backup or replicate from disk to disk in one single swoop.

But I would like to synch media files from pc to notebook.

Alex B · « **Reply #14 on:** July 04, 2004, 01:14:15 pm »

Quote from: Jaguu on July 04, 2004, 12:08:59 pm

But I would like to synch media files from pc to notebook.

Actually, I was after that too. If MC could keep two separate libraries synchronized it would be a great help for me. Besides the traditional backups of my whole computer to a compressed format I copy my media files to an external drive, which I use with my notebook.

Alex B · « **Reply #15 on:** July 05, 2004, 05:52:16 am »

Quote from: Jaguu on July 04, 2004, 12:08:59 pm

...you would have to backup your media files and all other files of your Home Folder separately...

On a second thought...

Since JRiver is directing MC 11 to be an all document handling center, an integrated backup and library duplicating would be a natural extension to it. I suppose it could be done quite easily at programming level and it might be a commercially wise move too. Too many people here are reporting about hard drive crashes and data loss.

TimB · « **Reply #16 on:** July 06, 2004, 01:59:55 pm »

Just purchased a Maxtor 250GB for $129 at local CompUSA.

-=Tim=-

TimB · « **Reply #17 on:** July 09, 2004, 10:28:37 pm »

Enclosure arrived and setup with HD, I ended up with a 250GB external and portable backup disk for $152, pretty good deal.

Thanks for all the help!

-=Tim=-

LonWar · « **Reply #18 on:** July 10, 2004, 01:44:55 pm »

Hi Tim, Can you switch drives that are in the enclosure?

nyc-ink · « **Reply #19 on:** July 10, 2004, 02:31:03 pm »

Buy a lacie drive, much better drive for about the same money and looks really cool on your desk! Go firewire if you can, much better transfer rate.

TimB · « **Reply #20 on:** July 10, 2004, 07:21:50 pm »

Quote from: imjustagamer on July 10, 2004, 01:44:55 pm

Hi Tim, Can you switch drives that are in the enclosure?

UrfTheWog says yes, I haven't tried it but I can see how you might try it.

Quote from: nyc-ink on July 10, 2004, 01:44:55 pm

Buy a lacie drive, much better drive for about the same money and looks really cool on your desk! Go firewire if you can, much better transfer rate.

Best price on Pricegrabber for LaCie 250GB is $257 and its hidden underneath my desk so looks aren't really an issue. I'm using USB 2.0 but transfer rate also really isn't an issue as my backups run nightly at 3am. Its also one heck of a lot faster than running across my network which is how I did it before.

-=Tim=-

LonWar · « **Reply #21 on:** July 11, 2004, 08:23:31 am »

Quote from: nyc-ink on July 10, 2004, 02:31:03 pm

Buy a lacie drive, much better drive for about the same money and looks really cool on your desk! Go firewire if you can, much better transfer rate.

Isn't USB2 faster?

xen-uno · « **Reply #22 on:** July 11, 2004, 12:19:57 pm »

Nope...here's one benchmark...

http://www.frozentech.com/article.php?story_id=27

... and Firewire (consider it serial SCSI) is isosynchronous...that is, no bandwidth splitting between devices (regardless if they're operating or not).

10^-27

LonWar · « **Reply #23 on:** July 13, 2004, 08:19:32 pm »

So if you have a external HD, the Firewire is a better connection?

nyc-ink · « **Reply #24 on:** July 13, 2004, 09:12:14 pm »

TimB · « **Reply #25 on:** July 15, 2004, 07:37:15 am »

OK, so I've got a load of extra space right now. However I know that data tends to expand to overflow the storage so I've been thinking about compressiing my 250GB backup disk, right now I'd save about 30GB (out of 106GB used). I'm using XP Pro with NTFS formatting on the drive.

Thoughts?

-=Tim=-

hit_ny · « **Reply #26 on:** July 15, 2004, 07:54:39 am »

Quote

I've been thinking about compressiing my 250GB backup disk, right now I'd save about 30GB

If the data is compressed audio, i doubt you will see much gains with drive compression.

Alex B · « **Reply #27 on:** July 15, 2004, 08:38:57 am »

Don't do it!

Most media file types (e.g. mp3, ape, ogg, mpc, wma, avi, mpg, mov, jpg) are already compressed with a more effective method (there are some exceptions). You can get advantage only with uncompressed files (text documents, uncompressed wave, etc). It is also slower because all data is compressed when writing and decompressed when reading. If the file system gets corrupted fixing it can be more difficult. Enough reasons?

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Author Topic: OT (a little): Backup Disk Storage (Read 4158 times)