External Hard Drive for a laptop

AriesEmily said:

I got an external hard drive for Christmas. Unfortunately, it is for a PC, not a laptop. Any recommendations for a laptop back up. I'd be backing up my manuscripts, pics, and a lot of music (I ripped over 200 CDs into my iTunes). The one I got for Christmas was a Seagate. Not sure if they carry laptop external hard drives or not. I'd take any advice.
Thanks
E

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I'm confused. Your laptop is a PC. Almost any external drive should work. I've generally bought whatever's on sale.

What exactly is it? Can you find it on Amazon or something and link? What computer do you have? Is it a Mac? There are very, very few ways I can think of in which what you've got now won't work correctly.

Normally an external hard drive runs on USB cable.. they will connect to anything.

Maybe you just got a "normal" hard drive?... maybe if you have a type number or anything we can see what you mean

It is a USB.. it should connect to any laptop / desktop you are plugging it into..

As soon as you connect it (don't forget to plug the power as well if it needs it) Windows should pick it up..

No.. firewalls is for internet USB is local.

What kind of error messages you got? To be honest you shouldn't need a program.. Just copy the things you want to backup onto the drive.

I see your confusion - it says desktop drive. It just means it likely has it's own power cord and is desktop-sized itself, not a palm-sized external drive that powers off the usb. Most of the 1tb or smaller external drives are about the size of a deck and a half of cards.

You should be able to use that fine. It's USB 3.0, but the very first review suggests that's not an issue if you're running an older system.

Plug it in and see - most are very user-friendly and will open a menu right up allowing you to customize a backup, or you can just see it in your computer and drag stuff over.

We all can't be computer experts

Just copy pasting should work using explorer.. Thats how I always do it

Just try it with a few times before trying it with 2000000 files

USB 3.0 is capable of MUCH higher power delivery than USB 1.0.

http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/

That hard drive may depend on the higher power delivery of USB 3.0 and so would not work in 1.0 or possibly even 2.0 sockets. I notice, however, that it is supposed to include a power adapter, so I'm not sure this is a problem.

I noticed that but the first review on the page says they're using it 2.0 and it's fine, so I doubt that's the issue, though who knows.

You should be able to set up a backup schedule whenever. The thing about that is it'll back up the stuff revised since last time, not just everything on your hd.

As for the dumping individual stuff, depends. If it's saving stuff to a dated file, it won't see it as a copy, because it's going in a different place. If it does ask, because you're just dumping it all there (given it's 3tb, I'd make dated files!) if you want to overwrite what's there, it's a new version so you'd just say yes.

You should be able to go in 'my computer' when it's hooked up and see it as a separate lettered drive. You can make folders in it, call them whatever (like the date, and new documents or photos or whatever) and copy the specific stuff you want into them with drag and drop or copy or whatever.

There are problems with copy-n-paste, but none of them are likely to be deal-killers, I don't think.

Primarily, copying and pasting changes the timestamp on the file. It's also always going to ask you if you want to overwrite the file in the destination.

I need to double-check Windows 8, but I'll say this as a blanket statement anyway: Windows comes with a very basic backup utility. It'll save to something like that desktop drive, and can be set to run regularly. It might suit your needs. Here's a decent rundown of how to do it in Windows 7.

There are other free utilities for backing up as well.

robjvargas said:

There are problems with copy-n-paste, but none of them are likely to be deal-killers, I don't think.

Primarily, copying and pasting changes the timestamp on the file. It's also always going to ask you if you want to overwrite the file in the destination.

I need to double-check Windows 8, but I'll say this as a blanket statement anyway: Windows comes with a very basic backup utility. It'll save to something like that desktop drive, and can be set to run regularly. It might suit your needs. Here's a decent rundown of how to do it in Windows 7.

There are other free utilities for backing up as well.

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I like Macrium Reflect Free Edition.

The pre-installed software on external hard drives that try to make things "easier" for you are almost always crap. I always delete them (and erase and reformat the drive).

Relying on your operating system and using copy/paste or drag-and-drop from Windows Explorer or OS X Finder will almost always work simpler and more reliably.

If you want automated backup, it's probably better to use your operating system's built-in utility (Backup and Restore on Windows, or Time Machine on OS X), or find a good third-party backup utility, rather than rely on whatever software came free with the drive.

AriesEmily said:

When you do this on a flash drive, it gives you the "you already have this file here" message. (yes, that's paraphrasing.) Thanks for everyone's help keeping my shit safe!!

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Your operating system doesn't know or care about the difference between a flash drive and an external hard drive. They're the same to your computer. The behavior will be identical.

The "Libraries" thing is a Windows illusion. I don't think you can pick it up as a whole. You want to back up the real contents of your real Documents folder. And pictures music, videos, etc. if you have such.

You will need to synchronize files in a backup with constantly changing files in your computer. A rather simple way (as long as you read the hints carefully) is Microsoft's SyncToy. You tell it which pairs of folders to sync, and whether to mirror deletions etc. or not (that's where the careful reading comes in, and "contribute" is the safest choice).

You can also tell it to ignore things. I'm not sure just how finely it can be tuned; I've experimented with it, but I don't use it myself. For one thing, I scrapped Windows some time ago. And, since I know my (complex and non-standard) file system, I've always used a double-paned file manager with a sync function to do manual backups. Magic is nice, though, and SyncToy is pretty good juju.

"Libraries" in most cases are just standalone files in which a list of other files is recorded. No actual content other than the list is included. Think of it as a playlist.

Sounds like you don't want to use the HDD for anything other than backup? You can almost definitely just have Windows do that for you upon plugging the USB in to your laptop. I would hold off on 3rd party programs.

I don't know if this is relevant, but I bought a Seagate some time ago that looks a bit like that one and all I do with it is drag the files to it. They copy when I do that; they're still in the original spot, too.


There's probably a lot of stuff I can do with it that I don't, but what I do is easy and backs up the stuff I don't want to lose.

The only thing that gets me about it is that the shortcut icon changes from time to time. Sometimes it shows a little gray drive, and sometimes an upright black one. Never figured out why.

There are sometimes issues with external drives the first time they are plugged into a new computer - they have to install the drivers etc and that can take time. I use one for work all the time - I have a 1TB portable drive with all my resources and lesson plans on it and it usually just plugs into whatever computer is in the classroom and works fine.

I also tend to use copy paste to move files but for proper back up I use Norton's back up capability which stores all your files in a single zipped file on the back up drive. When you have a crash or have to change computers, you simply plug in the USB drive and click on this file and it automatically restores all the files to where they were on the old set up. Already had to do this once and was very glad I had that ability.

It seems like everyone understand this, but I'll explicitly say it:

Copy and Paste is useless if you intend to use it for a system restore. There are hidden files and system files that won't copy because the system tags them as always in use while the computer is operating. If you're only using this for important files and data (as described by AriesEmily in the OP or areteus in the last post before mine), then this should not be a concern.

Now that your external drive is working properly, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you also backup/copy every file on the Seagate to another source (removable media or cloud backup). Their drives have an alarming failure rate, and even when the drive is still under warranty, the minimum charge for data recovery starts at $600 dollars. I have replaced two, and had to use brute force to get my stuff off them when they started dying...

Agreed. Always buy a backup for your backup. I've been a techie since I was a kid, and it is extremely horrific when your hard drive fails and you have to pay to get information off. No warranty and you'll be paying 1000 or more if it is a full recovery.