Kara Posted March 23, 2007 Share Posted March 23, 2007 I'd love to get an EHD, but my DH thinks I should just back up to DVDs. He has a master's in comp sci so he should know what he's talking about, but he's also very frugal and doesn't want to buy anything. We already have a spindle of DVDs. My concern is their durability -- what do you think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicole_j Posted April 13, 2007 Share Posted April 13, 2007 wondering this myself... I would think the difference would be that it would be faster to retrieve info from the EHD and dvds scratch so easily - I hate that factor. anyone else???? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ManiakMama Posted April 13, 2007 Share Posted April 13, 2007 I've heard the DVD's have a longer life than CD's. I store everything on my EHD, and backup on a partitioned drive on my Desktop. Then I also burn all of my zip files and LO's to DVD as a 3rd backup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meisie Posted April 13, 2007 Share Posted April 13, 2007 Stupid question : do extenal harddrives suffer from something similar to a 'crash' ? Could one's info become inacessable for any reason? I'm currently backing onto DVD's, but I'm wondering.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ManiakMama Posted April 13, 2007 Share Posted April 13, 2007 Yes, they are just as susceptible to crashing as our built in hard drives. That's why i back up on DVD's as well and some people even back up on a 4th resource! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
April Showers Posted April 13, 2007 Share Posted April 13, 2007 External hard drives can crash just like internal ones. I haven't had one do that- maybe because they aren't on all the time. I turn them off when I'm not using them. A hard drive is a hard drive, one is just easier to move around. I use both EHDs(2) and DVDs to back up my files. I back up to the EHD more frequently than I make new DVDs. When I make a new DVD of my zip files or pages, I'll sort the folder by date and include everything I've added since the last one I made and label the DVD accordingly. The EHD is much faster to use-especially for restoring files. I have had the hard drive I store all my scrapbook stuff on crash. (Last December) Fortunately, it was the day after I'd backed-up everything. And we keep an extra hard drive (A regular one that DH just hooks up to the computer and copies everything onto) in our safe deposit box. All our documents, photos, quicken, plus the OS. He just got so tired of reinstalling things. (He's got a masters in electrical engineering and works on computer chip design.) I can still pull up my notes from college. And that was 20+ years ago. Of course that was a pre-word word processor, but with a little work, I could use it. (If I wanted to.) So I think I back up all my stuff about 4 times. We are back-up fanatics, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDecker Posted April 13, 2007 Share Posted April 13, 2007 I back up to DVD and my EHD, however I also run 2 internal HD's in my computer one for storage and one for eht OS and programs, this way if the OS goes bad I still have all my stuff. My father has had an EHD go bad and lost everything. We bought a larger internal for his computer and took the other one out and put it in the EHD! This is when I realized they are EXACTLY the same HD but one can be hooked up to other computers easily! LOL HTH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TallCool69 Posted April 13, 2007 Share Posted April 13, 2007 I back up EVERYTHING to DVD:s!!! I love my EHD:s, but they can fail... So can DVD:s, that's why I always make duplicates! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PatBowman Posted April 13, 2007 Share Posted April 13, 2007 Yep, EHDs can fail because they are the same as a HD - just in a different wrapper. In fact, I've had one EHD fail already. I'm like Dee, I have two internal hard drives. One is for the OS and programs and the other is dedicated to my data. I have another spare HD that is the wrong type for my computer, and I was able to actually buy a container for it to convert it to EHD, and that's what I'm doing. I also back up my zip files and layouts to DVDs much like April does. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Sharebear57 Posted April 13, 2007 Share Posted April 13, 2007 Lost my EHD at Christmas time... One day it just started making a wierd grinding noise, and that was it... I always back up to both EHD and DVD. I keep a folder on my computer labeled "Scrapbooking Month.Year". I back this up continuously onto my EHD. When the folder reaches 4G, I burn it onto DVD, label it (Scrapbooking DVD#, Month.Year) and store this away in a fire-safe box. Then I rename the folder on my EHD "Scrabooking DVD#" and delete the folder off of my computers hard drive and create a new, empty one for new things. I always access my supplies, layouts, tutorials, etc. off of my EHD. This way, my regular hard drive is kept free from the clutter of billions of digital scrapbooking files and supplies. Plus, if I need to scrap on another computer, it is no problem: just plug in my EHD and all my stuff is right there. Anyway..the point is: No storage device (regular HD, EHD, CD, DVD) is fail-safe. And it is devastating to lose your stuff, especially pages you have worked so hard on. So back up, back up, back up as many times as you can on as many different storage devices as possible. You will NEVER REGRET having too MANY copies of your stuff, but if you lose your stuff you WILL regret it for a very long time. HTH! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
April Showers Posted April 13, 2007 Share Posted April 13, 2007 My husband used to buy hard drives and cases separately and put together his own EHDs before they were so prevalent. He has a whole stack of those. He switches drives around and puts in larger ones. Just have to make sure those little pegs (I really don't know the correct name) are set to "slave" rather than "master." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anna Posted April 13, 2007 Share Posted April 13, 2007 DH just bought me an EHD. Our computer has been acting crazy for a couple of days, and yesterday I was maddly trying to burn things to dvds when I got an error message saying the program I use to burn dvds won't work. So, right now, I can't even make backups. I've never wanted an EHD before, but I am glad we got one-I have a lot of stuff to save before DH wipes the computer clean.....This has taught me to be a lot better about backing up my stuff! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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