Hard drive back up options (looking for affordable drive options)

[aluminum]

I'm notoriously lazy when it comes to making CD backups of my data.

So...I'm going to use HDs instead. Here's what I'd like to to do:

- Get a 120gig HD for the desktop G4. This will be backup drive for the G4's main drive (40gig) and the TiBook's drive (30gig) plus extra space as a file server.

- Get a 120gig external HD. This will then mirror the G4 drive on a regular basis and be stored off-site.

So, I was looking for some advice on the above drives. To brands make a big difference? For every brand I ask about, I seem to get equal 'they're great!' and 'stay away from them!' responses.

Sam's club has a 160gig Western Digital internal for $150, which seems like a decent deal.

The other option I was considering was to purchase a cheap PC (I need a windows box anyways) and have it built with a 120gig drive and a DVD burner. I can get that for baout $700. Then I'd swap the HD + DVD burner with the drives in my Mac, and then use the HD + DVD as a backup system.

Thoughts?

[aluminum]

Of course, one drawback to swapping drives in the PC is that I'd use up a day installing XP on the old Mac drive. ;o)

[Cheryl]

You are going through an awful lot of work just to make a backup.

Just make a CD of your home folder and downloads.

[aluminum]

Cheryl:

I have 80+ gigs to backup. I really don't want to burn 100+ CDs to backup my system. ;o)

A DVD burner would be marginally easier. But still, that requires time on a regular basis. I'd really prefer just having a large drive that I could mirror occasionaly (or better yet, sync) and store off site.

[bobw]

Take a look at Carbon Copy Cloner

I use this to back up a 60GB drive weekly, plus using other backup software for daily file backups.

[Arden]

If you get a 120 GB drive to back up the G4's 40 GB and the PB's 30 GB, you should partition it into 80 GB and 40 GB, giving you 80 GB to back up the two drives and 40 GB to use as a file server. This way you don't introduce conflicts between your system backups and your shared files.

You can always get an external drive for your offsite idea with no real problems. Check out www.epinions.com for consumer reviews and www.pricewatch.com for dirt-cheap prices.

I don't know how well you'd be able to swap drives from a PC to your Mac. The drives have to use the exact same bus specs, like 100 Mhz IDE or something like that (I don't know the exact speed, but the idea's the same). I'd say get the hard drive and DVD burner specifically for your Mac, and just get something to use for your PC. I recommend using a Pioneer AV-105 (is this the specific designation? It's close to this) because that's the drive that Apple uses and officially supports in their computers.

WD, Seagate, Maxtor and IBM all make great drives. I'd steer clear of La Cie because we've had some flakes from their drives, but you can make your own decision when it comes time to buy.

[aluminum]

arden:

I was under the impression that the drive speed (AIDE specs) didn't really matter unless you actually wanted to use it at the full speed. In otherwords, I've never had to buy a HD based on a specific speed.

Am I wrong?

[Arden]

Drive speed affects read/write time. You'll notice a difference between a 5400 RPM drive and a 15,000 RPM drive, to go extreme, when doing a number of tasks, including copying lots of little files, copying large files, and importing digital video, to name a few. I suggest you look for a drive at 7200 RPM or better.

What I meant above, though, was bus speed. You have to make sure that the interface for the drives is the same. You can't use an internal SCSI drive in any G3+, for example, because they all use internal IDE buses, unless specifically configured otherwise. Also, the speed of your drive bus may make a difference, but I'm not sure about compatibility/performance with regards to bus speed.