My trusty old windows 7 pc is chock a block,hardly gets used,because of phones and tablets,but wouldn’t part wi5h it.
I need to transfer a number of folders full of pictures an small videos onto an external storage device.This Will the allow me to delete many unused
programmes and clean up the pc drive.
Question is do I buy an external,conventional hard disk drive or one of these solid state things,the size of a match box with equally sized
storage.
Welcome your suggestions if you can.
Steve
The smaller 'thumb drive' type storage are often more expensive per GB and slower. However, they are great for portability.
Personally I would suggest an external hard drive for speed and value for money.
Ok will do that thanks for reply.
Agree, for essentially backing up a spinning disk is fine. SSD are great for speeding up an old computer but for backing up speed isn't so much of an issue.
Seems to be the way to go,I did read a bit about them and cutting through to make a decision as you do,I was starting to lean towards the hdd.I mean,I still play dvd,cd so it was never going to be quick,despite recently saying to myself get the latest bit of kit.My Range Rover has 80 odd modules in it waiting to go wrong and very occasionally does,the Locost works on a wire and a few fuses.I suppose I’m old school,my kids tell me I am.
Just a thought, but we installed an SSD drive in our desktop, used that for windows etc and kept the old hard drive too.
I say we, our SIL who has geeky tendancies did it.
PC now starts up in seconds rather than many many minutes. Think you can buy an SSD for not a lot of cash thesedays.
Doing that would mean a nice fresh, fast windows install, you can then keep all your saved files where they are.
There’s a thought thanks.
How much space do you need? Why not just back up to a cloud service and you can access from wherever you want. I use Google one as a backup service and it costs £1.59 a month for 100GB. Backs up all my photos taken from my phone and can be accessed from any device I choose.
an external disk hdd is the easiest and best for backups etc
but if the machine has less that a gigabyte drive, I would suggest getting an ssd of 1GB, and copying everything to that. (they usually come with
cloning software)
then take the old hard drive out, and keep it as a (bootable!) backup
and install the ssd as the new system drive..
you can then delete things, knowing you have a backup if required.
a couple of amazon link to help
1GB ssd, (other sizes avaliable)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B078211KBB
if you want to use the old or new drive as usb
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06XCV1W97
no affiliation, but I have bought these products myself and can recommend them.
Hard drives don’t last for ever, they let go without warning just like standard Pinto rods in a race engine.
quote:
Originally posted by gremlin1234
an external disk hdd is the easiest and best for backups etc
but if the machine has less that a gigabyte drive, I would suggest getting an ssd of 1GB, and copying everything to that. (they usually come with cloning software)
then take the old hard drive out, and keep it as a (bootable!) backup
and install the ssd as the new system drive..
you can then delete things, knowing you have a backup if required.
a couple of amazon link to help
1GB ssd, (other sizes avaliable)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B078211KBB
if you want to use the old or new drive as usb
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06XCV1W97
no affiliation, but I have bought these products myself and can recommend them.
May not be what you're after so feel free to ignore me...
A few years back I got myself a 2TB NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive. It's a HDD not a SSD. It connects to your internet router using a
network cable. I've got mine setup so it backs up all photos, music, data etc off the family laptop (via WiFi) and a couple of the kids laptops
(via WiFi). It also backs up all photos from mine and SWMBO's phones (via WiFi). I can access it remotely via the internet and upload/downloand
info.
Western Digital and it cost about £140.
It's got a USB socket on the back, which I believe allows you to connect an external USB back-up drive if you wish.
Western Digital do mirroring versions (2 sets of HDDs which mirror each other as a back-up).
Reading "tims31" post above about using a cloud service, I considered this optin, but favoured having my own cloud rather than paying for
ever to use another providers. I understand there's pros and cons either way, but for me having my own had more pros, like being able to
configure/adapt it the way I want. Plus I can still access it remotely with an internet connection.
[Edited on 7/2/22 by nick205]
quote:
Originally posted by Slimy38
While I agree with most of what you've put, I'm guessing you mean 1TB rather than 1GB? You couldn't even install Windows on a 1GB drive...
But I would also go for upgrading the internal drive for an SSD and have the removed one as a repurposed external drive.
quote:
Originally posted by nick205
I can access it remotely via the internet and upload/downloand info.
Western Digital and it cost about £140.
quote:
Originally posted by Slimy38
quote:
Originally posted by nick205
I can access it remotely via the internet and upload/downloand info.
Western Digital and it cost about £140.
The biggest issue with a NAS is that they can be accessed remotely via the internet. WD are one of the worst offenders for opening things up for attackers. For example;
https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/2/22561140/wd-clou d-os-3-security-flaw-update-patch-disconnect
I do agree with you, paying a cloud provider for ongoing storage seems like a waste of money. But I also wouldn't expose a NAS to the internet. It's a good option locally, just not online.
I have a Synology for a long time, really nice to work with and the support and apps it has, will cost you about 450 euro with disks (2 for mirror or
just jbod)..but worth the money.
I have it connected to the internet as well, but only over https reachable ( encrypted traffic) using a comodo certificate on it. Next you can block
countries based on IP regions and enable MFA on it. There is always a risk, but with some additional measures it is acceptable
I run a 2TB parallel RAID array in a DLINK NAS for this purpose. The problem is I filled it with photos 
I always found USB pens fail fairly
frequently and recovery is basically a non-starter. IF you're backing up small amounts, you could instead investigate getting a google or
microsoft subscription - with office 365 personal edition I get 1TB of online storage....
Please if you do get a NAS remember "RAID isn't back-up". It offers some redundancy in case of a disk failure (well, depending on which RAID you have it in) but really you need to back-up the NAS also. I almost lost a massive amount of data (some of it very imporant) recently as a result of a failure to appreciate this. There's always the risk of accidental deletion or ransomware removing access to information and typically if the NAS itself dies there's a risk of data loss as the way the disks are formatted and arranged isn't the same from one manafacturer to the next (or even necessarily one machine type to the next) so you can't necessarily just take a disk from one NAS and put it in a different one and regain access.
quote:
Originally posted by BenB
Please if you do get a NAS remember "RAID isn't back-up". It offers some redundancy in case of a disk failure (well, depending on which RAID you have it in) but really you need to back-up the NAS also. I almost lost a massive amount of data (some of it very imporant) recently as a result of a failure to appreciate this. There's always the risk of accidental deletion or ransomware removing access to information and typically if the NAS itself dies there's a risk of data loss as the way the disks are formatted and arranged isn't the same from one manafacturer to the next (or even necessarily one machine type to the next) so you can't necessarily just take a disk from one NAS and put it in a different one and regain access.