My current hard drive is failing (from another forum discussion). So I'll probably get two hard drives

Can USB external hard drive be used to just cherry pick items I want to save from one hard drive..............in addition to whole system backup from a different drive? Purchasing a third drive would be too much for me.

The internal hard drive arrived. But I'll probably wait to purchase a USB external drive before I start anything

What USB external hard drive manufacturers do you all like?

 

Yes. Though, for simplicity, I copy my user profile folder so I only have to grab one thing.

I've used both Seagate and Western Digital externals and have liked both. The biggest and most current ones I have are WD My Book, I have a 2 TB at work and a 3 TB at home.

 

Cool.

Also, what is the difference between hard drive and hard drive enclosure?

 

In the job I retired from I was responsible for a number of product lines that used hard drives as part of instrumentation. We settled on WD after several rounds of issues with Seagate. I use nothing but WD at home and have had found them to have good performance and reliability. Among others, I have two 4 TB external USB drives that I use for backup. I keep one in my safe deposit box at that bank and the other in a fire safe at home. Every month or so I swap them so I always have a fairly recent backup offsite. You can always just copy individual files and directories to them as well as using them for complete/partial backups.

A lot of folks use cloud services for backup but I find them slow and am wary of their security, even though I always encrypt backups. They do have the advantage of being off-site, without the hassle of physically moving drives like I do. But they have become a target for the ransom-ware folks recently, so you need to use care in choosing a cloud service if you go that route.

 

An enclosure is a way of using an internal hard drive without putting it inside the computer case - it handles the connection between the drive and PC as well as power and cooling needs.

 

I understand about hard drive enclosure now.

When purchasing internal and external hard drive, are there any other compatibility issues to check for besides motherboard connections, form factor, GB/s? Do I need to consider operating system or any other specs?

 

How old is the computer to which you intend to connect all of this stuff? Could be that new stuff won't be compatible if your system is old enough.

 

Here you go, Stickshift,

It's a computer I built in 2010. All modern components for that time

ASUS motherboard with 3 GB/s, six SATA connections
4 GB RAM
3.1 GHz CPU
USB 2.0
Windows 7 Home premium for system builders 64-bit
DVD/CD player
ANTEC Earthwatts 500 watt power supply

Anything else I should add to this list?

 

Yeah, Carbide. I hear what you're saying about Seagate and Cloud backup. I am a little leery about those options too. Although I'm sure folks have had good results with those

 

Getting to be dated but I think it's likely OK with new stuff with the exception you know you're not going to get USB 3.0 speeds if you buy a USB 3.0 drive.

 

True. I'm already thinking about adding a USB 3.0 card to my motherboard also

 

Correction.........don't think my motherboard will go above USB 2.0. Is USB external hard drive maybe not such a good idea for USB 2.0? Will transfer speeds be fast enough?

 

you may want to think about a new build sometime the 6gb sata motherboards and ssd drives are a lot faster.
would probably add more ram to your system for an upgrade for this one.

 

I have USB 3.0 speed available to me but have an internal disc in an external enclosure which is only 2.0 and I don't notice any problems unless I'm moving GBs at a time.

IMO it's grey area whether you should upgrade components or start thinking about a new build instead.

 

No thanks on building another PC. The first time was expensive enough. I told myself I'm not going to fall into the trap of shelling out money to upgrade consumer electronics every few years.

Granted USB 2.0 is slower. But is copying a hard drive to another USB drive still doable?

If add another internal drive, will that put a drain on the 500 watt power supply and other PC resources? And does this mean that two drives are running at the same time when PC is powered up?

 

Two internal drives should be no problem - that's what I have in mine plus an external.

I copy nearly 300 GBs every time I back up my work computer and it takes a few hours to the 2.0 drive but I don't do that every day.

 

Ok. I looked at one of those date transfer calculators. I was getting about 5 hours to transfer 200 GBs. Is that not accurate?

You know, I might not be understanding something about motherboards and USB speeds. My motherboard is rated for USB 2.0. Does this mean the motherboard USB port is 2.0 or the motherboard itself? Because if I install a USB 3.0 adapter card on my motherboard (described as 2.0) won't this same motherboard now run at 3.0?

 

Not wanting to hijack thread just a quick question on the profile folder.
I was curious where to find it but I located it under computer--> local disc C --> USERS.
Pretty cool.

 

There are a few files in the user profile you can't copy because they're in use but they're some of the superfluous stuff you don't really want anyway; I just click the box to skip all such files when the window for it pops up near the end of the copy process.

 

Thanks. Can someone answer my most recent questions please from yesterday at 3:09pm?

 

You can install a USB 3 card and get improved performance over USB 2 that is on your MB. You may or may not get the full speed based on system limitations, but it will be faster than 3.0.

Note that some(many?) external USB hard drives, even though they have USB 3 interfaces, can't support sustained data transfer at full USB 3 speeds.

 

Ok. Thanks Paul. This is good to know. My hard drive has been making grinding sounds on and off for about six months now.

When I install the new hard drive and power on, will it prompt me with instructions including installing Windows 7 afterwards?

 

Not at all. You probably have to have the Windows 7 CD in the DVD drive when you boot. The boot sequence in the BIOS has to be correct too.

 

Most drives come with software to clone an existing drive; if your current drive is still working that is the easiest thing to do. You leave the existing drive and also install the second drive. the software copies everything over and prepares the drive to be the bootable drive. Then you remove the old drive and run from the new.

If you just remove the old drive and stick in the new, it will sit there like a lump of dirt

Your other option is to install everything from scratch on the new drive; this is more complicated and requires you have DVD's at least of your OS and kept all your license codes, etc. That method has some advantages, but I don't recommend it unless you are familiar with the process and are sure you have all the original software you will need.

 

LOL, so true! I didn't know that new internal drives came with cloning software. However, I thought that his drive was having problems & not worth cloning.

 

On another forum discussion I was advised not to clone because it would transfer any corrupt files and errors to the new drive. My PC is actually performing very well, even though it crashed a few times and was difficult to reboot.

I have installed from scratch several times because I had the horrible Windows Millenium OS years ago that sometimes needed reformatting. I have all my OS and software installation CD's and license codes. I know how to do it. It's just a pain in the ass to do it.

I guess I could try the clone thing. If it doesn't work out I guess I could reformat the new drive and reinstall the OS?

Also if I install Windows 7 on the empty new hard drive, will it recognize my Logitech wireless keyboard so I can enter the license product code?

Not sure which way to go.

 

I don't know if this is an accurate indicator of hard drive health. But I just finished running Check disk off Windows 7. It reported my hard drive as clean.

 

It seems like years ago but I believe that my first response was to vote for a clean install since you had the files backed up. If you still want to play with it, run sfc /scannow with a space after sfc. If you want to spend money on the old drive, buy a program called spin rite.

[BTW, this forum doesn't allow more than one white space, on each line. So when I introduce a command that requires a switch & I want to add a extra space between the command & the switch, in order to demonstrate that a space is needed, it removes the extra white spaces. The switch is anything in the command line that is after the / or the -.

Example:sfc /scannow becomes sfc/scannow in the eyes of the reader & the command may not run. Can that be changed?]

 

I'd like to get started today. The new Western Digital hard drive didn't come with any CD or instructions from Newegg. Just the hard drive and invoice. Is that normal?

 

Yes, that's normal.

I'm sorry and don't mean to insult you but I have to ask - did you build the PC you have or did someone else? You're asking questions I would have assumed you already knew the answer to if you had built it.

 

Connect the HD, insert the Win 7 CD in the drive & boot the machine. Follow the steps that appear on the screen. If you don't see the setup info, that means that you have to adjust the boot sequence in the BIOS.

 

I only built my one PC five years ago. Yes, I built it myself. So I might be a little overcautious since I have not done a single hardware task since then.

OK, so I'm up and running with this new hard drive. I'm in the process of re-installing, downloading, and importing everything I need. I didn't do the clone option since I don't have the software for it yet.

Hey..........thanks everyone for your help

One question. When I hooked up the SATA DATA and power to the drive, I also noticed an 8-pin connection on the drive. There were no corresponding wire connectors for this in the PC case. I don't need this....correct? What is this for?

 

bluesbreaker-


I think those 8 pins are for jumpers and not for a connector. I haven't read this entire article myself but I believe it will explain their use. Most likely the default would be OK for you.

How to physically install, set jumper settings, and set up a Serial ATA, EIDE, or SSD drive in Windows | WD Support

 

Ok. Thanks on the response about 8-pin jumper.

But I got problems. After all the hours I spent reinstalling software on new hard drive. I can't power up PC past black screen. I started another thread.