Duplicating Files on Two Hard Drives to Make a Backup

[rkk1]

Ok here's where I'm stupid. I didn't realize there is a difference in external hdd. Right now I have a western digital 1tb that all the interface says is USB 2.0. I wanted to get another smaller one just for the hoster and other music. Everything I look at says USB 2.0. The drive on the comptuer is SATA.

[seawolf]

There are many sources for laptop hard drives available on the web. The one I have used frequently is http://www.drivesolutions.com/

They are reasonably priced and stand behind their products. However, if you know if your internal drive is a SATA or IDE, you can find bargains all over. I would suggest purchasing a USB Universal Data Transfer Kit (see http://www.drivesolutions.com/cgi-bi...id&itemid=a8.1) so that you can easily create a clone of your internal drive and/or use it as an external, should you so desire. Most laptops will support internal drives up to 500 GB and many have two bays and will support 2-500 GB (HP, for example)

I think your next step is to research what you have in your laptop already. Most hard drives can be removed with two screws. Simply looking at the drive will indicate if it is a SATA or IDE. Some laptops, such as early HP's, use an IDE drive with a SATA adapter. If you are still having difficulty, RSVP with your laptop info & I'll try to help.

DC

[rkk1]

I have a Dell Studio 15 500gb sata hd (7200rpm). I really don't want to mess with an internal drive. The external is about all I can handle. I'm scared to death that I'll mess everything up when it's working perfect for me now. This computer replaced another dell that was only 1 year old. When it updated a service pack the computer would not come back up and I had to take it in to have as much as possible saved off the hard drive then they wiped it clean. I only had to re download about 50 cd's. That's when I decided to buy the new computer and get windows 7 because I hated vista. When I got the new computer windows 7 is not compatible with the version of Traktor that played my regular DJ music. I figured if I was going to spend money on new software I was finally going to put my karaoke on the computer. Big step for me because my son always helped me with my computers but I was tired of depending on him. I was determined to do this on my own. That's what brought me to Hoster. I have set up everything on my own and boy have I learned alot along the way. I got everything downloaded and set up by myself. Fixed the "hum" and fading problem I was having. Now I just want to make sure I don't go through this again. The old computer is back up and running, but I use that as my everyday computer so I don't want to use it as a backup. I use the studio only for my dj business and I only go on line for updates and occasional Itune downloads. I hope I can do what I need to with external harddrives. Sorry to go on and on. I hope to make what a have last for 2 more years than I can retire after 20 yrs.

[rkk1]

Seawolf I've been doing some research. See if I understand this. My computer has a USB/eSata port on the side. So if I get an external hdd that is usb/eSATA does this basically mean my transfer will be faster?

[seawolf]

Well, sounds like you're almost there. As I mentioned, it is really simple to replace the internal hard drive in most laptops, Dell included. It takes 2 screws to remove the cover, two fingers to lift out the old drive, remove the 4 mounting screws, remove & replace the drive and reverse the procedure. The whole operation takes less than 10 minutes, more like 5. There are certain truths in life...

1. Equipment will fail at the most inopportune time.
2. There are two types of data---lost and backed up
3. Occasionally backed up data becomes lost data.

I have 2 laptops, 2 cloned internal hard drives and 2 data only external drives. Bring on the hurricanes, I'm prepared. The 12k karaoke songs plus the 14k DJ songs eat up a lot of space, but I'll hopefully never have to download them again.

DC

[seawolf]

With eSATA/USB, the eSATA provides the data path and the USB provides the power.

Yes, you will generally see improved performance over a straight USB external. The only caveat---don't overload the USB ports or you might possibly run out of power. I had that happen when I was running 2-USB external drives (cloning), a GPS transciever & a cordless mouse on an old HP laptop. POOF! Maybe it was a weak power supply, maybe I overloaded it.

DC

[billyo]

in my opinion the only reason that most of the usb port won't work was that if you keep plugging and uplugging whatever you have connected on those ports, and using a usb hub,. my adviced was to keep them plugged in if you gonna keep using those hardware,( ext. hhd, mouse, keyboard etc. ) i never unplugged mine.

[rkk1]

Thanks for your help. As you can tell I'm a work in progress. I've learned so much just reading these forums. I'm going to do a little more research on the hard drives. Hopefully I'll have everything I need next week and let the cloning begin!

[billyo]

most laptops hhd are sata"2".5 and pc's are "3".5 it's not that hard to replaced them, i've cloned my laptops and pc's hhd a few times, i just got than cloning both of my show, back-up laptops and my pc's from 80g to 250g to 500g a month ago. all my kma files are on a 500g ext. hhd on both of my laptops, with another 500g ext. hhd as a back-up,all my dj tunes/softwares are on my int. hhd ( 6,218 tunes ea. laptops and pc's) ( 4 laptops/3 pc's total )