Question - External HD: All-in-one or enclosure+HD?

My laptop is just over 1 month old and I'm a little concerned about the seagate ST9250827AS that I have in it, issues discussed here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=268066

Anyway, I was looking at backup options and was wondering if anyone could give me some advice. First, should I go with an all-in-one option such as WD's MyBook or should I buy an enclosure and an OEM HD separately?

Second, should I go with a 2.5" or 3.5" drive? I'm wondering because if my drive were to fail, I'd like to be able to swap out the failed drive with the 2.5" backup and get running right away (assuming I could clone the drive whenever I backup- is this even possible?).

Thanks for any input!

 

Enclosure + OEM HD = Cheaper, Longer warranty.

2.5" = runs off usb power and alot lighter, compact thus portable
3.5" = needs a seperate power supply and bigger but faster and more capacity

 

Three options:

1. High capacity external 3.5" HDD + Acronis TrueImage or CasperXP (more expensive but more options) and store whole backup images on the external HDD. You can then restore the images onto a replacement HDD if the Seagate dies.

2. 2.5" HDD + enclosure plus software as above to create a backup HDD.

3. 2.5" HDD + enclosure plus software to clone the existing HDD onto a new one. Then put the new HDD into the notebook and keep the old one as backup where it should last longer since it is used less often. You have the option of have a new HDD that is bigger / faster than the old one.

I would suggest (3). You can use the trial version of TrueImage to do the cloning. Thereafter you just copy your documents etc to the backup (you could also do this with (2)).

John

 

Whilst there's no better program than Acronis True Image John... there are a couple of free alternatives available, for those with a limited budget:

Seagate's ' DiscWizard' (they also offer a 'User's Guide', for those who require it) is actually just a stripped-down version of Acronis True Image
And ' HD Clone' is another good imaging/cloning program.


Whilst they obviously don't offer the same feature list as similar commercial programs... they do offer everything the average desktop user will need

 

Does it help notebook users too?

I am very interested in Seagate's DiscWizard just because the new laptop drive Im swapping in is a Seagate.

 

Interesting. do these free programs also offer the option to make a bootable DVD, and run the program from there?

Well faster if you're using eSATA but with USB it will be hard to notice when you're just using it as external storage.

 

Just to clear up my question, what exactly can't DiscWizard do that other full fledged programs can't?

 

Kind of running with this topic-- I'm also looking to get a 500GB+ HDD for as cheap as possible but retaining quality.
I've had bad experience and luck with a Maxtor (died after 3 months) and a replacement separate drive with 3rd party enclosure (very finnicky) which got killed on a plane ride from NY to CA (slipped out of the cushioning -- oops).

So my questions are:
How much should I be paying for a reliable 500GB?
And, as MooCowz asked, should I go with an all-in-one or a two-part drive?

 

@ dtd00d do you prefer 2.5" usb powered or 3.5" external power?

If you want more than 500GB it will have to be 3.5".

 

@PhilFlow: Whichever's cheaper/more reliable, so probably the 3.5" form factor unless something is terribly cheap for some reason--portability is just something nice to have.