simple to use backup drive?

[}{arlequin]

i'm looking for a backup drive for my thinkpad. any recommendations? what's out there these days. simple and reliable is what i'm after

thanks.

[VincentVega]

Any external usb drive. I saw one yesterday that was ~30 gig, powered via usb and the size of a pda. Customer said it was ~$70. I use a larger 250gig unit I leave at my desk, backup my .pst and key folders every week. Not the fastest solution, but easy and cheap.

[Vipergrün]

Depends on how much data you need to backup. You could use a 1GB USB memory stick if not that much, or there are some good exernal USB drives, one of the brands has a button you puch for "one touch" backups, which work well. Do not recall the name off hand.

[jyl]

Maxtor is the "one touch" brand.

[}{arlequin]

thanks guys. one more thing... what's the best way to back up the machine. when you do the one-touch, does it back up *everything* including the os and settings etc.... or should it be done separately as in: porn, pics, word files, other media separately and then the os stuff separately too?

if everything is backed up as one unit, will that be enough to restore my computer if/when it all goes to hell?

i'm very computer illiterate....

[jyl]

Or go to local computer shop or eBay, buy cheapest hard drive that is bigger than Thinkpad hard drive, and an external USB enclosure, put drive in enclosure, connect to Thinkpad, open Windows Explorer, and simply manually copy data files from Thinkpad to external drive every week or so. TO make this easier, rejigger your app preferences to store all files in one coherent location, e.g. My Documents. Should cost about $100, 3.5" drives are cheap.

Or if you have a desktop PC w/ enough spare hard drive capacity, buy Laplink Gold which lets you network Thinkpad to desktop PC over a special USB cable, and lets you backup or synchronize selected folders. About $125.

[jyl]

What the backup will allow you to do depends on how comprehensive the backup is.

I use a backup program, Retrospect, that lets you creat a full backup. When I wanted to replace my iBook's hard drive, I simply installed the new drive, formatted it, did a full restore from Retrospect, and iBook was exactly the way it had been - OS, apps, data, preferences, everything, couldn't tell anything had changed expect that I now had 60GB extra storage. Retrospect is available for PC or Mac. I'm sure there are plenty of other backup apps that do the same thing.

The two methods I suggested above will only save your data. If your Thinkpad hard drive crashes, you'll have to reinstall the OS and apps and re-create all your app preferences.

Not sure what the Maxtor One-Touch does. Worth looking into, is probably the cheapest way to get external hard drive plus backup app all in one bundle.

Your Thinkpad should have option for creating recovery CDs, not sure what that actually does. I have a Thinkpad but have never tried.

[VincentVega]

Unless you create an image you wont really be able to restore in one step; although there might be software that can make it almost as easy. Windows recovery disks help, but you still need to do a little work.

I backup what I cant easily replace, email and anything I cant do without. It's crude but a drag and drop of the proper folder(s) takes all of 30 seconds. If/when the system fails I install the OS then the recovery disks, software then copy back my backup folders.

[Eric Coffey]

Lacie makes a series of Porsche-designed USB/Firewire back-up drives that are pretty reasonable. I picked one up on FleaBay, and have been pleased with it so far.

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&satitle=lacie+porsche

[Bill Verburg]

I use 2 250gb external USB2 harddrives alternately.

Saved my ** recently, be sure to backup e-mail and favorites