Best External Mirror Hard Drive options.....

[Drew99GT]

I have an Apricorn external HD with their EX Gig II software, which is a stripped down version of Acronis True Image.

I've reloaded images probably 30 times now! Works perfectly every time. Best thing since sliced bread.

There's some really good free imaging software out there as well. Drive Image XML and Macrium Reflect Free Edition for example.

Or you could step up to Vista Premium as it does imaging.

 

[Drew99GT]

Originally Posted By: Pablo


Is that what folks do? I can do this with an external drive?

Just in passing I remember statements about bone easy recovery- how?


You can get the super duper fancy imaging and backup software that will do incremental backups automatically, but I just make an image about once a week. With that, you can restore the entire image if something goes haywire, or you can browse through images to extract individual files, so it also is an easy way to to backups of data.

Bone easy recovery: your HD fails. You buy a new one, stick it into your machine, use the boot CD for your recovery software, install an image you have saved on your external HD, and voilla, your system is EXACTLY like it was before the HD crash. Back up and running in less then 20 minutes!

 

[calvin1]

After seeing 2 external HDs lead very short lives I decided to build one myself. Get an external enclosure and an internal HD with the longest warranty (five years is good) and put them together. Make sure you get an enclosure and HD that have the same interface (PATA or SATA most likely). Most of the consumer grade external HDs are junk, IMNSHO.