Hi.
What are ur opinions on having all ur photo's, files, music etc, from ur computer's hard stored on an external hard drive, for safety.
But then erasing them off ur computer's hard drive, to give ur self more space.
Does any one know how reliable they are, i bought a good make, its a 160 gb W.D
2007-12-13 11:42:48 · 4 answers · asked by Freckles 2 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Add-ons
They are good and as reliable as the internal hard drive. BUT it would be best to also keep a copy of important files on a CD or DVD. Ultimate back up is redundancy.
2007-12-13 12:10:04 · answer #1 · answered by Karz 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Having an external drive for backup is a good idea, assuming you're backing up what is still on your original hard drive. But, since you've deleted the files on your computer hard drive you no long have a back-up. All you have is one copy on the external drive. If the external drive goes bad, so goes your files.
Essentially you are using your external drive as a working drive to free up space on your computer's C drive, which is totally fine. If there are files on your external drive that are not on your computers hard drive, and they are files you don't want to EVER lose, they you'd be better off burning them to a CD or DVD. How often you do this depends upon when you add files to the external drive and at the same time delete them from your computer. For instance, if you add files to your external drive for say a year and during that time never deleted them off the computer drive, you wouldn't have to burn anything since you have two copies. But, when you delete the files from your computer and the sole copy is on the external drive, it's time to burn another disc. (Or use a flash drive [thumb drive] which are becoming incredibly cheap these days).
2007-12-13 20:02:37 · answer #2 · answered by TheDougmeister 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
An external hard drive is the best investment you could have made to store your pictures and other files for safekeeping. I'm not sure if I would delete them off your desktop though, to make space. Then you are left with only one copy again. Even an external hard drive can die eventually. If you delete them off your desktop, at least burn CD's first.
2007-12-13 19:58:38 · answer #3 · answered by computer doctor 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
its absolutly fine. i highly advise doing so for most people. they are very reliable especially from wd.
2007-12-13 19:55:44 · answer #4 · answered by James H 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋