how and where to save the backup from my hdd portable(1T)?My pc hdd have only 80

[karlosss]

So i have a HDD Seagate Expansion Portable 1 T and i also have an old and low memory PC (hdd 80 gb),my question is how or where to save my 1 T backup ?there any online host to backup straight there ? because it's clear that i can not save the backup to my PC first
And by the way does anyone know how to keep my external HDD safe, a small program,software to proetct it?I remember once i had a USB stick( 20 Gb) and i lost all my 20 Gb !

[DaveLembke]

My suggestion is buy another 1TB external and make a 2nd copy of all data to that. Save that someplace safe as a master. Update this master periodically from the working 1TB drive after first verifying that your not going to spread a virus to it from the working drive to the master.

Cloud storage is safe but 1TB of space will come at a cost. If you had 15GB or lesser Google Drive can store the up to 15GB for free. I have a Google Drive and only using 3GB of my 15GB. For the data that I dont want on the cloud I have multiple external drives and follow this practice above of working and master drives first performing full virus scans before connecting the master to make sure that the data never gets infected or lost. *20 years ago I lost a large amount of data to a virus and so I am extra careful with data that I dont want to get wiped out. Some of the most critical data I also burned to DVD-R discs at up to 4.7GB per disc. DVD-R Discs are immune to catching a virus, they are write once and so as long as the data burned to the disc doesnt have a virus then its safe if this disc was introduced to a system that had a virus that it wont hitch a ride on the disc like USB Flash Drives and External Drives are susceptible to. *Note: Some USB Flash Drives have a switch on them to make them Read-Only. Here is a link to Physical Write Protect USB Flash Drives: ( This is a good brand and other brands available also with write protect switch. ) https://www.kanguru.com/storage-accessories/kanguru-ss3.shtml

[Geek-9pm]

This is from dictation. I'm doing this to give you a quick answer and use this as a starting point for further discussion. Some of the things I say may not apply to you but could be helpful to others that also read this.
Your questions are about backups and how to make sure that your data is safe. First some fundamental assumptions.
Materials that you have downloaded off the Internet are not really precious and hard to replace. If you lose them, you just download them over again, so there's little value in making backup copies of things that are still available to you. Now about movies and photos. The easiest way to save movies is just put them onto a DVD where they belong. Some individuals save their movies in compressed video format or MP4 and save up to four movies on one DVD.
Now about the stuff that really matters. The stuff that really matters are your own documents that you have created an that are not available anywhere else. Those the things you need to save and put in a safe place. No way do you have a tetra byte of personal documents, that would be impossible unless you are the most gifted writer of the century.
In documents can be saved on a file server. In fact, that may be the most convenient way to save your documents. On a file server you're able to get into the documents even when your computer is not turned on. You use another computer, or even a tablet that has Internet access. There are large number of services that let you store documents in the cloud, including Google documents, just to name one.
Now about saving your system. Having an image of your system is the ideal way to keep a backup of your operating system that can be quickly restored. But oftentimes this requires drive space of up to 50 GB just to store the operating systems and the program to use most often.
If you have a large collection of programs that you don't really use, it's best not to install them until you want to use them. Otherwise a lot of your backis going to be wasted on programs you don't even use.
Now about the different kinds of storage and backup systems people use. I've already mentioned cloud storage. Then there is putting stuff onto a DVD. Which is not really very cost effective for large amount of storage, but it's convenient for some things that are not very important. If you have an old hard drive at hand, you can get an enclosure and an interface and a small power supply and make it into a portable backup device that uses the USB connection to plug into any of your computers.
One method I like is to have more than one computer. Even old computer can have more storage and it if you want to. If the power supply is in good condition you can add another hard drive inside the case of the desktop PC. Most desktop PCs have some additional space inside the could be used for another hard drive. One possibility is just remove the CD-ROM drive and use that space to hold an extra hard drive. The CD-ROM drive also can be put into an enclosure and made into an external device. If you don't use your CD-ROM drive very much, that would be a practical way to increase the amount of storage you have inside your desktop PC, using the space taken up by the CD-ROM drive to house another internal hard disk drive.
Now about backup software. The best backup programs allow you a variety of ways to make your backups. One method is to have a system image of just the operating system itself. Another is to create a compressed file that contains copies of your important documents and other material that you need to preserve. Most backup programs also have some way of doing incremental backup. An incremental backup means your only backing up the files it recently changed. This reduces the amount of time you have to spend on backups. This kind of a task can also be put into your task manager and it would do it automatically some time at night after you stop using the computer.
Here are two of many possible recommendations. For one I would recommend is Easeus Todo Backup software  For second place I would suggest a package that goes by the unlikely name Macrium Reflect Free.
OK. I'm going to stop here and wait for your next reply.

[karlosss]

thank you
I have one more quesiton about this: Some individuals save their movies in compressed video format or MP4.How to do that?i tried some tools found on google but are veryyy slow and not eficient for example i have 10 movies(4 k format) i need to compress and convert to smaller MP4 without loosing quality

P.S.
and one more question about my HDD Portable seagate expansion,how to keep it safe?

[DaveLembke]

When making video files smaller my experience is that you lose quality. So thing is that you can only go smaller to a certain extent and then you start to notice a blur and pixelation. I use a free tool called Format Factory to resize video files and convert them from one format to another. Another free video formatiing tool is Virtual DUB. Format Factory is easier to use. I use Virtual DUB mainly for taking raw videos recorded with FRAPS of game play events and making a 25GB video down to a 1.2GB video as an AVI. There is some loss of quality in the settings that I have. It can be adjusted for better quality with a larger file output or lesser quality for a smaller file.

[karlosss]

I understand.....any tool i use will lose quality so i better not touch them i understand, thank you

[karlosss]

about viruses and lose data from hdd portable read this:https://askleo.com/how-do-i-protect-the-files-on-a-portable-hard-drive/

First off, external hard drives, or portable drives, are no more likely to be affected by malware than internal drives. In fact, they’re slightly less likely to be affected- since most malware infects the system that’s stored on the internal drive.

- What can be done to insure longevity and safety to the drive and its contents?

[DaveLembke]

- What can be done to insure longevity and safety to the drive and its contents?

Avoid the drive getting bumped when running, store drive in a dry location, and make sure the drive is running in a cool environment to avoid overheating the drive, power the drive through a UPS to avoid power disruptions. Rest of the safety is in the data not getting infected etc as well as only connect it to a hardware healthy system such as if you connect it to a system that crashes and its writing to the drive it will corrupt it.

[karlosss]

Ok thanks for all this information,but still wondering mmmm can i find on internet a software to protect my HDD data?
-a USB Stick is safer or is the same story?
thank you
then i will close the subject

[DaveLembke]

Software protection only goes so far.

A good Antivirus is #1
then other protections can be encryption if you dont want others easily able to access your data if drive gets in wrong hands etc.

Write Protection is next line of defense but not perfect. Additionally if the drive is being written to, I dont know of any software that writes to a drive in a manner that it wont corrupt a drive if the drive is disconnected in the middle of writing to it.

There are so many ways to mess up a drive. And a few ways to protect them. That is why redundancy of data on other drives or cloud is best vs all your eggs in one basket. If you stick with just that single 1TB drive your going to be at risk of losing some or all data if something goes wrong. Google Drive has 15GB of free storage, I would place your most important files on the cloud and lesser important files on only that 1TB drive as best practice if not buying a 2nd 1TB drive to have a 2nd line of avoiding data loss.

There is a reason why RAID and Backups to multiple media exist, both mainly to protect from total data loss. If a system admin was running a company on a single hard drive and single backup drive and something went south to where they were unable to recover the data they would be fired in a heartbeat for being an idiot in not better protecting the data when data protection is fairly inexpensive and data recovery is costly but total data loss can cause failure of a business or extreme financial burden. Example being a Point of Sale system. If the Point of Sale system goes down for a business then there is no money flowing. How long can a business run with no money flowing. Even worse, a company that has engineering and all their data is on a drive and nowhere else and not properly backed up. Drive dies and out the window goes could be millions of dollars or more in information and whoever was responsible for the protection of that data fired and could be sued for negligence.

USB stick answer .... USB sticks are safer from vibration than a HDD. They are like slow SSDs. But you will still want to backup to more than just 1 of them to avoid having all eggs in 1 basket. Flash Media data recovery is sometimes worse than HDD's. Reason being a HDD has physical platters with stored info and as long as they can spin up and be accessed you can generally get some of the data back vs all. If your really lucky you get all but if the drive was corrupted, then there is some loss. Flash media and SSD's if they get corrupted really good you can see a total data loss pretty easily. Example being I had a SSD that failed with BSOD to Windows 7 the one day in the middle of gaming. The drive would mount but could not be accessed. Used all sorts of tools to try to get the data. Gave up on that and repartitioned it. went to format after repartitioning and it would fail. Tried to flash the SSD to fix it that way with OCZ flash tool. SSD was a very light paperweight.

[karlosss]

i understand but if i have luck...can my hdd live for 3-12 months?

[DaveLembke]

i understand but if i have luck...can my hdd live for 3-12 months?

Magic 8-ball might give this answer. 

Drives are suppose to last longer than their warranty period. A good indication of quality sometimes is how much trust the manufacturer puts in their product to last without troubles. Never a guarantee that it will last that long but if it doesnt, then the manufacturer has to replace it if it died under normal use and no abuse. Sometimes a product with a 3 year warranty is better than a product with a 1 year warranty because the product was tested to last 3 years of use when they tested it under extreme conditions hot, cold, vibration, and Exercise of the electronics Read/Write cycles, etc. A product that has a 1 year warranty may have been tested to only last 1 year of average consumer wear. *I use to work in manufacturing of products and was involved in the stress testing of new products to see how much they can handle before they break and well as stress testing before products left to the customer to be flawless under stressed conditions. Working with engineering I learned that warranties are a good indication of trust in ones product to its customers.

If a product has been stress tested and has a failure rate that falls short of other warranties that a manufacturer provides in similar products you will even see at times where the same manufacturer has two hard drives one with a 1 year warranty and other with 3 year warranty or even maybe a 5 year warranty in some cases where the drive is suppose to be a solid running workhorse to put lots of run hours on before failure.

[karlosss]

have 2 years guarantee
so i better plug out everytime i not use the hdd? i think i will use 1-2 every 10 days

Now u make me wonder: why i buyed this hdd? )) is not safe not live looong life, i better buy1   laptop  and 1 new pc with 3-4 T hdd and save everything there.so this hdd will be useless

[DaveLembke]

When not needed properly disconnect it from the USB connection and leave it powered off.

A Hard Drives life is unknown. But it can be treated like a car. When not needing to run shut it off to drastically lower its run time. Run time is like mileage on a car.

i better buy1   laptop  and 1 new pc with 3-4 T hdd and save everything there.so this hdd will be useless

You dont want all data in 1 location = 1 drive ... you should have it on multiple drives if you dont want to lose it. Drives will fail, when is unknown, but a pair of drives failing at the same time is about the odds of being struck by lightning or a house fire which would cook both of them. It can happen but far less likely than 1 of 2 drives dying. Right now with 1 external drive your running with all eggs in 1 basket and risky.

Trying to help you to reduce the risk of data loss. Stated a few times you want to use multiple drives and not just one large single drive. 

Buying a new laptop isnt needed unless you really need a new one. An additional 1TB or larger drive is all you need to properly protect up to 1TB of data with redundancy = same data stored on both drives.

Now u make me wonder: why i buyed this hdd? )) is not safe not live looong life

Getting back to car analogy, if its kept parked and protected from the environment around it and not used much it can last 20 years or longer because of light use just like a car that isnt run into the ground to failure.

Most people wont have a use for a external hard drive after about 8 years or so due to the fact that 8 years from now that drive will seem small though. For example i have a 10MB hard drive that came out of my 8088XT computer. The Hard Drive is 30 years old and still works, but the most complex application for it would be Windows 3.11 which uses about 9MB of the 10MB leaving 1MB free for data. It has DOS 5.0 on it and some really old DOS games. The 10MB of data off that drive is on a 650MB CD-R with a bunch of other old data going back to the 1980s. When CD Burners got affordable around 1999 I burned all my old data to a single 650MB CD-R made 2 more backup copies of it for redundancy vs a single CD to lose data, and threw away a trash bag full of floppy disks that held 720k or 1.44MB of data each.

Another drive a 4.3GB Quantum BigFoot 5.25" drive that I had since 1996 though failed 6 months ago. It was used a lot and then put into storage and used occasionally. One day I went to use it for a Windows 98 SE system and got the clunk of death.  After reboot after clunk of death the drive no longer spins up, just a solid green LED on the main board that normally would flicker with HDD activity. The drive lasted long beyond its intended life and failed after 20 years.

[karlosss]

i uderstand,my pc have an internal or external HDD drive It is mounted indoor unit, u tell me to buy a 2'nd drive and mount inside my pc? is possible this? or to buy a 2'nd portable hdd?

[DaveLembke]

2nd Portable is my suggestion. Label one of them say #1 and other #2.

Say #1 is the Master Drive. This drive gets updated from Drive #2 after first confirming that drive #2 is clean of virus's. Drive #1 is placed somewhere safe. Drive #2 is used as the drive you interact with most. Whenever you have a certain level of data that has been added or changed on drive #2, you will scan the system and drive to make sure no virus's exist and then connect drive #1 and update it with file changes from drive #2.

Some people balance the wear on drives by using them in a rotation as well. Such as after confirming that drive #1 is clean, introduce drive #2 and update it with changes from #1. Then remove drive #1 properly and put it somewhere safe and drive #2 is then in use. Then the next time you have some data on it you cant afford to lose you perform the complete virus scan and if clean reintroduce drive #1 and update drive #1 with drive #2. Then properly disconnect drive #2 and place drive #2 some place safe and alternate, but never miss the full virus scan prior to introducing each drive to each other. Reason being is that a virus can act like fire. Failing to perform a full scan and you just spread the fire to both drives and now are at risk of data loss.

Myself I have less than 32GB of important data that is projects that I work on so I have three 32GB USB sticks labeled A, B, and C. I backup to A, then next week B, then next week C, and then the week after that overwrites A with the latest info, and week after that B is overwritten with latest data. If I have a project that i worked on that is critical to have it backed up on multiple drives, I will perform a backup sooner than waiting 7 days and stick with my A,B,C,A,B,C rotation. NOTE: I also perform full virus scans regularly before introducing the 32GB USB sticks to be as safe as possible to not spread a virus like fire.

Back in the 1990s I had a virus that spread like fire over floppy disks and it was really bad. I learned my lesson from this. 

[Geek-9pm]

I only said that as a suggestion. Standard desktops have room inside for a second drive. The exceptions are the very small units taht have no room for internal expansion. But if you don't want to dig inside the box, you can use an external drive for general backup and secondary storage.
This video is simple and easy to follow.
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=chr-greentree_ff&p=howto+add+second+hard+drive+inside+PC#id=3&vid=ef944ed1e6221c68190bf608d2029d22&action=click
What he shows is what I meant.

[karlosss]

I think first i will save everything on my laptop and on my portable hdd too until i will buy the second portable hdd( 2 places better) then i will use 2 portable hdd i will save all data on both, when i lose data form 1'st i will recopy from the 2'nd then scan for viruses, this way is impossible to lose data,thank you..ur answers make me understand many thing,thank you.I have a new question,i.e.: i want to watch 2 movies (4 hours),the movies are on my HDD Portable,what u advise me to do? copy both videos in my pc and run there? or run 4 hours directly from HDD Portable?

-By the way I saw a tut. about viruses on portable HDD and they said they can't harm ur hdd becouse virus goes to the system etc,anyway i will do what u said i will scan to be sure

-Why backup and not copy the files directly( simply copy & paste) to a 2'nd portable hdd?

[DaveLembke]

when i lose data form 1'st i will recopy from the 2'nd then scan for viruses

Just wanting to let you know that you want to do a full virus scan on any computer these drives come into contact with prior to connecting the drives. *If the drive has been being used on that system extra virus scans arent necessary but I'd suggest a daily scan. Its most important that a external that was separated from the system, the system itself verified to be clean before connecting the external.

By the way I saw a tut. about viruses on portable HDD and they said they can't harm ur hdd becouse virus goes to the system etc,anyway i will do what u said i will scan to be sure

Wherever you saw this info, its false... External Drives CAN get infected and they DO get infected from a system that has an infection if the nature of the code is to spread by removable media which external drives are. There are all sorts of virus's that spread this way, however most virus's out there are dependent on Windows OS and target Windows itself by altering Windows system files or nesting/rooting themselves in the system as a parasite leech. Most do not work independent of the OS and are heavily dependent on Windows to carry out an exploit or attack method. This is why a drive infected with a Virus from a Windows system can be brought to a Linux computer and the virus is inactive. The worst virus's that I know of are ones that attack the master boot record which is a low level attack/infection. Its able to run prior to Windows booting. I am not the best guru out there on Virus's but I do know how to protect yourself from them. They are constantly evolving and so you have to stay on your toes to keep systems free of them.

i want to watch 2 movies (4 hours),the movies are on my HDD Portable,what u advise me to do? copy both videos in my pc and run there? or run 4 hours directly from HDD Portable?

If your computer has the space available to copy to the local hard drive, I would then copy them and run them from there. Once you get your second external you could play from USB external drive, but right now if your external overheats or gets bumped you lose everything on it possibly, so until the 2nd external has a copy of the first external drives contents, I would minimize its use. And so I advise copying the files to local computers hard drive at this point and playing direct from there instead. * Some external drives heat up when they are in constant use. When they are connected and nothing reading and writing to them they stay cool, but is its constantly active it can heat up. Some external drives are poorly thermally designed and dont have proper ventilation for many hours of constant use. A drive that heats up inside its case with no ability to get rid of heat can damage the drive.

Why backup and not copy the files directly( simply copy & paste) to a 2'nd portable hdd?

Any part of the conversation where I may have stated backup, it was suppose to imply that the files are replicated (copied) from Drive #1 to Drive #2.

Here are DOS instructions that can be run once you get your second drive. You will need to figure out which drive is #1 and #2. In my example below Drive #1 is E: and Drive #2 is F:

 It will copy all data from Drive 1 to Drive 2. You connect both external drives to a healthy computer that doesnt have any virus's on it, and then run this instruction. It can take quite a while for the data of drive #1 to Drive #2 initially. But after the initial copy from #1 to #2, future replications should take less time because it will only copy over files that have changed been edited or altered as well as new files. * This instruction though does not perform garbage clean up, and so if you delete files on say drive #1 and connect drive #2 and run this instruction to replicate, drive #1 to #2, Drive 2 will not be removed of the files. So anything that you want removed you will have to manually remove from drives.

To make a mirror copy of Drive #1 to Drive #2

Code: [Select]

xcopy E:\*.* F\*.* /h/s/d/y
To make a mirror copy of Drive #2 to Drive #1

Code: [Select]

xcopy F:\*.* E:\*.* /h/s/d/y
*The above instructions will need to be adjusted for what drive letters your external drives are given. Its common for E: and F: to be used on a system with C: as hard drive and D: as optical drive. So before you run the instructions just be sure you know that the paths are correct for drive letters. This copies everything from E to F and F to E. You will never lose data with these, however if you have any files that were edited it will overwrite the old files. If you want to keep copies of old files its best to place then in their own directory or name them with a unique name so that they are protected from overwrite.

These are run from command prompt or can be added to a text file that is given a .bat file extension in which they then become a batch file. the very first time you do this you will see lots of files copying as well as it can take quite a while due to the limitations of the USB ports speed. I am guessing your on USB 2.0. If your on USB 1.1 or 1.0 it could take a lot longer. These days newer computers have USB 3.0 slots and if the external is a USB 3.0 drive then it goes full speed transfer rate. If its a USB 3.0 drive connected to a slower 2.0 port then it will be at 2.0 speed.

**Also to mention there is a newer replacement to XCOPY called RoboCopy, but XCOPY is compatible with a larger variety of computers so thats why I used XCOPY vs RoboCopy instructions for mirror copying the externals to each other.

[karlosss]

thank you very much DaveLembke

[DaveLembke]

Very Welcome ... Best of Luck