Want a new Internal HDD

[Puntoboy]

i've used all sors of HDD's over the years. only ever had a maxtor drive fail on me. but got it replaced under warranty so never really bothered me. i kept back ups

[joey_turbo]

bloody hell, i didn't realise HDD's were so cheap.

tel me about it. when I bought an 80gb a few years back, it was that sort of money.

When people backup their hdd, what exactly do you backup?

[Puntoboy]

depends what you are using the HDD for.

for a system drive, i use Ghost. creates and exact image of the drive.

for a storage drive, just DVD/CD's.

[joey_turbo]

when this 300 will be my storage drive, but I have never backed up my main since I got it.
I can see the benefits of backing up the storage part, but not of backing up your main. Is it to save the OS?

[Alex_Dark]

My Documents folder - its about 10gigs. The rest are ... well ...

[Puntoboy]

when this 300 will be my storage drive, but I have never backed up my main since I got it.
I can see the benefits of backing up the storage part, but not of backing up your main. Is it to save the OS?

yes and all the programs etc installed on it.

can save you hours if your drive fails. plus, if you installed things you have lost installation disks for, you can always restore them.

i reinstall windows at least once a year. to save me having to find the instal files for all my programs, i simply reimage my system drive. 10 minutes and i have a fresh install of windows with all my programs etc ready to go. all i need to do is add the odd few programs i've started using since i created the image last.

[Zeus]

or you could use OSX and have no need to rebuild

on a serious note, it should be noted that C: drives should ideally be keept free of documents/mp3's and have systerm/program files on it only. Instead store these on a secondary disk (physical, not partition).

It can sometimes be benefitial to have the pagefile on a secondary drive also; but again this is normally server standard.

Ultimately, you'll then need something external or CD media to copy the contents of drives onto in case of a drive failing. Consequently a hard disk can fail 5 days after use, or possibly 5 years after use. It's a gamble..but the more copies you have the less chance of data loss occuring.

[Puntoboy]

sound advice.

i keep everything other than the system on a 40GB HDD. i reload windows once a year at least so this way i don't have to prat about copying all my dosc etc, off of it, before i can flatten it and start again.

[Mawbster]

i have 2 x maxtor 200gb drives and have had no problems with them what soever. i do play some heavy graphical games as well.

i use c: for windows and keep most of my files on drive 2 i am nowhere near 50 gbs yet i dont think.

[joey_turbo]

Thanks for the advice guys. I will use my 80gb for windows and the 300 for storage. Or shall I just use a 20 for windows and the 80 and 300 for storage?