Back up advice

Rob.... here's what I did recently...

My work computer...this one, had a 40gig drive and it was getting rather full...It wouldn't run some of the defrag utilities because it needs 15% free space... so I went to the computer store and bought a brand new Maxtor 500GB drive...

I disconnected the D drive and hooked the new Maxtor up as a slave drive... using the "clone drive" function included on the CD that came with the Maxtor... I cloned the drive.... this took about 15 minutes.... the computer then instructed me to shut it off and install the 500GB maxtor as the primary drive....removing the old 40GB drive....I also at this time reconnected my D data storage drive and rebooted.... and it come up and ran OK..all the OS and applications were there and intact. I did have to do a reinstall/fix on one of my business programs, but everything else works perfectly.... including all the programs that use some sort of disk ID security to keep you from installing the apps on additional computers with out paying another license.... even my online Carbonite back up is working perfectly.

If you do as you are doing now...you have to tell the computer where the new files are located...I started to do that with my picture files and my MP3 Itunes collection... the problem came when I went to update my Ipod.... it updated rater quickly and I soon discovered that it had one song on it.... then I had to go and tell it where all the files had been moved to... what a pain that was....

Now I have a 500GB C drive and a 250GB data drive, in this work machine. It was the quickest and easiest drive swap I've ever done.... well worth the cost ...

John, I can rememember when I installed the 40GB drive.... it literally took me 3 days of working on it to get a semblance of what I had previously....between all the "clean" installs and registrations.... and reloading data bases..and on, and on... and then at the end of it....the computer was still not exactly like it had been before....

Kudos big time to cloning software.... I couldn't believe it was that simple or fast....

Albert - greetings dude! And yepper, I second that suggestion big-time. In fact I just recently started to actually USE the backup to BUNDLE rather than Project, specifically for those reasons. Since for most of us, drive space is not the big issue anymore, it only makes sense. In fact, your last statement is also very important to consider - FX that are not native to CW. This is one reason I'm trying to simplify my own setup and keep a much tighter rein on what FX I use and keep tabs on where I need to be sure to make backups of, in all my projects. These days I'm in more of a "back to basics" mode and follow the K.I.S.S. principle !

This is bordering on preference so I thought a minute before posting this - but considering I've spent something like 18+ years in the IT business and worked with countless drives of al brands and models, here's what I've noted:

Maxtor drives are the most noisy I've ever worked with, although are reliable enough.
Western Digital have failed BY FAR the most often of any model I've worked with, and I blame it on the poor design of their desktops which for the longest time, mount them on end inside the case.
Seagates are the best combination of quiet and reliability.

Feel free to take or leave the advise, I only point out my observations so if you have a choice of xxx GB's at the same cost (and most of them are VERY close in cost), you can consider the options. Best of luck to you!

Cheers JD - do all the drives you mention come supplied with the cloning software Herb mentioned? (and also really really simple instructions lol?)


Herb - could you give the model number of your Maxtor if you still have it handy? Most I'm seeing are external drives.

You can buy software that clones drives automatically on a schedule, that way you can be ready for a crash as well. A good external HD clone of the "C" drive is a problem solved in advance.

Finally decided on the Western Digital Caviar Blue 640 gig hard drive, was only a few quid more than the 500 gig ones. Any opinion on it?

Not looking forward to attempting to clone my current hard drive though.

Don't forget, if you dump all your data onto an external drive, then clear off your working drive, you still only have one copy. If that external drive crashes, you won't be a happy camper. I have my working drive and my external drive is my back up. Ideally, I should have two external drives, then I could clean off my working drive, which I will have to do one of these days.