[uzziah]

ok, so ironically my dad works for IBM, but he has ZERO backup on his laptop; he works from home all the time, and if his hdd was lost, he'd be royally ****ed; however, he's a marketing guy, and NOT a tech person; he asked me the other day "what happens when i shut the laptop lid when it's turned on".........he'd never actually done it, always shut down every time


anyway, i need to get him a "one touch" type of external hdd solution that is simply, easy, and ideally does it automatically

so, a couple questions:

1. is it best to buy an external hdd made for this, or is the software i could get and put on a blank external drive just as good?

2. what to buy?

cost is an issue, but he doesn't have tons of stuff. it's all text documents, powerpoints and excell spreadsheets; very little audio or video so he doesn't need a huge external drive.............but i need it to either backup with the push of a button, or better yet, backup automatically regularly

he uses an ibm thinkpad, a couple years old but top-spec PC, it generally just sits in one place, and he runs windows XP

he uses lotus notes, but i don't know if that would be something he'd backup; mainly i think it would be MS word, excell, and powerpoint docs

thanks

 

[iPoodz]

I'm not sure what the latest ones are called, but Seagate has some nice USB powered (no external supply needed) hard drives, complete with pretty docks, that have fairly standard back up software.

This should also work fine, if you don't want to get a Seagate for some reason.

Although, it doesn't sound like he'd need a ton of space, so I'd very enthusiastically recommend he get a Dropbox (or Carbonite, or any such service), or other similar service. I use the free 2GB version, and modify my documents in the Dropbox itself, so the most recent data is stored there, as well as a copy I can access locally. Best of all, you can download the file again from any internet connected computer (so, he won't need to lug around a big laptop for 1 excel file, if he'll have access to a computer at his presentation place). I am a big fan.

 

[120717]

RAID external with 10 duplicated drives for the lulz.

 

[majid]

Er, shouldn't IBM's IT department be responsible for this?

Most one-touch backup software is anything but. Few consumer-grade programs will know how to handle Lotus Notes databases correctly, and the free bundled programs that ship with drives are worth exactly what you pay for them.

I would use something like Acronis TrueImage for him to do a bit-for-bit copy of his drive. It's more cumbersome than a file-based backup program, but there are fewer things that can go bad for an unsophisticated user.

If his laptop is a Thinkpad, it should have built-in IBM backup tools as part of the blue button suite of tools.

 

[appophylite]

Quote:

Originally Posted by majid /img/forum/go_quote.gif If his laptop is a Thinkpad, it should have built-in IBM backup tools as part of the blue button suite of tools.

Spot on. And this system is pretty simple, quick and easy to utilize as well. I have about 3-4 backups of important information constantly and back up daily to an external hard-drive and I still utilize the nice little Thinkvantage utility on my X200 with great regularity.

 

[balderon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by majid /img/forum/go_quote.gif I would use something like Acronis TrueImage for him to do a bit-for-bit copy of his drive. It's more cumbersome than a file-based backup program, but there are fewer things that can go bad for an unsophisticated user.

There are numerous good deals out there for USB hard drives.

X2. I use Acronis products for many years to backup (and restore

) my pc's at home. You have the option of creating either a file or partition image backup. For me two valuable features are the ability to mount the partition image allowing you to restore any file(s) you wish. Also, you can create a bootable recovery disk to restore a partition. Most anything is better than M$ backup. LOL

 

[MCC]

I would also vote for Acronis. It makes a full image backup so you can restore everything without having to re-install Windows. It's expensive but I always have a backup drive capable of storing a copy of all the data on both my laptop and desktop.

Edit: As far as the drive itself goes, I like Thermaltake #N0012USU. It has a low-profile 80mm fan for cooling which should significantly extend the life of the drive. SilenX makes a suitable 15mm thick replacement fan if the need arises.

Mine is paired with a regular (not green) Seagate 1.5TB drive and it runs cool to the touch.