Hi,
I am wondering which type of external storage device would be best for
backing-up around 4Gigs of data. Should I be looking at, say, a USB 2.0
external hard drive, or, a USB 2.0 DVD burner?

What is DVD capacity?

Do DVDs write faster than my 2 years old DVD RW burner?

ALso, if I want to do a full back-up of EVERYThing, and I know the DVD
doesn't have the capacity for this task, but, do I just copy, using the
wWindows file explorer, the entire C and D drive (I gave my disk
partitioned in to a C and D drive) and then paste it into the extternal
hardrive?

Or, are there more effective ways to back up the system in such a way
that if my hard drive dies I have a complete replica, that I can boot
from (?) , on another drive.


Any help or advice would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Paul

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"Paul S." <pauls@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:10dklv0jds4lu9a@corp.supernews.com...
> Hi,
> I am wondering which type of external storage device would be best for
> backing-up around 4Gigs of data. Should I be looking at, say, a USB 2.0
> external hard drive, or, a USB 2.0 DVD burner?
>
The answer to your subject question is a hard drive is faster, but both will
be limited by the USB connection.  A Firewire connection would be faster.

> What is DVD capacity?
>
Currently 4.7 gig, 9.4 gig (dual layer) recorders may be available within
the next year or so (bleeding edge technology=$$$$).

> Do DVDs write faster than my 2 years old DVD RW burner?
>
Look at the box, your 2 year old may be a 2x speed and newer drives are 12x
(Plextor PX712A for example).

> ALso, if I want to do a full back-up of EVERYThing, and I know the DVD
> doesn't have the capacity for this task, but, do I just copy, using the
> wWindows file explorer, the entire C and D drive (I gave my disk
> partitioned in to a C and D drive) and then paste it into the extternal
> hardrive?
>
Yes, it should have its own drive letter.

> Or, are there more effective ways to back up the system in such a way
> that if my hard drive dies I have a complete replica, that I can boot
> from (?) , on another drive.
>
Ghosting or mirroring (think RAID) is the only way to create a bootable
backup.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Kay Archer wrote:
> "Paul S." <pauls@nospam.com> wrote in message
> news:10dklv0jds4lu9a@corp.supernews.com...
> 
>
> The answer to your subject question is a hard drive is faster, but both wi
ll
> be limited by the USB connection.  A Firewire connection would be faster.
>
> 
>
> Currently 4.7 gig, 9.4 gig (dual layer) recorders may be available within
> the next year or so (bleeding edge technology=$$$$).
>
> 
>
> Look at the box, your 2 year old may be a 2x speed and newer drives are 12
x
> (Plextor PX712A for example).

|||||||||||| Oops, I meant to ask whether the DVD RW drives burn data at
a rate |||||||||||| faster than my two year old CD RW drive.
>
> 
>
> Yes, it should have its own drive letter.
>
> 
>
> Ghosting or mirroring (think RAID) is the only way to create a bootable
> backup.
>
>

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

> >>Do DVDs write faster than my 2 years old DVD RW burner?[vbcol=seagreen] 
12x[vbcol=seagreen] 
>
> |||||||||||| Oops, I meant to ask whether the DVD RW drives burn data at
> a rate |||||||||||| faster than my two year old CD RW drive. 

Look at the MB/s (megabytes per second).  A 4X DVD can burn a full disk
(4.7gig) in about 15 minutes.

If you are buring CD-RW disks in the same drive it will be about 24x, your
two year old burner could be the same speed.

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=16638

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