need help finding a 2.5 inch external drive that is swappable on Dell D410 (1 Viewer)

[Gregg Loewen]

hi guys
I had a HD failure this past weekend and almost lost a huge amount of data.
Is there a HD available that I can externally connect to my laptop to regularly ghost / back up my internal HD? The plan would be to do back ups 2 xs weekly, and if my internal drive were to fail I would simply install the external drive in the failed drive's place.
For reference, my laptop is a Dell D410 and has a 60 gig drive.
I figure there must be some kind of USB / firewire external bay that will allow a regular internal type of HD to be connected to it.

Please assist if can.

thanks!!

Gregg

 

[Mike_J_Potter]

This should do the trick if you just want a cable. It will allow you to hook up a normal IDE hard drive or a 2.5 laptop type.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRa...82E16812156101

Or if you want an enclosure to put a hard drive in there are plenty of choices out there. I bought a cheap one that I stuck 120 gig for backing stuff up.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

The easiest way to do it, IMHO, is to go with Mike's second suggestion; an external USB2 or Firewire enclosure.

You combine that with a program to synch your harddrive contents to another drive. One such program that I've tried is Second Copy and I've also used ViceVersa Pro. Both do a good job of mirroring a file structure to another location.

The upside of that type of backup is that recovery is very easy. You don't even need to load the file synch program if a disaster occurs, just open up a command line in Windows and use the xcopy /s command to copy the whole shebang back to where you want it.

Indeed, you could use the xcopy program to do the backup as well, but you don't get advanced sync features like making an exact mirror.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Gregg:

I had a somewhat similar need for my Inspiron laptop when I decided to upgrade the internal hard drive. I went to Drive Solutions and bought my upgrade drive and their handy external drive enclosure upgrade kit. You could do the same and just order two drives - a replacement for the bad one and a duplicate to use in the external. The prices are very reasonable and the disk duplication software works like a charm. I now have a 100GB drive in place of the factory-supplied 20GB, and a 2.5" external drive for data back-ups and special projects. (I back the full 100GB up to a 3.5" external drive, of which I have several. I buy cheap external enclosures and then grab internal drives when there are really good sales or rebates. Handy for moving video files and the like between my desktop and laptop for editing, etc.)

Anyway, I've been very happy with the price and service at Drive Solutions (I also upgraded my notebook memory with them) and like to recommend them when I can.

BTW, are you expecting to be in South Florida at all in 2006? I'm having my JVC D-ILA delivered in a couple of weeks and will also have my 32" Westinghouse HD LCD panel in the home office. I may also get a 27" Westinghouse for my bedroom if I can hit that Best Buy $500 sale on Friday. Lotsa stuff to calibrate.

Later,

Joe

 

[Gregg Loewen]

hi guys, thanks for all the help!!

Joe, I am now servicing Florida every 3 months, my next trip will be during the last 2 weeks of January

Happy thanksgiving!!!

Gregg

 

[Gregg Loewen]

hi Guys

I just ordered a HD bay kit, with software, and 2 drives from Drive Solutions, The bay, with cable and software was 45 ish and the 80 gig drives were 110 each.

Thanks for all the assistance!!!