External back-up drives

I have an Intenso back up drive that is a good few years old now but still seems to be working perfectly. I want to recommend a good drive to my brother but have noticed the Intenso's are not getting good reports now. Any recommendations would be welcome please.

 

What sort of stuff are we talking about backing up Sheal? These days there is a move towards online storage.

 

@Sheal
I've used a 500GB Freecom Mobile drive for some years now. This is powered by the USB port and has worked well for me.

 

I have a Verbatim external drive USB power , just plug it into a port , very easy.
You can buy a Toshiba 500gb for £38.
Make sure it is suitable for the USB 2 (white) or USB 3 port (blue)
http://www.ebuyer.com/662454-toshiba-500gb-canvio-basics-usb-3-0-2-5-ext-hdd-black-hdtb305ek3aa

 

I also store about 6GB of files on Google Drive , cloud storage. Works really well and I can access the files anywhere. You get 15GB free and can upgrade for a cost .

 

And being on googles infrastructure, you can know that it will take a lot more than a single hard disk failure to cause the loss of all your stuff.

 

Thanks all for your help, I'll look into your suggestions.

Both my brother and I have laptops but I assume the ports are the same Harry.

The usual computer files and thousands of photo's that are irreplaceable. Neither of us trust online storage which is the reason for the back-up drive.

 

All my photos are stored by Google. It costs me nothing at all. Even if my phone gets completely destroyed, I know my photos are safe.

If ransomware somehow managed to encrypt my files at Google, which I doubt because Google is not the kind of organisation that overlooks security, I'd just report it, and they'd just restore any affected drives from backup.

It is nigh on impossible for Google or the likes to lose data. Commercial data centres don't store files on single disks. They are organised in disk arrays called RAID, which is an acronym for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. The word redundant is very relevant even though not exactly accurate. It refers to the RAID architecture's ability to completely lose disks without losing data or even going offline. The data on the disks is 'striped', meaning that each disk only stores some of a file but not all of it, and then a checksum is stored with it. In normal circumstances, when you access a file, the RAID architecture will get the seperate pieces from many disks and reassemble them on the fly. It means it's extremely fast because you're not held back by the speed of one disk. However it's what happens in abnormal circumstances where the magic really happens. If one or even multiple disks fail, RAID can deduce the missing content using a clever formula involving the data it has still got, and the checksum data stored with it.

All of this sits behind multiple industrial grade firewalls, it's backed up frequently, and a whole team of network and infrastructure specialists monitor the whole thing constantly.

Even if someone were to actually break into a Google data centre, they still couldn't do much long term damage. The data is in multiple physical locations. Busting one would just mean getting it from another.

If you have 'offline' storage connected to a device that has an internet connection, your data is online anyway, to anyone determined enough. Storing it 'offline' on a device connected to another device that has an internet connection is just like storing it online, but without the epic industrial grade infrastructure and network security that the likes of Google has.

 

Thanks for the info @clueless1, I understand where you're coming from but knowing mine and my brother's track record with computers I feel better, like @JWK dealing with my own storage and not having it sitting on a cloud somewhere. There's hardly a day goes by when I don't have some problem or other and there are times when I just want to bin my computer. Problems have a habit of seeking me out and that never ceases to amaze my son who is often in the hot seat to put things right for me.

 

A portable SSD is an extra bit of kit that might be useful.

I've got a 500GB device that's credit card size, and can be used with tablets/phones connected with an OTG cable to backup stuff (like loads of images whilst on the move away from the electricity required for laptops).

 

As you say Armandii, to a certain extent it's about being in personal control. If I lose what I've stored it's down to me and I stand a chance of retrieving what has gone, if it's stored somewhere in the ether and it's lost, I don't stand a chance.