External hard drive - getting started

[arthurk]

I've just acquired an external hard drive, and have a couple of questions about getting started with it.

First, it came formatted as FAT32, but I think I read somewhere that NTFS is preferable. I'm using XP Home, and don't ever expect to connect it to a computer using anything other than Windows, and then only XP or later. Would it be a good idea to reformat it to NTFS?

Second, whenever I plug a drive of any sort into a USB port (thumb drive; camera card reader; this new HDD) it is assigned the letter E: (Except on one occasion when I had 2 devices plugged in at once and one became F: ) I've found instructions on how to change a drive letter (MS site Article ID 307844), but if I do that with a removable device, will the computer remember the change next time I plug it in?

Thanks for any help,
Arthur

[Nicolina]

we have several external hard drives (500Meg & 1 Terabye) and have left all as Fat32. They all run perfectly on Vista Home Basic and Home Premium. As for the drive letter, why change it? It doesn't make any difference what letter it has.
Elaine

[arthurk]

One thing I saw suggested that NTFS was faster and more secure, both of which seem quite good reasons to prefer it over FAT32. As for the drive letter, I was wondering about using the new drive to install some lesser-used programs or else for storing data relating to programs on the C: drive, in which case it would be important to have a consistent letter, wouldn't it?

Arthur

[Guy Etchells]

NTFS has many advantages over FAT 32.
Control over which users can access which files.
Compression, NTFS allows files to take up less disk space due to smaller cluster size. Cluster size determines the minimum space available, if the cluster size is 512 k then even 1k of data takes up 512k of space.
Recoverable, NTFS stores files in two separate places this means if one file gets corrupted the other will be recovered by the system.
Capacity FAT32 is limited to about 2 terabytes NTFS around 19 terabytes.
Speed NTFS is faster at locating files than FAT 32 because of the B-tree structure used.

There are many other advantages but these are enough to be going on with ;)
Cheers
Guy

[Guest]

I second what Guy has said about NTFS - he beat me to it because I've been watching the news :D

There is no point in changing the drive letter. The OS will recognise the drive when it is plugged in no matter what the letter is.

As regards installing software, always install to the C drive. Use other drives (be they partitions of the main internal hard drive or separate internal/external drives) for storing data and/or system recovery software/data. You don't have to have the same drive letter for data as for the software. Many programs store the data files within the same folder as the software simply because many users have no idea about setting up separate data folders.

Graham

[Alan Welsford]

You've got me wondering now.

We bought an external drive a while back, mainly for data copies, and it never occurred to me that the format might be other than NTFS.

A useful prompt to go and check.

I'd echo the comments about not trying to install software on it. Keep it simple, and have anything that's installed only on your fixed drive(s). To do otherwise seems to be making complications that you do not need to.

Alan

[Rove]

A very interesting piece of info. I've been thinking about buying an external unit.

Thanks to Guy and all of you.

Bill.

[Mary Anne]

Me, too. Thanks, all. I still can't get my head around needing 500 MB for backup though, when my hard drive is only 80GB and it's not full yet :)

[arthurk]

Thanks for all the help on file systems - looks like NTFS is the way to go. I take the point about installing programs only on to the C: drive, but if a program is going to access data on the external drive, would I then need to make sure that the same letter was always allocated to it? (It might never happen, but I can envisage the situation where I have a thumb drive plugged in as E: and then I attach the HDD, which becomes F: rather than its usual E:.)

Arthur

[Guy Etchells]

I work in a slightly different way from that recommended by others.
All my computers have at least two internal drives a C: drive and a D: drive.

I only install the operating system on my C: drive and allow the rest of the drive to be used for temp files and system cache.
This allows high speed access and transfer in most situations.

All programs are installed on my D: drive which is also used for stored files etc.
Back-ups are on two external drives or remote computers depending on how vital they are. ;)

If you wish to force an external drive (usb) to keep the same drive letter then ensure it is connected and switched on before connecting any other usb storage (this includes cd drives).
Cheers
Guy

[arthurk]

As a follow-up question, is it preferable to use some kind of backup software, or are Windows' tools sufficient (i.e. drag-and-drop, copy-and-paste, and right click - Send To)?

I use XP Home, which by default doesn't have the XP Backup utility installed, and while, according to a big XP book that I have, this can be installed from the XP setup CD, my PC manufacturer supplied Windows on a partition of the C drive, without a CD.

The new external drive came with a backup program and I've found a number of other possible backup programs (free), which have a much smaller footprint. I know that these programs can usually perform differential backups, which the Windows tools can't, but the issue that I'm really wondering about is verifying each backup job. Not all programs seem to do this, but what I'm now wondering is if the Windows tools include any kind of verification/error reporting, so that for the very simplest tasks that is all that's required, and any additional software is just a waste of space.

Arthur

[Guy Etchells]

I much prefer a simple approach of copying or duplicating each file I wish to keep onto my back-up drive.
Yes it take a little longer and one has to have discipline to create a back-up rather than relying on automatic back-ups. The plus side is the peace of mind knowing the back-up has been made and works.

I used to use a raid array for back-up until a faulty raid controller corrupted not only the main array (two drives) but the back-up array (a further two drives) also.

If you can remember to create back-ups then I would recommend creating your own back-ups. If you may forget to create back-ups then leave it to the automatic programs.
Cheers
Guy

[malcolm]

As a follow-up question, is it preferable to use some kind of backup software, ...

I personally like (and use!) EZback-it-up from http://www.rdcomp.net/ezbackitup/

It allows a backup 'job' to be defined (i.e. the set of folders to be backed up) with options, for example, for whether deleted files should be deleted from the backup. The backups are just copies, no compression, so dragging files out onto another machine is easy.

EZback-it-up does require that the USB HD gets the same drive letter each time. That's not much of a problem but if it is, the USBDLM (USB Drive Letter Manager) utilty from http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html can help you. You can use it to always assign your drive to a 'high' letter out of the way of transient asignments.

= Malcolm.

[arthurk]

Thanks for the replies and suggestions. Guy - I don't like the idea of automating backups either, and while I know I can just copy across from one drive to another (and don't have much trouble remembering to do it regularly), what I'd really like to know is if there would be some advantage in using a program which explicitly claims it will verify that the backups have been performed correctly. (As far as I know, simply doing this via Windows Explorer etc won't give this assurance - or am I wrong about this?) It seems to me that to have confidence in your backups, you really need to be sure that they are accurate.

Malcolm - this program looks quite similar in function to others that I've seen. On the website I didn't see any reference to verification, though the log did have a place for Errors. Could I assume (and this applies to some other programs I have seen) that if a program can log errors, it is in effect verifying that the backup is OK?

Arthur

[malcolm]

Malcolm - this program looks quite similar in function to others that I've seen. On the website I didn't see any reference to verification, though the log did have a place for Errors. Could I assume (and this applies to some other programs I have seen) that if a program can log errors, it is in effect verifying that the backup is OK?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'verification'. It copies files, the O/S will report if the write fails but it does not do whole-file read-after-write if that's what you mean. If the backup is being done to a USB hard disk, I see no need for such read-after-write.

Malcolm.

[arthurk]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'verification'. It copies files, the O/S will report if the write fails but it does not do whole-file read-after-write if that's what you mean. If the backup is being done to a USB hard disk, I see no need for such read-after-write.
I'm not 100% sure what I mean either :) All I know is that some programs have a tick box in their options to "verify that files are copied correctly" (or similar), but I've no idea how they do this. I've just been in touch with the support dept of a program that doesn't offer this option to ask whether it might do it anyway, and he referred me to a Wish List on their forum where someone had asked for "Verify after backup (bitwise comparison)" but there were no further comments on this, which to me implies that the feature isn't there, and there are no plans for it.

Anyway, you say "If the backup is being done to a USB hard disk, I see no need for such read-after-write" - please could you explain why? It might save me from what is beginning to resemble a wild goose chase.

Thanks,
Arthur

[malcolm]

Anyway, you say "If the backup is being done to a USB hard disk, I see no need for such read-after-write" - please could you explain why? It might save me from what is beginning to resemble a wild goose chase.

If you had two hard disks inside your PC, and you copied a file from one to the other, wouldn't you assume the OS took all precautions and that you could trust the copy to be accurate?

Tape, and CDs/DVDs, are considered less reliable and I would want to verify the files were copied. That said, tape requires more verification generally that a CD or DVD with tjose I wuld assume the data to be correct as long as the files themselves are all readable - I use CDcheck (http://www.kvipu.com/CDCheck/) to scan written discs although it is best, of course, to do that verificatin in a drive other than the one t was written in.

Hard discs, on the other hand, I trust. If I copy a file I don't feel a need to explicitly verify it was copied correctly. To go back a step, when your FH program saves its data to disc, does it read it back to check it was written correctly?

I hope that makes sense, Malcolm.

[arthurk]

Thanks Malcolm, that does help. I agree about verifying CDs and DVDs, and the program I use to write these does have that option, though it happens in the same drive immediately after it's recorded - I think it probably compares the CD/DVD files with the temporary files on the HD, but anyway it takes nearly as long as the recording itself.

As for the external HDD, maybe I was getting a little paranoid, or at least confused by the extra bells and whistles which some programs have. In any case, by backing up to the external drive as well as CD/DVD I should be better protected than before, so I'll try to relax about it now (apart from the intricacies of configuring the program and its backup jobs).

Arthur

[malcolm]

... maybe I was getting a little paranoid ...
There's nothing wrong with a little paranoia to ensure your data survives :)

Malcolm.

[Raffaele]

All good advice but.

The bit that is missing is the disaster recovery backup.
Normal Procedure in business

Daily - automatic overnight
Weekly full backup using tools of your preference.
Weekly or Monthly - Back to DVD or CD stored at a different site.

If you have faced as many people as I have over the years who have had a small fire destroy their computer and backups you would understand this.

Home computers, as many backups as you can manage. They notoriously die at the wrong time and people like me are very expensive to recover all the important stuff.

Regards - PS I have run software and hardware companies since 1980

[malcolm]

If you have faced as many people as I have over the years who have had a small fire destroy their computer and backups you would understand this.

I'd add a rider on that. The most recent backup is probably the one right next to your computer, but that isn't the important backup copy ...

The important copies are:
The copy at the 'other end' of the house that will not be taken if your computer is stolen and the copy in a neighbour's or relative's house that will survive a fire in your house

Malcolm.