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Until now I've been backing up movies and I've created on my PC on DVDs. It's a pain in the ass, and some of the uncompressed avi files I make are much bigger than 4.7 gigs. I guess I could buy some double layer DVDs, but there's gotta be an easier way to make sure my shit is safe. The idea of an external HD has occurred to me, but hard drives aren't 100% reliable. You big-brains have any ideas/suggestions?
I back up to a second hard drive using Retrospect.
There are online storage places. If you have movies you can compress them into MP4's and 3's (right guys?). But if I had the ability I would save them via DVD still. And you can try d/ling movie software which converts the files to a more compressed and readable format. Like one I used to have then lost via F-Disking my HD. I believe it was called TGM movie reader or something like that.
Well, the whole point is that I don't want to compress my original movie files. I mean, I just finished an hour and 48 minute movie and uncompressed, the avi file is fucking 23 gigs. Fuck.
But I guess if that's my choice, I'll just bite the bullet and buy some dual-layer DVDs. I'll still have to chop up some of my longer movies to get 'em to fit, however.
I guess I'm starting to see the advantages of Blu-Ray- a 25 or even 50 gig DVD-R would be really sweet right about now.
If you keep your movies on your main HD, and backup to an external HD as well that will be reliable enough. The odds of them both failing at the same time are incredibly low.
I guess that's probably my best bet, unless aliens land and attack us with some sort of EMP weapon.Quote:
Originally Posted by stormy
Thanks, all.
Yeah, an external HD is the way to go.
Okay, I did some looking, and external hard drives are getting hella cheap. Is Western Digital a good brand? Circuit City has several for great prices, like a 250 gig for $80 after rebates.
BTW, I know some of you may suggest that I build my own drive but honestly, I can't be bothered. I just want to buy the thing, plug it into a USB port and forget about it.
check out the one touch or one button external backup units. they are pretty much external enclosures with a piece of software you install. then you push the button on the front and whammo
should be fairly easy and you wont have to worry about setting it up everytime you want to copy something over
heres a few on ebay and amazon, id go for a western digital, maxtor or a seagate, but i bet most of them you could just swap the drives out:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw...xternal+backup
http://search.ebay.com/search/search...kup&category0=
500gig externals can be had for about $150 if you look at the right time. Here's one that I saw the other day. No name case, but I heard there's a WD drive inside. Just depends how picky you're going to be about it.