But not really off topic as it has to do with keeping disk space for my Poser work. :)

Do any of you use external drives to store your files?

And if so, have you had any problems with losing all your files due to overheating or any other reason?

The reason I ask is that I just bought a new 1tb external drive for my files.
I do so much graphic work that my 400gb only had 75gigs left.
So I've transferred all my files to my new drive, however, I do not want to delete them from the internal drive until I'm fairly sure I won't lose them.

Once before I had an external overheat and put itself in RAW format.
Luckily I did not reformat it until I found I could recover the info with a file scavenger program.

I'd rather not go through that again.
But then I have also lost all my files at times when the HD just died.

Any thoughts on this before I do something stupid?
My Poser work depend s on a large drive.

copy them to CD/DVD  disc that way you have a back up in case anything happens to your external drive

I do indeed use an external for my Poser stuff - purchases and freebies and associated Poser stuff like my fabric swatches for clothing textures...you get the idea ;o). I've had many, many hd's go down over the years and lost everything because I was lazy. I keep my stuff on my external, but I also burn everything to dvd religiously - even then there are things I've lost. It's only been the kindness of some of the merchants that I was able to get them back.

As an aside, I chuckled when you said you only had 75 gigs left. I came from a Mac background - it being the first computer I'd ever used (circa 1990). Anyway, my first PC was a Comcrap. When we went to the store to buy it, it had the largest hard drive you could find at the time; 4 gigs. The salesman said that would be all the hd space we would ever need and could NEVER fill all that up (Windows installed with floppys). My husband's old computer hard drive had just 80 megabytes...hehe. It almost killed me for PC's - after having used Mac's OS, I couldn't understand why you couldn't drag a file from one window to another (you couldn't do that in Windows 3.1). Ugh!

It just seemed funny that 75 gigs was getting small...LOL. Oh, how far we've come ;o).

Laurie

I use a 500 GB external for all my Poser runtimes. The only runtime on my internal drive (other than the default one and the "downloads" one that come with Poser) is a temporary one  that I use for freestuff items I'm currently working on.
I've never had problems with losing stuff except for one hard drive failure, but I had everything backed up so I was able to recover most of it

Attached Link: http://www.memeo.com/autobackup.php

Good advice.

I use an external HDD (WD "My Book" - 360 GB) with automatic backup software.
Note -the backup software comes free with WD's "My Book" HDD.
Get the FREE TRIAL and check it out.

Everytime I create or modify a Poser or PSP graphics file, it is automatically duplicated (see attached link) on the external HDD.

In addition, critical files are periodically backed up on a CD/DVD and ...
... I've never had a CD or DVD crash yet. . :biggrin:

Easy?  You bet.  Just plug the HDD into an available USB port, intall the software and ...
You're good to go!

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

WD = Western Digital

I will backup the most recent 3d stuff since most of it is already on CD and also my download stuff from Rendo And Daz.
But in addition to the bought stuff, I have a lot of free stuff and my downloads in zip format equals 34gb.

Lord only knows how much space I'll need if I ever succeed in learning modeling.  lol.

Thanks for the feedback.

dr geep, I had a choice of an external that had automatic backup abilities built-in and a boot system as well, and the one I got.
I was afraid all the automatic backup would eat up my HDD space.

But I hope to save enough to buy it soon too just for safety.
I like to be sure I have enough space for my work.

As many crashes, viruses and HDD failures as I've had, I too, learned to backup to CD often. :)

I have my main PC set up in Raid 1 array so I don't lose anything that way and I also have an XHD that I use for individual and complete backups.

I had 2 HD's fry on mr a few years back, lost eveerything twice over, the chances of that happening now are next to nothing, it would have to be afreak turn of events to lose it all with this set up.

For anyone not familiar with Raid arrays, "Raid 1" is also known as "Mirrored" disks... i.e. one disk contains an exact copy of the other, maintained automatically. If either disk breaks you can carry on reading data from the other one.

I have an external drive containing 2 x 500GB disks set up as a Raid 1 array. You can get larger capacity ones, too.

Some Raid devices support "hot-swapping", where you can just unplug the faulty drive, plug in a new one, and it automatically rebuilds the mirror image. (Usually you can't write data to the drive until this is finished). With other devices, you have to do this manually.

Quote -
Do any of you use external drives to store your files?

And if so, have you had any problems with losing all your files due to overheating or any other reason?

Yep and yep!

In March I bought a new external drive that is measured in terabyte rather than gigabytes. The one I have is equivalent to 6 - 250 gig ones.

However, I'm so not impressed!!!

I moved all of my stuff (web sites, 2D and 3D content etc. etc.) off of both of my partitioned spaces on my main computer, as well as the stuff from my other 250 gig hard drive.  I also have a gazillion CD's and DVD's that have a lot of duplicate content on them, so in my attempt to get rid of clutter I had this great idea of putting everything together on the new larger hard drive and then start making new DVD's.  

I transferred just over 500 gigs of content and before deleting anything from my other hard drives (I kept the CD's and DVD's)

I ran the external drive for a few days to make sure that things were working well. Then I deleted the files off of my main hard drive as well as my smaller external drive.

Given my luck with anything electric, I should have predicted what would happen next. I swear, not even a day later I started getting some wonky errors from the new external drive and the drive stopped showing up in "My Computer."  I was mortified!  Of course the company who made the drive couldn't have cared less. They said they would replace the drive, but if I wanted the files recovered it would cost me over $2,000.00!!!!!!

I unplugged the drive and let it sit there until I could get it packaged up and return it to the company for a replacement and considered the whole thing a horrid learning experience.  

The day I was going to pack it up to send back with a really, really nasty letter, copied to the Better Business Beaurea, I decided to plug it back in and give it another go just to check.

The drive showed up in "My Computer" and all of my files showed up too.  But in less than a minute I started getting that wonky error about not being able to save some sort of file again.  And the files were not able to be accessed.

I unplugged it again and tried several hours later, and once again it showed up, but again there was that error.  I managed to copy a few of the files from "My Documents" such as my passwords file before I couldn't access the drive again.

I suspect the drive is either overheating or my computer isn't powerful enough to run such a large external drive.

I still have the drive here and I know the files are still safe on it, but I can't access them.

How I'm ever going to get the contents off of it and onto 3 - 250 gig drives is completely beyond me though.

So take my advice.  If you do go for an external drive, get a 250 gig one and stay away from the larger ones. Also, make sure that the drive you buy isn't one of those skinny thin ones like the one I bought.  My 250 gig Notebook one is about 2 inches thick, while the new one is maybe 1 inch. So I suspect the fans are less powerful in the thin ones.  And never, ever, ever, delete anything ever!  No matter how many places you have it stored!  If you have a gazillion copies of something that takes up a room in your house, buy a bigger house! It will have you an ulcer!!  laughs

The one I bought, a 1tb, is thick but it has a front that has little holes like a grill.
It allows air to circulate for cooling.

The instructions that came with it included advice to unmount before turning it off.

The little icon on the task bar lets you do that.
The instructions say otherwise you can lose information or the drive mail give error messages.

I didn't know that with my first one and it failed.
however I did get my files back later.

When I bought my E-machine the ad promised a DVD writer and software installed but it does not have either and contacting the seller led nowhere.
I did install a DVD Writer but no software to run it...sigh.

No software for a DVD writer?  That sounds strange.  Writers are generally packaged with some sort of program may it be Nero, Roxio or other. 

One fire/flood/theft etc. could negate any local backup strategy.Online storage isn't free but...

Just spent the afternoon looking at new Ext. HDDs, so a timely post for me!

@BluEcho:
I'm about to replace my second set of external drives.  I have kept all my 3D stuff on them - program files as well as Runtimes - they are generally on 24/7, for about 6 years now, and none have ever failed, I've just outgrown them. 

Although no problems in the years I've been using them, I am still chicken (and lazy) enough that  I do buy them two at a time -- and use the second drive primarily as a backup (although not as a duplicate). 

My first pair were Maxtor 120GB, and the second pair were WesternDigital 250GB.   Now Looking at either the Seagate or Maxtor 1.5GB drives, both only about $150 bucks -- until I saw Acadia's post that is.   :-(

@ Acadia:
Which external drive did you chose & have all the problems with?

Anyone else having problems using the newer, larger drives with older computers?

and for the historical trivia fans:
My first ext. hard drive was for Apple's 'LISA' - it was a huge loud box with only 5Mb - for $5K IIRC. 

Quote - @ Acadia:
Which external drive did you chose & have all the problems with?

It's a Seagate and looks like this one. The one I have is 1.5 TB.

http://www.photoreview.com.au/reviews/storage/seagate-freeagent-desk-external-hard-disk-drive.aspx

The box claims to have a 5 year limited warranty. Apparently that doesn't cover file loss from a brand spanking new drive.

rhutt-roh....   :-0

SeaGate till a contender, but I'll tread lightly.  Thanks Acadia.

Attached Link: http://www.nch.com.au/burn/index.html

As hborre said, it's very strange that a new CD/DVD burner came with no software.

But you can download basic CD/DVD burning software for free, which should work okay with your drive. The link is just one example, for Windows or Mac.

Hi;
My DVD isn't new.
It was on another drive as an extrs so I deided to use it in this comp,
And I found two free DVD burning sotware if I can get my brain working to use them.

BTW:My new external is a Green Drive from Fantom.
Got it for under $100,00 from Tiger Direct.

I had it within two days of ordering.

And I've never had probs with anything I've bought from them before.

CompUSA is whole other story. :)

I bought a 1.5TB Seagate drive about a month ago, and so far haven't had any problems at all with it. In fact, it runs quieter and cooler than a 250GB Buffalo one from about 4-5 years ago. I'd still recommend a Seagate, even though Acadia had bad luck with hers.

I have a 500 gigabyte Simple Drive, USB2. Runs like a champ. Never had a problem with it. I just plugged it in and it worked ;o).

Laurie

I've been lucky so far. I've had a WD 500gb external drive for about two years without any problems. It even survived a four foot drop with no ill effects. My 1-yr old 1 Tb WD drive is also holding up without any issues. I've got a couple smaller portable 2.5 inch external drives that have survived a couple years trouble free.

I've got nearly all my Poser content burned to CD/DVDs, but need to back up a few more of them. I've also left a backup external drive at a relative's house for additional safety and need to do another. That way, a catastrophic event at my house won't affect that copy.  I'd still lose a year's worth of downloads, though. At least the older stuff, most of which isn't available anymore, won't be lost. I probably ought to look into a safety deposit box that I can more frequently keep current.

Another question occurred to me about backing up files to CD and DVD.

Most CDs only hold about 700mb and DVDs hold 4gb.
Now we all know our Poser and other digital files will go way beyond that.
And even at 4gb it takes soooo many disks and soooo long to backup even the most recent work.

But here's the question, has anyone ever used the little USB Flash drives for storing files?
Will they keep the files intact for long periods of time?
I know it would take a great many of them like with the DVDs,  but it's a thought that just popped into my head.

They hold up tp 4gb too and they are so tiny.smile

I guess you could, but those can fail too. They are subject to magnetism and other things just like hard drives where as dvds are not. I find that cds and dvds are the most reliable if not the biggest pain in the posterior ;o).

Laurie