Disk Question

[riz]

<p><em>External drive capacity:</em> <strong>500 GB</strong><br>

<em>Size of photography files:</em> <strong>50 GB</strong> (presently only in external drive) </p>

<p><em>Laptop hard drive: </em><strong>80 GB</strong> (in 4 partitions)</p>

<p>How do you manage this scenario?</p>

<p><em>Note: Previously I had 160 GB hard drive on laptop which got stolen. This issue came up when I had to buy the current one. </em></p>

[johne37179]

<p>I'm not sure what you want to do. Transfer the 50 GB from one external drive to the other> Plug both in and drag and drop if you are on a Mac.</p>

[peter_e]

<p>Get a second external drive as a backup of your first one. That's about it. I don't see the advantage of partitioning, especially a small drive like this.</p>

[andylynn]

<p>Why the partitions? And what exactly do you mean by the question? If I were you and I wanted a more manageable setup, I would upgrade the laptop to 500GB (which is cheap, and you can use cloning to copy the drive) and not partition, get another external drive to be the backup, and offload everything I haven't used recently. I use Aperture, so every once in a while I export projects I haven't opened in a long time as libraries and put them on two external disks, to save space on the more limited internal (laptop) hard drive.</p>

[waltflanagan]

<p>I'd go with Andy's suggestion. Upgrade the internal laptop hard drive. My laptop came with a 120GB drive. $100, a screwdriver, and 1 minute later it now has a 750GB hard drive. Assuming you're running Windows you may need some special software to transfer the bootsector but I don't know anything about Windows. Unless you are running multiple operating systems I don't know why you want to partition such a small drive.</p>

<p>I would also get another external drive to have 2 full backups of all data and keep one at another location in case of disaster at your home.</p>

[marklcooper]

<p>Rizwan - I'm struggling with the same dilemma. My current laptop came with a 250 GB hard drive. When I approached filling this up I upgraded to a 500 GB hard drive. Filled that up and now have an almost maxed out 750 GB drive.</p>

<p>My current laptop won't take a 1 TB hard drive due to HDD thickness. I'm probably fairly unique because of my profession. I can put a server-class computer at one of my client's office and access it remotely.</p>

<p>I just yesterday started mulling over the possibility of setting up a server with 16 to 36 GB RAM, 6+ TB RAID 5 drive array, dual Xeon quad core processors. I'll offload most of the files on my laptop to the server. The server will be available over the Internet from all my client locations. The server location has a standby generator for power outages.</p>

<p>In effect, my laptop will become a portable smart terminal to my high-power server. This would be comparable to a private 'Cloud' storage solution.</p>

<p>Again, this is not typical. I have a Microsoft Action Pack Subscription granting me access to thousands of dollars of Microsoft software along with a MS TechNet subscription.</p>

<p>Just my thoughts,<br>

Mark</p>

 

[jim_service]

<p>3 TB USB ext drive is $140 at Best buy. Buy two and have them back each other up.</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>Yes. External Terabyte HDs are commodity items these days. For a little more you can get fairly large capacity 'pocketable' drives that can go along with the laptop in the case or in your pocket.<br>

Surely you don't need <em>all</em> your files on the laptop itself?</p>

[johne37179]

<p>I'm with Jim on multiple TB externals and having more than one backup. All drives will fail -- even backup drives. With two you at least improve the odds they won't both fail at once. Having said that, if you really want to be cautions, don't by them at the same time from the same manufactured batch -- because they will have similar service lives and fail close in time. I'd suggest getting one now and another in a year and alternate their replacements by at least a year.</p>