[ox411]

i currently have 3 hard drives in my desktop.
2 of them are set up in a RAID array as drive 'C' that i keep windows and all installed programs on
the other is an IDE drive 'D' that i use for personal information, pictures, etc.

i use norton ghost to make a copy of the 'D' drive onto DVDs once a month or so, but it is a long and somewhat painful process. So now im going to add another hard drive and use it to back up the 'D' drive.

there is plenty of space and power in the tower to add another internal IDE drive. is it a good idea to back up one internal drive with another internal one? or is it better to use an external one?

thanks for your advice.
-josh

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The best way was your original method of backing up to DVDs. Nothing is really more effective than this. The trouble with backing up to a hard drive is that it has the potential to fail as well.

[Titan8990]

The best way was your original method of backing up to DVDs. Nothing is really more effective than this. The trouble with backing up to a hard drive is that it has the potential to fail as well.

[james_8970]

I disagree, hard drives are better, easier, faster and can't be lost if not taken care of.

You could do either external or internal.
It depends on your connectors, if your computer only supports USB 1.1, then defiantly internal as the process will be MUCH faster. If you have eSATA (stands for external SATA) then it wouldn't make a difference whether it's inside or out.

From slowest to fastest these are the connections avaible, Internal and external.
USB 1.1 (1.5 Mbit/s (Low-Speed) and 12 Mbit/s (Full-Speed))
Firewire 400 (393Mbit/s)
USB 2.0 (480Mbit/s (burst))
Firewire 800 (786Mbit/s)
PATA or IDE (1064Mbit/s)
SATA 150 (1200Mbit/s)
SATA 300 or eSATA (2400Mbit/s)
Ultra-320 SCSI (2560Mbit/s)
Fiber channel (16000Mbit/s)

The last two you'd never use in your home as they are for servers.
So in short, since you have IDE I'll assume your computer doesn't currently have Firewire, you could have either versions of USB and you won't have eSATA, as this is a card that you add to your PCI slot after you buy the computer, I have yet to see a retail computer come with it. That being said, if you adding a hard drive, internal would be far faster then external and more then likely cheaper as well.
James

Edited by james_8970, 14 July 2007 - 12:24 PM.

[Neil Jones]

Think of it like this:

If you back up on an internal drive and your computer gets stolen (hopefully this will never happen to you), your backup goes with it.
If you back up on an external drive and your computer gets stolen (hopefully this will never happen to you), you can replace the computer and your stuff.

But aside from that practically the methods are the same, but an external drive means you can keep the backup separately from the machine.

[ox411]

thanks for the advice.....

im pretty sure im going to go with an internal IDE drive, its the fastest connection i have available (without buying additional PCI cards)
and i need to get away from the DVD back-ups.. it takes hours... and sometimes it fails.
ive never really thought about someone stealing my desktop before......... but either way i would probably just keep the external hard drive right next to it, so they would probably swipe that as well.

thanks again

-josh