Laptop Hard Drive Question

Sledgehammer70

Being a person who updated components and hardware almost daily I have simple question for laptop owners. I have recently sold off just about all my Desktop PC's that I own, and with that I have lost my backup drives etc… etc.. So now I am running on my Laptops. My main laptop is a HP dv8000t and runs very nicely for all my applications, but I have been starting to worry about HD failures. I tend to carry my laptop with me just about everywhere, car rides lugging it around to work daily etc... and I have started to think that all this moving and bumping and shaking might take a toll on my Laptops hard drives. So my question to you is... Do you think it is wise to swap out HD's every year or so to hopefully prolong a HD failure? I would much rather have a handful of HD's with my Hardware data on it than have a handful of DEAD drives.

Thrax

I would get a small external the same size as your notebook's and not worry about it.

Sledgehammer70

And just back up the core data? I was thinking of ghosting a 2nd HD with the main programs I use to have just incase of a HD failure. Nothing is worse than having to get a new HD and than format and install everything when a project is due... "It seems to always happen to me this way"

Pterocarpous

I image my laptop's HDD as well as my desktop systems' regularly. (image created w/ Acronis True Image - don't like Ghost and ATI IMHO is better than PQ (now Symantec) Patition Magic which I used for years b4 converting to Acronis). I use a 2nd partition on the HDD (created w/ Acronis Disk Director) and image the primary partition to this 2nd partition (which is also my data partition). I keep the image there for convenience b-u-t I also copy the image to another (external) location for safe keeping. If you like, you can split the image to file sizes small enough to fit onto DVD R/RW discs and store the image there.

A laptop HDD enclosure like Thrax recommended is invaluable when you're dealing w/ laptops. You can find them for SATA and IDE drives. If you use it for data, just be sure to backup somewhere else too. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Since you're moving around w/ the laptop (and an external HDD), you're more subceptible to HDD failure (droping the laptop, external HDD, etc.)

As for the data (which I keep isolated from the primary partition), I treat that as a separate task. I keep my data backed up across the network regularly.

Thrax

I heavily endorse Acronis TrueImage. It's a great program; vastly more intuitive and easy to manage than Ghost or other similar products. Making weekly clones of your laptop's HDD to an external is a great idea.

Pterocarpous

Thrax wrote:

I heavily endorse Acronis TrueImage. It's a great program; vastly more intuitive and easy to manage than Ghost or other similar products. Making weekly clones of your laptop's HDD to an external is a great idea.

Here here. I'm a true Acronis convert. I use their multi-boot manager as well (included w/ Acronis Disk Director). Imaging regularly has saved my bacon more than once and saved hours and hours of system rebuild and data recovery time.

Prevention is, by far, the best cure!

Sledgehammer70

I have a ton of External HD's I can use ... So the main thing was just seeing what other people in my shoes are doing to ensure the least amount of down time if something bad was to happen.

howard

My "D" drive in my dv8000t is the data drive, although a considerable amount of data also resides in the "C" drive.

I bought the hard drive kit for the xb2000 docking station (same capacity as my "D" drive --- 120 GB), and back up my dv8000t "D" drive, as well as the appropriate folders in the 8000t "C" drive, onto the docking station hard drive. I use "Second Copy" for my backups.

Howard