External storage...what to pick?

A few months ago I lost my hard drive....I mean the drive failed.  Luckily it was under warranty and was replaced, however the loss of data was not easily replaced.  My music, stories ( I am a writer ), and my games. 

So what I am interested in is suggestions and opinions on what kind of backup would be best.  I am interested in reliability over speed.  Now I have a dvd burner but for large files that won't work....for example and specifically when I download all the Sims 3 files again.  Things I have looked at for ideas are flashdrives of various sizes, an actual external hard drive, blu ray burner.  Price is a concern but would not necessarily be the deciding factor....like if flashdrives are going to be as secure and reliable as a blu ray burner and buying 4 of them would cost less than a blu ray burner plus the media...then I would go the flashdrives.

I am hoping for suggestions and opinions based on what you use.....brand names, horror stories, best price, reliability, ease of use.  I would say that at the very upper limit I am looking to store maybe around 100gig.  That would be games (again mostly all the sims 3 stuff), some stories, music, maybe a couple movies.

Any input is appreciated.

oh wow, now those are amazing.  not sure how I didn't see those in all my searching but I guess I was focusing more on flashdrives and blu ray.  but that is definitely the ticket right there.  How long have you had yours?  Any problems?

Hi there,

I used to write a lot of stories, so I feel your pain(!). I have a backup of those important stuff on every USB stick and HDD I own, lol.

I thought I was good...I had a dvd with my stories on them.  Unfortunately it was corrupted and I was devastated.  Luckily though, it turned out that I had saved them on some free online storage thingie.  I had completely forgotten about it and found it by accident as I was looking through saved emails hoping against hope I had mailed myself a couple of files.  There was a message in there confirming my account and stuff....I went there and voila, all my files except for 2 more recent ones.  I was ecstatic.

So yeah now I have multiple saves of my stories...the other stuff like music, videos and games I can always download again but not the stories.  So I now have 3 dvd's, 2 online storage, 3 separate email accounts that I have mailed the files to.  I will never lose my stories again.

By the way, that WD passport....that is definitely what I will be getting.  Hopefully sometime next month but that is just an amazing price for a massive amount of storage with very few reported problems in any reviews I have read.  Thanks for the info and suggestion.

Ashkevron wrote:I thought I was good...I had a dvd with my stories on them.  Unfortunately it was corrupted and I was devastated.  Luckily though, it turned out that I had saved them on some free online storage thingie.  I had completely forgotten about it and found it by accident as I was looking through saved emails hoping against hope I had mailed myself a couple of files.  There was a message in there confirming my account and stuff....I went there and voila, all my files except for 2 more recent ones.  I was ecstatic.

So yeah now I have multiple saves of my stories...the other stuff like music, videos and games I can always download again but not the stories.  So I now have 3 dvd's, 2 online storage, 3 separate email accounts that I have mailed the files to.  I will never lose my stories again.

By the way, that WD passport....that is definitely what I will be getting.  Hopefully sometime next month but that is just an amazing price for a massive amount of storage with very few reported problems in any reviews I have read.  Thanks for the info and suggestion.

Hi there,

Ah, I hope you'll never lose a story again!

As for the WD Passport, hmmm... if you only want to use it for storing files and stuff - not using it portable - why not go for the (bigger) external ones. E.g. Western Digital Green, those have a lower RPM (5200), but are excellent for storing files. And the price/storage ratio is better in proportion with the Passport one. (The 2.5" HDDs are usually more expensive than the "normal" 3.5" ones)

Shamrock wrote:Well it is true that I mostly store videos, so I didn't know about this!
Good to know!

Hi there,

At least, they are cheaper here. I don't know about your local prices, so you have to check that for yourself.