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I need suggestions for a new External drive. My Maxtor got corrupt...I can view photos but cant add any more to it... Its not even half full... thanks! Big Grin
   
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Registered: 08/23/08
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I need suggestions for a new External drive. My Maxtor got corrupt...I can view photos but cant add any more to it... Its not even half full... thanks! Big Grin


Best Buy has 1tb 3.5 external hard drives right now for $120. I think office depot has the same deal. Harddrives are cheap nowadays. Just make sure you back it up. For every harddrive I have, I have another to duplicate it.
You might want to try and run scandisk or chkdsk (error-checking) on effected drive, that could possibly fix the problem. External drives are prone to errors because of the possibility of the usb plug getting bumped or power getting turned off while writeing

   
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Registered: 09/09/08
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We're looking for a large storage backup also so Deborah, Julia, and I can share our photos. A friend is currently trying to get my Windows-Vista computer to talk to the Windows-XP computers, and it's not going well.

Not long ago I read somewhere that there are companies, like web service providers, that allow you to do your storage and backups on their systems for a price. Depending on the price they may be cheaper than a hard drive.

Google's Picassa allows you to store lots of photos on their system and share them, selectively, with whoever you want. The downside is that they limit you to 8G.

My web provider, Gator.com, advertises unlimited storage and we could share our photos through them using FTP but it would be slow, even with high-speed internet.

Of course, you could always store on CDs or DVDs.

Costco is selling 1.5T hard drives for, as I recall, $140. They had a whole pallet of them near the cameras the other day.
   
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Registered: 05/12/09
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We're looking for a large storage backup also so Deborah, Julia, and I can share our photos. A friend is currently trying to get my Windows-Vista computer to talk to the Windows-XP computers, and it's not going well.


info: Something to think about

No need to shair computers.

Switch or router is best for sharing files on computers. Doesn't mater which operating system.

A networked hard drive plugged in to the switch (or router) will allow access from all wired computers as long as the drive is on.

You can conceivably have several terabyte drives tied into the network and all wired computers would have access. Think pictures, movies, music and multimedia files. Very simular to networked printer.

An external USB drive on a network requires a computer to be on to share drive and you have to re-share it every time you start the drive or computer back up.

If you have wireless internet router, that will plug in to the switch and still transmit internet and allow anthing wired to have access also. It will also allow you to wirelessly access the networked drives.

Switch runs anywhere from $80 on up. Tera Harddrive $100-150 depending. The network case is the most expensive thing. If I remember right, they run about $200-$300 at Fry's.

Example case = http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=207&srkey=network%20drives


Probably more info than you wanted to know but still, Very Cool!
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Registered: 09/09/08
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An update.

Yes, we have a wireless router connecting our computers. Windows Vista, it seems, is notorious for being cranky when it comes to networking with Windows 98 and such. The friend found a web site,
http://www.home-network-help.com/simple-file-sharing.html, that described how to get it to work. This got it to work, most of the time. Whenever my computer hasn't accessed that drive for a while (hours?) her computer closes its firewall and I can't access the drive again until I turn off her firewall long enough for the two to get re-acquainted. Annoying but it only takes a couple of minutes to accomplish. Deborah thinks she can fix the dropout problem by doing something with the MAC address.

I bought one of the Costco 1.5T drives and we plugged it into Deborah's computer since it's almost always on. For purposes of sharing that drive, her computer now acts as the server. With the router in the circuit it's slower than going directly from my computer to my USB drive but fast enough for our purposes. So far the 1.5T drive (Seagate) is working perfectly.
   
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Registered: 05/12/09
Posts: 269
5 posts :: Page 1 of 1

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