The Glade 4.0

Ok, so my research group wants me to set up a centralized backup drive that we can all use to put regular data backups on (there are 9 of us in the group, all with laptops).

I had thought about doing a NAS drive, but our university tech services group really frowns on hooking NAS drives up to the university network, and our labs are too spaced out to easily put in a network of our own.

So I'm planning on going with a USB/firewire external hard drive that we can leave in one room, and everyone come to it to back up whenever they want.

So my question is, what drive do you recommend? We're looking for something in the range of 1 TB, the one I'm currently looking at is the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk model, as it works for mac and PC (we have both), and a variety of connectors.

My main concern is the software.

Ideally, I'd like something that can run with little to no automatic backup software- everyone knows their data, we would like to simply set up 9 directories on the drive, and people drag and drop their backups when they want. I know all the drives tout their automatic backup software, but can they run fine without it?

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Just drag and drop from windows, no software needed.

Honestly though, it seems a waste of time. If people will have to come to the drive to do the backup, they generally won't.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Since everyone agrees on the solution, I'm betting in this case they will.

That, and their boss is requiring it of them.

One of our group members just had his laptop and phone stolen from out of our lab, and lost ~6 months of work- so everyone is in a frame of mind conducive to setting up a backup system.

And thanks, that's good to know. I was afraid that the software would prevent the basic options, requiring you to use Seagate's interface instead of Windows Explorer.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

What ever you do stay away from WD NAS
or any of their other storage products.
Who in their Right mind takes a 1.5 TB HD breaks into 4 partitions 1 small one for the OS and 3 equal size partitions and then sets those to partitions to raid 5 giving you just under 1TB space, and formatting it to operate under HPFS.
Ask western dipshits about this and data recovery, and they'll tell you that don't handle that, but there is only one company they know of that can do it. Call that company they want 5k to diagnose and 75k for recovery data size doesn't matter. Turns out thet wrote the OS package for WD.

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History of the Condom
In 1272, the Muslim Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea, by taking the intestine out of the goat first.

Wow. That's hilarious Leshani. One more reason to validate my aversion to WD.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Seagate it is, then

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.