Storing Images on External vs. Internal HDD

I know that a good reason to store backup images on an external hard drive vs. an internal hard drive is to safeguard against the possibility that your computer will for some reason (virus, theft, lightning, etc.) become unusable.

My backup plan includes storing images on my external HDD, but I also like to store images on my second internal HDD, which I do for two reasons that may or may not be right. If I am wrong will someone please correct me:

1) Imaging to and restoring from an internal HDD is significantly faster than an external (USB connection in my case) HDD.

2) There's a lower likelihood of I/O errors when imaging to and restoring from an internal HDD vs. an external HDD.

Thanks for your advice.

 

both somewhat right as long as internal means ata (or s-ata) and external means usb or s-ata. you don't have to worry i/o errors with robust i/o systems (they verify what's delivered). so in a home pc environment you could take firewire or sas (or old scsi). but if you connect the drive case by firewire and the drive itself is again ata ... well, you catch it.

if you want to avoid usb, the cheapest solution (although not the safest as long as the drive is still ata/s-ata) is to use it internally while backing up and then taking it off.

 

I find that in my case imaging times to an internal HDD is slightly quicker than to an external USB drive. Restoring from an external HDD was up to four times longer than from an internal HDD. However using a BartPE CD with Acronis plugin bought the USB drive to virtually the same speed as the internal HDD in restore mode. Things may have improved with build 3677 but as I no longer use an external drive for imaging I have not tested this latest build in that mode.

As to I/O errors I have never had any so cannot even guess which is the safer method.

I now use only an internal drive for backup images. My external backup is in the form of one of my exchangable Caddy mounted Main drives.

Xpilot

 

Not to add much, but internal is slightly faster but USB2 is good if the drivers (particularly the recovery mode linux drivers) are good.

There should not be any I/O errors regardless of the method but USB does introduce cables and connectors that undergo more flexing/connecting/disconnecting than internal cables.

I do my images to a second internal drive. I then copy selected (not all) backups to another PC on my gigabit LAN and will occassionally copy (not direct-burn) a backup to DVD. Working with the backup on an internal HD is very handy and fast when you want to create/restore an image quickly when doing things like software testing.

 

Doing the same for quite some time now, except for the second level, which with me is an USB drive that's connected for that selected copying only.

 

I use an old IDE internal disk (80Gb) as an ASZ and I have a eSATA hard disk for archiving backups which runs at the same speed as an internal hard disk. The main reasons for the external disk are 1 space and 2 virus protection.

Fairy

 

That's what I do every day. Yes backing up to an internal drive is the fastest way of both backing up and retrieving your images. However, if everything in your pc enclosure fails then you would need an external hard drive (or DVD/CDs) to retrieve your system with data. If your USB connection is a USB 2.0, I have found that the time is not excessive both to copy *.tib files to it (from your internal hard drive) and/or retrieving them. If your USB is 1.0/1.1, then you need to at least get a USB 2.0 card installed as the speed is extremely slow (technically it maybe shouldn't be so but I also found USB 1.0/1.1 to be unreliable copying large files).

 

My experience is also that backup on an internal harddisk works faster than on an external USB 2.0 harddisk and the restoration is even faster.

If I want a quicker restoration :
1. I copy/paste my backup file from my external harddisk to my second internal harddisk.
2. I restore my backup file from my second internal harddisk.
3. After restoration I delete the backup file on my second internal harddisk.

 

Many thanks for all that great information.

I rely on a combination of backups that include my second internal hard disk, my (USB 2.0) external hard disk and a second backup program for my data files. So much of my life is on my computer, so I go for additional layers of defense.