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Can someone explain what is a logical drive?

Can someone please explain to me the advantage of a portable hard drive over a zip drive?

  • I've seen zip drives that have a lot of GBs, and the portable hard drives are more expensive. Can you help me understand why? I've recently had a serious computer crash and once I pay off the repair I'll be looking into something like this for backup. Thanks!

  • Answer:

    The old zip drives which used special zip disks takes much more time to write to than a USB 2.0 attached portable harddrive. Also those old zip drives were much more limited in size. And the combined cost of READWRITE disks with the drive was high. The less expensive write disks can only be written to once so aren't good for backups. There's also software installation needed for zip drives and not for most portable hard drives (just plug into a USB port). The little memory sticks and mini-hard drives around the same size have much too small an amount of memory for backing up a whole computer. Even for backing up only your documents if you add pictures or websites with images it won't take long to reach their capacity. So, unless you know you have only documents to backup, might as well invest a little more in the portable hard drive and have a lot more versatility for that application use you haven't thought of yet, that always seems to pop up just after you've bought the other product! Note: there are portable hard drives that are quite small, and external hard drives that you wouldn't want to lug around in your briefcase. The externals go up to substantial sizes, but the portable ones can get to decent sizes for backing up (80-150MB the last time I looked and it's probably more by now - or wait 2 months and it will be.)

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I am going to assume that you mean "Flash" or "Thumb" drive when you say "Zip Drive". There is a BIG difference between Zip drives and Flash drives, the main being that ZIP drives are a good 10-15 years old and are no longer used. Flash drives are cheap for anywhere from 4-8GB's of space. But portable hard drives come with anywhere from 40-1000GB's of space, and that is why there is such a price difference. Portable hard drives are better for backing up larger amounts of data. If you only have a small amount you want to back up, then the flash drive is a better idea for you.

Bjorn

Buy an enclosure and get the best of both - an enclosure is a case for a hard drive that you can take with you and is limited only by the size of the drive you put in it - and XP or better will auto load the drivers when you plug it in. a decent enclosure starts at about 30$ and you can get 300Gb hard drives for around 120(ish) If you are talking abuot backing up your system on a zip (thumb/usb) - wont work - the zip drive is to small biggest i have seen for commercial use is 20Gb , most back ups are around 60Gb but can vary from 12gb and up. -- the enclosure will allow you to share files and folders as well. and you can use it as a mass storage device to hold pics and music for a fraction of the cost of a "portable" drive.

zampa_cotj

save up and buy a portable hard drive. it's money well spent.

DougSM69

External hard drives (that plug into your USB port) come in enormous sizes-- 500GB or more. Portable storage (zip drives, usb thumb drives, etc) come in sizes up to a few GB. The question is size-- do you want to backup all your files, all the time? Or do you just need a place to copy papers, spreadsheets and a few photos? Most of the external hard drives you can purchase now have backup software included- and many have a button you can push on the drive that will backup your entire computer. Great if your computer's hard drive dies!

Matthew H

external hard drives are much better as far as compatability, price and size. you can buy a really cheap case (refered to as an enclosure) and any GB size hard drive and make it an external and connect it to just about any computer PC & Mac linux or Windows

sjwcool_2000

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