June 17, 2006

External hard drives are an easy way to archive your digital photos, back up your computer, create portable data storage to share among computers and more.

The NewerTechnology miniStack V2 hard drive enclosure with pre-installed hard drives is one such hard drive, with a few extra features added. The miniStack provides USB 2.0 High-Speed 3-port hub, a Firewire (1394a) 3-port repeater/hub, extra capacity heat sink, a thermostatically regulated variable-speed fan for quiet operation and a silver and beige case that coordinates with and fits neatly under the new Mac Mini computer. The miniStack also works with PCs, using either the USB or Firewire connections.

If you get the enclosure only you need to obtain and install your own hard drive. This will give you the most flexibility and often best price per gigabyte (one million bytes) of storage. You can, however, buy the miniStack with pre-installed hard drives of capacities from 80GB to 750GB. The latter is great if you’re gathering gigabytes of photos, videos or music files or need extra storage for sequential backups (you are backing up your computer regularly, aren’t you?).

Our installation of the 750GB model consisted of plugging the unit into our computer’s firewire port (we could have used USB 2.0, but firewire transfers faster) with Windows recognizing the device as a Firewire-connected removable hard drive and indicating it was "ready to use." But the miniStack did not appear in the "My Computer" window, resulting in our having to call for tech support. The support tech explained that the miniStack comes pre-formatted for Mac computers and needs to be re-formatted for use with Windows computers. A simple process, but it took our computer more than three hours to re-format this 750GB drive. Once formatted, 698 GB (gigabyte) of free space was available. The apparent discrepancy is due to the way all drive manufacturers calculate size (the drive manufacturer sees 1KB as 1,000 bytes, whereas your computer sees 1KB as 1,024 bytes).

Included with the miniStack is Retrospect Express backup software for Mac or Windows. Installation of the software was easy, and by using this program you can manage your backups and create one or more complete backup sets. Once you’ve done your first complete backup, the program will do additional progressive backups manually or on a schedule. A progressive backup backs up only new files or files that have changed since last backup. Our first test backup was of our digital photos folder, some 27.6GB. This took 20 minutes. The next was a complete computer backup, which took about four hours, including file compression and verification. We then intentionally deleted a test file and using the restore wizard in Retrospect Express, restored the file into its original folder. Easy.

You can also script backups so you can specify various types of backups, such as music or photo files, document or spreadsheet files only, or any combination. You can set these to be done at different scheduled times and on different types of media. For example, you can have music and photo backups on DVDs and document and computer settings backup on an external hard drive. The program will also perform a "verify" to insure that the backup set you’ve just made is intact and matches the files that were just backed up. If they don’t match, it’s prudent to run the backup again.

If you’re using backup media such as CDs, DVDs or tape, the program prompts when new media is needed. Using Retrospect Express, you can restore individual files or folders that were accidently or maliciously deleted or perform a complete disaster recovery in the event of computer or hard drive failure. Instructions are provided for creating a bootable disaster recovery CD-ROM.

The NewerTechnology miniStack V2 is stylish and compact, measuring 6.5 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches. The Owner’s Manual is bare-bones, but tech support is readily available. The miniStack is available from www.newertech.com/ministack, complete with pre-installed hard drives: 80GB, $129; 160GB, $159; 250GB, $189; 320MB, $219; 400GB, $300; 500GB, $420; 750GB, $600 or as an "empty" enclosure ready for you to install your own hard drive for $79.95.

Another external enclosure is the Dual Link Drive Kit (ADS Tech, $55), a box into which you install your own hard drive, CD or DVD reader/writer. The enclosure has a power supply for the drives and both USB 2.0 and Firewire ports for speedy transfer of data to and from your compatible Windows or Mac computer. There are two Firewire ports, so you can daisy chain the drive to another drive or a digital camcorder. Included with the kit, in addition to the drive enclosure, are both USB and Firewire cables, drivers for those operating systems that may need them and a User’s Manual.

These external enclosures are handy ways to use old hard drives or new economy hard drives as extra storage or to easily add a CD-ROM or DVD burner to your computer.

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