USB Flash Drive vs Portable External Hard drive for everyday use?

Cast said:

The USB are reliable full time when they are going to spoil, I tell you from experience of 32 GB lost just think about safeguarding my files a couple of days to move to another storage unit, so now I have solid disks and ssd and if I move something it will be for another external hard drive trying not to affect the welds. Oh and I do not forget the CDs or DVDs that I also have backups.
Surely some program will serve you a lot to encrypt your files and everything you have.
Tip: Expand your storage disk (native)

Thank you very much Cast for your time and input! Much appreciated! Thank you for sharing your experience. I had an experience of losing my whole 1tb drive, but I was able to recover I believe 90% of it or more. As of this thread, I am getting some great input here that I can be better at safeguarding my stuff as well. Don't want to go through that again!

mrje1 said:

Hey Stitch194! Thank you very much again for your time and input! I appreciate the info. Ok, will do! Are you using Macrium free or home?

I actually use Macrium and Aomei, both free version. I have both images on my USB HD.

Bree said:

I have a portable HDD plugged into the USB port on my router which powers it and makes it available as a network share. I set my File History folder to be on that network drive, so unless I disconnect from the network it's always available.

Thank you again Bree for your input! That is interesting about having a HDD connected to a router and using the File History method to back it up there. I will keep that one in the options cabinet!

Berton said:

I salvage 2.5" drives from Notebooks that have otherwise died and put them in a portable case, great for storage and can be used on other operating systems. An issue in formatting them in Windows is its limit of 32GB for FAT32 but I get around that with Linux Mint, have formatted 500GB drive as FAT32 which also works on Mac OS X/macOS and Windows.
The universal cases generally use a Y-cable to provide data and power with the second leg providing additional power from a second USB port. The WDC My Passports I have use only one cable and work with USB 2.0 [750GB] and USB 3.0 [1TB]. The differences is in the power consumption by the drives themselves so the My Passport does indeed use a different type drive setup.

Thank you very much Berton for your time and input! I appreciate it! Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic. Added more to what I have learned here from CountMike, this method I am strongly considering. What about NTFS? Curious to know if NTFS is the better option compared to FAT32 when dealing with any USB drives and Windows?

Y Cable Universal Case or the on cable ones, which one should I start off with, if I go this route?

Caledon Ken said:

You might just be better off with Onedrive, Dropbox, Google drive etc.
If you have an Office 365 subscription you get a 1TB included.
I use purchased Macrium (to get Image Guard and folder / file backup)

Thank you very much again for your assistance Caledon Ken! Greatly appreciate it!

I do have Office 365, I keep forgetting here what I learned, but how big are the backup images normally? Because I don't want to fill my OneDrive storage. That is an option to think about though! What is about Image Guard and folder/file backup that you liked so much to buy Macrium?

Clintlgm said:

On Macrium Reflect prices their putting it up 20% off quite often you can just use the free version until they have a sale. I find it well worth the money sale or no sale.

Thank you very much Clintlgm for your time and assistance! I appreciate it! Great to know. Hopefully soon. Through out this forum I have been hearing the samething.

Stitch194 said:

I actually use Macrium and Aomei, both free version. I have both images on my USB HD.

Thank you again! I appreciate you sharing! I would have to look back, not sure if you answered this, but what brand HDD are you using?