Abraham Deutsch
asked on
Upgrade USB card
Is it possible to upgrade a laptop with a usb 2 to a usb 3?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Lee W, MVP
"Similar expansion card" = expresscard - just couldn't think of the name!
ASKER
It takes me to do a window 7 image backup from my laptop to a external USB drive hours. (My hard drive is 500GB 300 of it is used. I don't have so much of applications and documents but have 5 VM)
So you need a new laptop. Or if you have gigabit ethernet, you could offload via the network to another computer with USB3 (gigabit ethernet is more than 2x faster than USB but closer to 4x faster in ACTUAL performance).
what i do is take the drive out of the laptop, and image it on a PC and connect it to a sata cable - that's the fastest, and best method
You can do your backup image after hours when you don't use the laptop. Who cares if it takes hours, as long as it is finished in the morning when you get back to it. Besides that you don't have to make a full image backup daily, most image backup tools can be setup to make incremental backups, which would probably only take a few minutes.
You would then change the disk you are backing up to on the weekend and take a full backup, then the rest of the week you do incremental backups to that disk. Then the next weekend you change to another disk and again take a full backup...
You also don't have to take a full image based backup if you don't change things in your system. For example Windows 7 has 2 built-in backup tools, one the image backup which images the complete system, the other is a tool where you select what you want to backup, foe example your data folders. It then just makes zip containers of those selected folders in your backup location. As the data generally doesn't take up that much space, it'll be much faster and take up less space on your USB disk. So for your daily backup you could use that form of backup...
You would then change the disk you are backing up to on the weekend and take a full backup, then the rest of the week you do incremental backups to that disk. Then the next weekend you change to another disk and again take a full backup...
You also don't have to take a full image based backup if you don't change things in your system. For example Windows 7 has 2 built-in backup tools, one the image backup which images the complete system, the other is a tool where you select what you want to backup, foe example your data folders. It then just makes zip containers of those selected folders in your backup location. As the data generally doesn't take up that much space, it'll be much faster and take up less space on your USB disk. So for your daily backup you could use that form of backup...
ASKER
Economically and sufficient is to keep the current laptop and keep using the external USB drive, and do it when in use for a longer period of time, rather than buying a new laptop, replacing a I7 16GB 500GM SSD drive fairly new laptop. Even if it only has a USB 2 and 100MB Ethernet. Keeping on after hours depends on the environment, if the laptop is a traveling environment or in office.
I recommend using windows build in image backup, it’s the most accurate backup when needed for recovery. And for this reason you always want the image backup to be up to date. Windows image backup keeps only one backup and only applies the changes to the existing image. Only doing continues date back up will help much because you will still need to do the image beck up for system and date changes that are not saved in the library, many program’s save their date in a their folder which is located in the program file on the C drive. An image backup in is not necessary every day but should be done at least once a week, so in case of a disaster not much date is lost.
Summary: a backup to an external USB drive may be the best choice in certain environment even if it takes some time, if there is not faster mobile device that can be used.
I recommend using windows build in image backup, it’s the most accurate backup when needed for recovery. And for this reason you always want the image backup to be up to date. Windows image backup keeps only one backup and only applies the changes to the existing image. Only doing continues date back up will help much because you will still need to do the image beck up for system and date changes that are not saved in the library, many program’s save their date in a their folder which is located in the program file on the C drive. An image backup in is not necessary every day but should be done at least once a week, so in case of a disaster not much date is lost.
Summary: a backup to an external USB drive may be the best choice in certain environment even if it takes some time, if there is not faster mobile device that can be used.
I don't agree with some of what you just mentioned. Windows built in backup isn't the "most accurate" backup tool. Others are just as "accurate", and the 3rd party backup tools are easier to use with more options and user friendliness. Most of them also include the possibility to make incremental backups.
I also don't agree that 1 weekly backup is enough, they should be done at least daily, particularly if you have new or changed data on the PC, but you don't necessarily need to backup the full PC daily, you only need the data that has changed. For that you don't need a full image backup, but rather just an incremental backup, only backup your data.
You also shouldn't backup to only one external disk and overwrite it with every backup. You should rather have several external disks which you rotate, so you always have at least 2 good backups you can restore from, with different versions of your data. Remember, backup disks can fail, or your backup which has just overwritten your previous backup could also fail, or you could have been backing up corrupt data replacing good data on your backup destination. Things like that happen all the time so you should really re-think your backup strategy.
A system can be restored from an older backup quickly and easily, you may just have to rerun OS updates and re-install some software, all no problem at all. But the data needs to be current. The rest is less important.
I also don't agree that 1 weekly backup is enough, they should be done at least daily, particularly if you have new or changed data on the PC, but you don't necessarily need to backup the full PC daily, you only need the data that has changed. For that you don't need a full image backup, but rather just an incremental backup, only backup your data.
You also shouldn't backup to only one external disk and overwrite it with every backup. You should rather have several external disks which you rotate, so you always have at least 2 good backups you can restore from, with different versions of your data. Remember, backup disks can fail, or your backup which has just overwritten your previous backup could also fail, or you could have been backing up corrupt data replacing good data on your backup destination. Things like that happen all the time so you should really re-think your backup strategy.
A system can be restored from an older backup quickly and easily, you may just have to rerun OS updates and re-install some software, all no problem at all. But the data needs to be current. The rest is less important.
Your question was "Is it possible to upgrade a laptop with a usb 2 to a usb 3?" Your question has clearly been answered. You might get MUCH better responses (or maybe the same) if you ask a new question such as "best method for an end user to backup a laptop with 300 GB used, USB2 and 100 Mbit ethernet".