Setting up external hard drive

[cdz25]

I am going to purchase an external hard drive for back-up and recovery of clients data. Is there any special way I should set this drive up?

Should I install an operating system on the drive?

 

[seedubya]

Assuming it's a USB drive and that you just mean to copy customer's data onto it for backup or recovery from damaged PC's or drives then no.

 

[gunslinger]

you may want to set it up in FAT32 format so you can use it with Macs or PCs.

 

[JohnG]

If it were me...I'd be sure to have a drive large enough to partition mutiple file systems, FAT/32, NTFS and even 'nix file systems as Dell is now offering pcs/books with Ubuntu installed.

 

[tkrabec]

I would recommend a NAS, such as a Thecus N2100 or N299. Then you don't have to worry about which OS,is running on the client computer. In an office environment you can backup several machines at the same time.

 

[MrMille]

I am going to purchase an external hard drive for back-up and recovery of clients data. Is there any special way I should set this drive up?

Should I install an operating system on the drive?

Format it as FAT32, next.