External 3.5 drives all need a separate power supply.
External 2.5 drives are laptop drive, and get enough power from the USB port.
There isn't a standard name for the driver you are looking for, different brands use different names for their USB powered drives. I think the max size in 2.5" drivers is 1TB at the moment. Solution to drive failure is to have multiple copies, perhaps on different media. Personally I have 3 external disks. I got rid of my 3.5 disks as the power leads become awkward once you've a few disks.
Disk1 - Working drive. Most recent stuff
Disk2 - Backup a week or so ago.
Disk3 - Backup a month or more ago
I use Karens Replicator to synch them. Once a year, or 2 yrs I make a DVD backup of the really important stuff. All but one of the drives is encrypted, and they are stored in different locations. Because if you have a break in, or a fire, you don't want them all in the same place. I also do an AV scan on them occasionally too. As the dissk get too small I replace them with a bigger drive and sell the old ones, after wiping them securely. I guess I have about 400GB of stuff I backup. Probably only 200GB of is really important to me. I don't have a good enough connection to back that up online. Also it would take ages and eat up the ISP cap.
I don't do the above on a strict schedule. Just when it occurs to me.
External 2.5 drives are laptop drive, and get enough power from the USB port.
There isn't a standard name for the driver you are looking for, different brands use different names for their USB powered drives. I think the max size in 2.5" drivers is 1TB at the moment. Solution to drive failure is to have multiple copies, perhaps on different media. Personally I have 3 external disks. I got rid of my 3.5 disks as the power leads become awkward once you've a few disks.
Disk1 - Working drive. Most recent stuff
Disk2 - Backup a week or so ago.
Disk3 - Backup a month or more ago
I use Karens Replicator to synch them. Once a year, or 2 yrs I make a DVD backup of the really important stuff. All but one of the drives is encrypted, and they are stored in different locations. Because if you have a break in, or a fire, you don't want them all in the same place. I also do an AV scan on them occasionally too. As the dissk get too small I replace them with a bigger drive and sell the old ones, after wiping them securely. I guess I have about 400GB of stuff I backup. Probably only 200GB of is really important to me. I don't have a good enough connection to back that up online. Also it would take ages and eat up the ISP cap.
I don't do the above on a strict schedule. Just when it occurs to me.