Portable hard drives

[gary_c4]

<p>Having used a PC laptop, I have recently decided after much research to buy an I Mac for all my photo processing. It will have 640gb but I wish to have a hard drive backup and having spent days reading about almost every hard drive ever, I find mixed reviews on them all. Can anyone give any suggestions on a 1TB hard drive or alternatively a 500gb that is both reliable and resiliant to manage my library.<br>

Thank you GC</p>

<p> </p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>They will all fail, absolutely, without fail (so to speak). <br /><br />You cannot trust one external drive to be your safety net. Use two (at least) and park at least one, unplugged, away from the rest of your gear. Park another in a different zip code. <br /><br />Shy of hardened military-grade stuff, nothing you're going to buy off the shelf is going to be ruggedized in a meaningful way, and will require gentle handling. The only real way to be safe is to make multiple copies, on multiple drives.<br /><br />With that in mind, stick with a brand name supported by the retailers, and look for a sale. Western Digital products have always treated me just fine.</p>

[eric friedemann]

<p>What Matt said. Also:</p>

<p>1. For hard drives you'll leave in one place, I'm fond of the Western Digital My Books, even though you have to use them with awkward wall warts.</p>

<p>2. For the laptop I take to and from the office, I use a 500GB Passport- quite small, and it draws power from the USB connection with no need for a power converter plugged into the wall.</p>

[hal_b]

<p>Make sure and use a solid, 3.5" external with it's own power source. These are the real deal. The tiny 2.5" portables that run off USB power are toys, really, and not for backup usage.</p>

<p>It is more important to have redundant backups (2 backups instead of 1), than it is to buy the biggest brand name. Try not to get snookered into buying an expensive brand based on someone's recommendation. In the end, they are all about the same. So it is better to get 2 inexpensive drives than 1 expensive drive, if the money is the same.</p>

<p>Just make sure you aren't buying something brand new and untried. If a hard drive is a lemon, people will be complaining about it within 3 months. Get something that is at least 6 months old. Right now, the 2TB drives are all new and are being experimentally thrust upon the public for trouble-shooting. Avoid these. The 1TB drives, however, pretty much have all the bugs worked out by now. I think this goes for all the major brands, including Western Digital (my personal favorite), Seagate, Hitachi, and Iomega.</p>

[eric friedemann]

<p>Well, along with others at my office, we've been using the heck out of a dozen or so 2.5" "toy" Passports for over a year and haven't had one die on us yet. Also, I'm unaware of any stats showing that 3.5" drives are more reliable than 2.5" drives.</p>

[hjoseph7]

When I purchased my first external Iomega hardrive it came with 250GB which at the time was very high-tech. These days you can get a protable hard drive with 500 gigabytes and at half the price that I paid for mine almost $300.

[hal_b]

<p>Eric: If you'll notice, we posted at almost the exact same time earlier. I didn't mean the "toy" comment to be targeted at you. It is unfortunate that it looks that way.</p>

<p>In my experience, the 2.5" drives have a slower transfer rate, so backing up 250 GB takes longer than it would on a powered 3.5" drive. That's my only interest. I also have never seen one of the little ones fail. I see the bigger ones as just as portable for my use as the little ones, plus they are less money per GB.</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>Expensive but really well built and run really cool, I love the G-Tech drives:</p>

<p>http://www.g-technology.com/</p>

<p>I own 5, they are rock solid. </p>

[ekovisions]

<p>I second the recommendation for Western Digital's drives. They are great. Having said that, they too will fail--so have at least 2, one off site. I use 2 WD drives as my Time Machine drives, and rotate them to my (non-home) office at least once a week. Hail Mary backup of DVDs burned of all originals (bucketed into folders as in The DAM Book), so worst case scenario I can restore the originals in the event both backup hard drives fail or get corrupted. </p>

 

[eric friedemann]

<p>Hal, no offense taken. Definitely, if I don't need to constantly take a drive with me, I opt for 3.5" My Books that can sit butt-up against each other and have small footprints. They're certainly less expensive.</p>

<p>I use my Passport primarily for three-camera video editing with Adobe Premiere, and I haven't been unhappy with the transfer rate. (Again, this is a drive I have to carry around with my laptop.) I use a USB Passport, but if I wanted faster video transfer and needed a drive that would fit in my laptop shoulder bag, I'd probably get a Passport Studio Firewire drive:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=569">http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=569</a></p>

[john v.]

<p>I've always had good luck with external drives bought at <a href="http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/">OWC</a> (MacSales.com). They offer a variety of external drives. Also, you can order the enclosures empty and install the drive of your choice, or have the external drives built to order. Like Matt said, any drive can fail, so redundancy is your best bet against data loss. Even though they cater to Mac users, their external drives work just as well with PC's (you may need to format them for the PC, however).</p>

[gary_c4]

<p>Thanks for all the advice I will definantly start with two ext drives and see where that takes me. I will take a look at all the different types and take it from there.<br>

Thanks again Gary C</p>