External Hard Drive???

[enrique_r.]

<p>Looking into buying one to backup most of my pics. Really never used one, always had them in my laptop or on line.<br>

Now shooting everything RAW & a lot, so I need something that is realiable. Portable would be nice & if it had a card reader would be great, if not no big deal.<br>

If I need to buy more than one it's ok also. </p>

[Spearhead]

<p>You can buy a bare drive and a case on Amazon and put it together in about ten minutes with just a screwdriver. If you want fully portable, you can get an Acomdata Tango 2.5" enclosure for $20 and a WD 500gig drive for $50. When you fill up the drive, you can re-use the enclosure. It's completely portable, no power cord required.</p>

<p>I haven't seen anything with a card reader slot but there's probably something out there.</p>

<p>You should probably get it as soon as possible, you shouldn't have your images on just one drive.</p>

[john v.]

<p>I get all my most of my drives and enclosures at <a href="http://www.macsales.com/">OWC</a>. Although they cater to Mac uses, any drive or enclosure they sell will work fine on a PC. If you buy a drive/enclosure already bundled, you may have to reformat it for the PC (they sometimes come pre-formated for Macs). Back up drives are cheap insurance. If all your data is on one drive, get a back up sooner than later.</p>

[wpahnelas]

<p>if you're just looking for someplace to dump image files, and you aren't a gearhead, just about any of the external drives will do the job. there are portable models that draw power directly from the USB interface on your PC or notebook, if you need something that travels. they're pretty simple, too.<br>

trouble with USB 2.0 drives that are most common is the slow interface. transferring a substantial volume of files can take a long time. if you want to use an external drive as working storage, it needs something like firewire of eSATA as the interface to the host computer. all systems come with USB, but not necessarily these others.<br>

if you feel so inclined, do what jeff spirer suggests above. since i can no longer buy the firewire drives i've been using, an eSATA drive in an enclosure will be my next move.</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>Iomega has a series of 1 TB to 2 TB, 7200 rpm drives in durable aluminum cases with USB and eSATA ports, which I highly recommend. USB is pretty fast, but eSATA screams - nice for handling 460 MB medium format files. I fill'm and stack'm, with no more than two external drives on line at a time. An eSATA card costs about $50. The drives come with a power supply (line-lump) and a 6' eSATA cable.</p>

<p>I'm using them for real-time audo recording (16 tracks at 96K), editing and photo storage. The quality of construction is better than anything else I've seen short of G-Force and Glyph stuff. If you want a single RAID which will sit on your desk and run continously, then consider one of the pricier enclosures (e.g., G-Force).</p>

[gkgerber]

<p>I have a cheap external SATA dock and really like it. It is essentially this: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182197" target="_blank">Hard Drive Docking Station</a> under a different brand name. It has a USB and an eSATA port and takes most any 2.5 or 3.5" SATA bare hard drives. You can then put the bare drives back in the antistatic bag they come in and store them away somewhere safe.</p>

[mike_sinquefield]

<p>I would also suggest that you consider buying 2...I have a WD 500Gb drive I keep attached to my PC to backup every time I shoot. Then I periodically also backup to a USB powered WD 500Gb drive that I keep in my office away from home. The docking station mentioned above should work, then just get 2 cheap hard drives..Keep one nearby and one off-site.</p>