I need small cheap hard drive to back up images. My laptop is dying....

[dan_hall4]

<p>I need a small and cheap hard drive to put pictures on. The sole purpose is to get all the pictures (2,000) of my IBM laptop. I want to store them on this device forever. I have already put all images on Flickr and burned cd's. What I am looking at is a triple redundant back up if you will. Something to put away in a drawer "just in case". The hard drive would not be used for anything other than this one task. Any ideas?</p>

[goldbergbarry]

<p>Hi Dan,<br>

Good question. It is hard giving you specific advice on which hard drive to buy without knowing the details on your needs. For example, does your laptop support firewire, what version of USB do you need, how big are your pictures, do you shoot in RAW, etc. Shooting in the dark, you might consider any off-the-shelf 1 terabyte drive. You can find them for under $100 at Amazon or elsewhere. Just be sure that you know what interface you will use (e.g., USB 2.0, firewire, net drive, etc.). Be sure to buy a name brand.</p>

<p>Triple redundancy is a good idea. However you do this not only by purchasing a drive but by modifying your workflow. For example, here's is what I do. All of my pictures are on my laptop. I also back them all up to a network hard drive that is sitting on my wireless network at home. And then all pictures are uploaded to my Flickr account. This provides three places where all of my pictures are stored. I also Zenfolio for sharing portfolios but that has nothing to do with back ups. Note that I could have also added another layer by having a RAID 5 configuration on my network drive but that is too expensive. Instead I purchased a second network hard drive to manual back up the first drive.</p>

<p>Wish you the best,</p>

<p>- Barry</p>

[py-photography]

<p>Western Digital My book 1TB drives are $120 in canada. Lots of storage standard USB 2.0 interface. Great deal.<br>

I have one and you won't need space for a very long time.. I have 40000 raw files and tonnes of other junk.. and still have 400GB free give or take a little.</p>

[dan_hall4]

<p>Thanks for the quick replies. To answer Barry's question, I have usb and firewire on my IBM Thinkpad R51 (6 years old). The images are 90% jpegs (2-2.5 mb) and I have a few hundred RAW files since getting a dslr two years back. Most the images since buying the dslr have went on a newer Dell desktop. So most the images I have are from point and shoots, but their sentimental value is very high. Wedding, honeymoon, trips to Alaska, etc.. Sounds like there are many options for external hard drives at reasonable prices. Now just to decide which one. Not something I have ever shopped for before. What I may do is get a decent hard drive and use it to get the images off the laptop, then continue using it to back up all images I put in my newer Dell desktop. Otherwise, I will be in the same boat in years to come as I upgrade my now current desktop. Thanks for the replies so far. Any specific hard drives recommended would be great. I know nothing of them. Well, before this post I knew nothing. Thanks for educating me:)</p>

<p>Dan</p>

[joshuamck]

<p>2000 pics x 13MB (Canon 40D which OP states in another post he is using) = approx 25GB<br /> When it comes to hard drives buying only what you need now saves money in the long run. I prefer Seagate Freeagent Go range over the WD range. They look sexy and use mini usb (which I have many cables for) compared to the newer micro usb (which I don't). The 320 GB should set you back approx $65 CAD according to shopbot. By the time that you fill it the $55 you saved will buy the 1TB drive above. Anything smaller is probably end of life at a guess, though you might be able to find retailers getting rid of smaller drives for even cheaper.</p>

[waltflanagan]

<p>2000 * .9 * 2.25MB = 4050MB (90% are JPEGs, average size of 2.25MB)<br>

2000 * .1 * 13MB = 2600MB (10% are RAW, average size 13MB)<br>

So you need to store 6.7GB. That's a relatively small amount of data. You can get an 8GB USB thumb drive for $20. Spend another $10 and get a 16GB version.</p>

[goldbergbarry]

<p>+1 for Walt's recommendation. I would buy two and give one to a friend or relative for safekeeping in case the unthinkable happens (fire or something).</p>

[mizore]

<p>The other solution is to buy a USB drive case and put whatever's on sale at your local computer discount store in it. Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital are all okay drives (sometimes drives have bad patches). I tend to go for Hitachi/IBM (which may not be the same as it was) or Seagate. </p>

<p>Thumb drives would work but are easier to lose. I'd use those for second level backup.</p>

<p>The drive case can be reused for future larger drives. Swapping drives in and out is not that difficult. I've used one Neptune Drive (Other World Computing) firewire drive for two different hard drives. Keep the packaging the drive comes in for storage if you swap it out later. A drive case that takes 800 firewire, whatever the new IDE variant connector is, and USB II would be the most flexible in the future. </p>

<p>If you buy an external hard drive in a case, make sure you can reuse the case in the future. Figure hard drives last three to five years and plan to swap out drives from time to time.</p>

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[gkgerber]

<p>Dan,<br>

I have a external SATA dock and really like it. It is essentially identical to this: <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182197">Hard Drive Docking Station</a> . It has a USB and an eSATA port and takes most any 2.5 or 3.5" SATA hard drive. This one is listed for $22, I paid a bit more locally but it is worth every penny... In fact you may be able to take the hard drive out of your laptop and pop it in this thing to load your images on your new computer when the time comes as well.</p>

[ed_berger2]

<p>Dan mentions Flickr as a backup but aren't those images considerably reduced when uploaded?</p>

[phule]

<p>[[but aren't those images considerably reduced when uploaded?]]</p>

<p>Not at all. That you can't see someones original image just means they've turned that off to you.</p>

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