Kalina54 Loc: Flagstaff, AZ

Hello, I think I saw listed on here the other day the name of a hard drive that was a stand alone...meaning no computer necessary to download to. Does anyone recall the name of this machine? Thank you K

Keldon Loc: Yukon, B.C.

Western Digital has at least one model as does Lacie and several others.

Kalina54 Loc: Flagstaff, AZ

Thank you

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Western DIgital Passport Pro or the various models of Gnarbox

ez22 Loc: The World

I've had 4 LaCies fail on me, each within a short time of their warranties ending. I never banged, dropped or abused them in any way. Hard to believe a company like that stays in business. Go for the WD. I've had two of them ranging from 8 years and 4 years. Still work perfectly.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

LaCie has been purchased by Seagate, God knows why - they have an even worse reliability record than some of Seagate’s drives (note that I didn’t say all Seagates). Hopefully they will now die the death as a storage supplier that they so richly deserve. WD or HGST both make good drives, BUT you need to be aware what particular drive is packaged in the external you purchase. WD, for example, makes many series of drives, from cheap to enterprise quality, and the last time I checked, the particular Drive type is not specified for their external drives (someone please correct me if that has changed). The best bet, if you’re comfortable with it, is to buy a good quality enterprise class Drive, and a fan cooled enclosure to put it in. Only takes a few minutes to assemble the pieces, and you’ll know that you’re using the most reliable external system you can afford. Since your data is the end product of all the time and money you spend on buying cameras and taking photos, it doesn’t make much sense to risk that on a commodity $80 external with no idea what’s inside.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

It's good to keep all the rotten eggs in one basket.

CHOLLY Loc: THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE!

^^^THIS.

The difference in price will be directly tied to the quality of drive you purchase... and this is one of those situations where you really DO get what you pay for.

ez22 Loc: The World

Oh crap ! I did not know that Seagate purchased LaCie. I have four of the little Seagates buggers. I've bought one every year for the past four years. The last one I bought about three months ago. They all work, knocking on wood... The recent one, a 4T, I purchased the recovery plan for $14 which covers me for three years. If something goes wrong with it, you send it back to them and they say they guarantee they will recover the data, put it on a new ext drive and send it to you at no cost.

I have approximately 10 ext drives that all work. Some are close to 15 years old. (The LaCies are the only ones that have ever failed me.) They all back up each other, so if one fails, I have several more with pretty much the same and most important data.

I do think that I will take this advice and go with WD or HGST enterprise class drive that this poster recommends. Hard work and expensive equipment are not something to screw around with.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

You might find this link interesting: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q3-2017/
Backblaze has tens of thousands of drives of various manufacturers in service and publishes failure/reliability data every quarter. As you can see, some of the Seagates are excellent in terms of failure rate, while other models are awful and at the bottom of the list. It’s been suggested that it’s dependent on what factory the particular model is produced. One criticism of Backblaze is they typically buy low cost consumer grade drives, so not much help if you buy enterprise drives (which you should if you can possibly afford them)

ez22 Loc: The World

Very helpful and informative. Thank you !

bickfor903

Same here with the LaCie drives. I have none left. They seem to have an almost deliberate lifespan. Since I went to Western Digital, none have failed in 7 years.

Captkirk Loc: Masterton, Wairarapa, New Zealand

Perhaps you are talking about the Ravpower Filehub. This unit can be charged and used to charge your cellphone but its Main Claim to Fame is that you can insert a SD Card into one end and attach a external Hard Drive to the other and transfer your images from the SD Card to the Hard drive using a Android or Apple app on your phone or tablet. I have one. Its easy to use and as you can see, no computer required.