Millismote Loc: Massachusetts

I agree with Cameraf4, I have had good luck with Western Digital My Book. I have used their drives for many years.

NormanTheGr8 Loc: Racine, Wisconsin

Go for 4TB or more 😁

jccash Loc: Longwood, Florida

I second this. Use a G-Tech 4 TB SSD drive.

jpgto Loc: North East Tennessee

My $0.02, I use the Seagate external h.d. and have had good luck.

johneccles Loc: Leyland UK

If you use a laptop and rarely use the DVD drive why not replace it with an HDD caddy with a 1TB Hard drive installed, I did this some time ago and am very pleased with it. The job is very simple and only takes a few minutes, you need one of these though: https://hddcaddy.eu/
There are lots of alternatives at various prices.

I do have an external DVD optical drive for use with my netbook or any other PC if and when required.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Eileen, I would stay away from the consumer-grade hard drives you see at Costco, Walmart, etc for under $100 for 2 TB. G-Technology hard drives has great high-end drives that use reliable HGST drives still offer only 3 yr warranties, a clue that their Ultrastar He drives are not inside the case. The Ultrastar series bare drives come with 5 yr warranties.

My suggestion is to purchase an HGST Ultrastar or Western Digital Re and a USB3.1 case, which are available from $10 to $30 on Newegg, and you will have a considerably more reliable longer lasting solution. Both HGST and Western Digital brands are owned by Western Digital. Samsung Spinpoint drives like the F3 were outstanding in their day, but not sure of how they have changed under Seagate ownership.

Think of your future needs as well. Maybe a 2 or a 4 TB drive is a better long term solution. A 3.5" drive size will give you more options.

G-Technology drives are popular with Mac users, but in the bigger scheme of things you can do better for less. If you are uncomfortable with placing a bare drive in a case, you can go to a Micro Center or buy one from a MicroCenter, and ask them to assemble it for you. Or you can work with your friendly local computer repair guy who will be more than happy to help your for a very small fee.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

👍👍 excellent advice.

Traveller_Jeff

Whatever you get, purchase two of them. You'll read lots of stories of external hard drives that just stopped working and of the heartache and cash spent to save the contents. Save everything on both drives to give yourself peace of mind. Once you purchase the drive of your choice, learn how to safely disconnect from your computer. Too many drives have been damaged by just yanking the cable out of the USB port. Personally, I've been using Seagate and Western Digital for years with no failures YET. You might want to consider getting a HD larger that 1TB to give you room to grow. It doesn't cost very much more to buy more memory than you think you'll need.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

I would go with WD 2-4 TB gives you a lot of space

Kuzano

My 2tb Seagate sata went TIT'S up with 1.7tb of data on it. The lesson....one is never enough!

25 years of building, fixing, and consulting on PC'S and Apple computers in business. Redundancy is key. Everybody's drive's fail!

I triplicate my backups, with 1 off site, so I lost nothing. I favor WD, but they also break,

Google, read, and understand "the TAO of backup"

daddybear Loc: Brunswick, NY

Engineering term.When the contractor executed exactly what was on the engineered drawings. Dead Nuts On. The origin, have no idea, and in retirement no longer care.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Personally, I stick with Western Digital. There are other decent brands but I stay away from HP and Seagate. I've been burned by them more than once and don't donate any more.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

Don't just buy one drive. There are many inexpensive external two drive RAID devices that will allow you to write two copies every time you save. Any little bit of safety is appreciated.

If you think you will never go over 1TB of storage need you might consider getting Solid State drives. Another option for growth is to add two 2 TB drives in a mirroring RAID configuration. There are many others with much more knowledge of computers than I on this site, maybe they can chime in.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

It would be my recommendation that you stay clear of any drive system that didn't disclose exactly what drive(s) it contained. I strongly recommend either Seagate or Western Digital drives. Both are made in various sizes, connection modes and qualities. My personal choice for an external drive would be a Thunderbolt 3 system, if you are using a Mac, or a USB 3 if you aren't. I use a Western Digital MyBook, Thunderbolt 2 external drive along with three Synology NAS systems. My drives are all either Seagate or Western Digital. ALL of my storage is either RAID 1 or RAID 5. I am a busy pro and have almost 100 TB of external storage as I shoot about 10,000 images a month. Best of luck.

bpulv Loc: Buena Park, CA

Before discussing brand, you should consider size. Just because you currently have 284GB of data now is not a true indication of what you will need in the future. You must first answer the following questions"

1) How many photographs are included in the 284Gb? Divide the 284 by the number of photographs to determine the average size of each photo.

2) Using the number from item 1, how many pictures do you take on average per year?

3) How many years do you want to go before buying your next hard drive?

4) Are your pictures in RAW, jpg or another format? RAW files are considerably larger than compressed format files like .jpg and that additional file size must go into the size of the drive you will need.

5) Do you or do you plan to edit your photos? When you edit photos, you will be making multiple copies of your files in different formats as part of the process? That takes hard drive space that you must allow for when choosing the correct size drive.

6) Do you plan on buying a new camera in the future? Your new camera will probably make larger files than your current camera regardless of the format you shoot in.

After you have answered all these questions, you will have a good idea of how much external memory you actually need.

In addition, you should consider an additional system for backing up your photographs in at least three places including off site backup. I do not recommend cloud backup because your pictures will not be 100% under your own control and slow upload and download speed.

Now as to brand. I use Western Digital hard drives exclusively and, over the years, have found them to be completely reliable. I currently have two WD My Book drives (4Tb and 5Tb) and five internal 4Tb WD Red drives mounted in a Drobo RAID backup system that provides multiple backups including off site backup (one of the drives is always in my bank safe deposit box).