Portable Hard Drive: Im looking for a portable hard drive to take when I travel. I shoot in RAW & want to download pictures to a unit for storage. I have a MAC at home with Lightroom...

Mama Bear984 Loc: Langley, BC Canada

Im looking for a portable hard drive to take when I travel. I shoot in RAW & want to download pictures to a unit for storage. I have a MAC at home with Lightroom installed for processing. I have know I deal what I should be looking for. I shoot on average for a trip of 2 weeks 2500 pictures.
What make or model of what???

traveler90712 Loc: Lake Worth, Fl.

Mama Bear984 wrote:

Im looking for a portable hard drive to take when I travel. I shoot in RAW & want to download pictures to a unit for storage. I have a MAC at home with Lightroom installed for processing. I have know I deal what I should be looking for. I shoot on average for a trip of 2 weeks 2500 pictures.
What make or model of what???

A portable hard drive needs power, normally USB power and normally from a laptop or desktop computer. If your going to be in a hotel or someplace that has one, and have the capabilities to use that computer, it would be no problem.

If that is the case, any portable hard drive, with adequate space will do.

I am unaware of one that is self powered and has a slot for different cards.

Joecosentino Loc: Whitesboro, New York

I use WEstern digital my passport, 1 TB drive, I keep my light room catalog on it so when I get home I just plug it in and all my photos and edits are on the drive. Works great.

Nikon_DonB Loc: Chicago

A agree with Joe. Get a Western Digital.

Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA

I use a small SeaGate "Free Agent" GoFlex Desk, 1.5 Tb for all my back-up.

oldmalky Loc: West Midlands,England.

My wife and i both use a seagate expansion 1TB

Crwiwy Loc: Devon UK

Mama Bear984 wrote:

Im looking for a portable hard drive to take when I travel. I shoot in RAW & want to download pictures to a unit for storage. I have a MAC at home with Lightroom installed for processing. I have know I deal what I should be looking for. I shoot on average for a trip of 2 weeks 2500 pictures.
What make or model of what???

Look at the Seagate - it has plenty of capacity, a good reliability record, is little bigger than a box of cigarettes and is powered from the computer via a short USB lead.

Amazon has a 500Gb for £47 and 2Tb for £85
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-STBX500200-500GB-Expansion-External/dp/B0084LZIB8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354876761&sr=8-1

sportyman140 Loc: Juliette, GA

Seagate 1 or 2 TB is great for travel I have a Seagate 1 TB and it works great for me.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

I use western Digital as my back-up drive on trips- I download to my laptop in LR with a second copy to my external drive.

mooseeyes Loc: Sonora, California

I use, and am very happy with, the Seagate 3TB units. Last time I bought two of them, they ran $149.95 each for the 3TB. I think the 2TB units were like $129.95, and the 1TB units were running about $109.95. . .i.e., about $20.00 difference between each them. It was a no brainer for me to elect to go with the 3TB units.

shutterbug64 Loc: Colorado

I use Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex. I buy 2 and keep everything double saved and keep everything on them. They are to cheap not to have 2. When I want to work on a file I bring it to my laptop and work on it then send it back to both when done. I keep nothing but programs on my laptop. Having two is peace of mind that when one of them crashes I have a back up.

Lucian Loc: From Wales, living in Ohio

I suggest you take a look here...

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0056TYXJE/ref=asc_df_B0056TYXJE2283816?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&tag=dealt664035-20&linkCode=asn&creative=395093&creativeASIN=B0056TYXJE

Jayne Loc: Wisconsin

I use Seagate Go Flex and my most recent portable is a Buffalo and all have been performing flawlessly. For what ever reason WD don't last long for me........

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Mama Bear984 wrote:

Im looking for a portable hard drive to take when I travel. I shoot in RAW & want to download pictures to a unit for storage. I have a MAC at home with Lightroom installed for processing. I have know I deal what I should be looking for. I shoot on average for a trip of 2 weeks 2500 pictures.
What make or model of what???

There are so many different drives available, and there is no reliable source to check to see how good and how durable they are. "You pays your money, and you takes your choice." I've used several, with no problems. The 3 1/2" inch are great for traveling.

Make sure it's compatible with the Mac. You might as well get USB 3.0 while you're at it. Even if it's not set up for the Mac, you can format it to work on your Mac.

sloscheider Loc: Minnesota

What I have is 2 - 320 gig external drives that are very compact. I bring one (or both) with me on location and set up a sync pair so any files I import to Lightroom get synced to the external within a few minutes.

I don't bother using these for backup when I'm at home - they're too small. I erase them when I head out to a new job.

You didn't say what camera you have but figuring a D800 is rumored to produce around 50 meg raw files you could fit roughly 6,500 images on a 300 gig drive. If your camera produces smaller files you'll fit more :)

Since you have a Mac and can deal with a faster drive interface, here's a link to Best Buy with a search for external FireWire drives: ($82 gets you 320 gig and $110 gets you 500 gig) (if you have a Thunderbolt interface you should take a look at those too as they are WAY faster than any other external drive interface out there)

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olstemplatemapper.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&_dynSessConf=-7059488322941866013&id=pcat17080&type=page&lcn=Computers+%26+Tablets&sc=abComputerSP&st=processingtime%3A%3E1900-01-01&usc=abcat0500000&cp=1&sp=%2Bcurrentprice+skuid&nrp=15&qp=q70726f63657373696e6774696d653a3e313930302d30312d3031~~cabcat0500000%23%230%23%233hn~~cabcat0504001%23%230%23%23a2~~cpcmcat186100050005%23%230%23%2327~~nf161||466972655769726520383030&add_to_pkg=false&pagetype=listing&gf=y