Suggestions for a good external hard drive to back up photos
Jan 16, 2018 10:46:15 #
Picture Taker
Loc: Michigan Thumb
PS I saved my pictures for a while on a outside storage and they didn't want me when I got too many pictures to save. Yes I know I take a lot of pictures (a lot of HDR) and sell. But I'm not going to lose pictures again.
Jan 16, 2018 10:56:47 #
tomad
Loc: North Carolina
I use 2 Western Digital 4tb drives. One is a Passport SSD small and safe for travel so can back up on the road or at home. The other is a Western Digital Easystore which is a standard hard drive that is always connected and does continuous incremental backups of whatever I want backed up on my computer. So I have 2 backup copies of all my photos on 2 different drives and a complete hard drive backup of my computer on the Easystore. Software that comes with both is easy to use to do whatever/whenever backups you want. The passport was around $135 and the Easystore was about $100.
Jan 16, 2018 11:10:17 #
NBBPH
Loc: Indiana
LaCie (Porsche Design) - they are small and portable and not too expensive. I have four of them.
Jan 16, 2018 11:17:53 #
My personal solution is to store ALL my photos on an external WD Thunderbolt dual drive system. I also employ an extensive amount of additional storage on several Synology NAS systems. Best of luck.
Jan 16, 2018 11:19:48 #
I've been using Western Digital USB drives for years. They are reliable. I have the 6TB and 8TB versions but I prefer the 4TB size, because the 4TB version has an LED light that blinks when you are transferring data. The larger sizes don't show anything when data is transferred. Just my personal preference.
Jan 16, 2018 11:34:35 #
pahtspix wrote:
I'd go with a Western Digital 8TB My Book with WD... (show quote)
That's what I use for my primary backup. Mine is the 8TB MyCloud Mirror (4TB RAID1) which allows access over the internet. I also have a 3TB ioSafe fireproof drive that I use for really important stuff that I would not want to loose in a fire. My main drive I use for Lightroom storage is a Seagate 4TB portable drive, which I can disconnect from my desktop and use with my MacBook Pro any time I want. I was a little leery of Seagate but it was on sale at Costco soI took a chance. So far so good and I do regular backups WD MyCloud Mirror RAID.
Jan 16, 2018 11:36:21 #
Couple of thoughts:
USB 3: Nice fast through put, but be sure your machine can actually take advantage of it! Look for a USB jack with a blue tab in it. If you don't have a usb 3 port, then you won't get the benefit of the faster device. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXCKKVUw-mg)
Consider the purpose for your backups. If it is to protect yourself in the event of a hard drive failure, that is one thing. But what about a fire or water damage? You might want to consider TWO drives, keeping one at another location.
USB 3: Nice fast through put, but be sure your machine can actually take advantage of it! Look for a USB jack with a blue tab in it. If you don't have a usb 3 port, then you won't get the benefit of the faster device. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXCKKVUw-mg)
Consider the purpose for your backups. If it is to protect yourself in the event of a hard drive failure, that is one thing. But what about a fire or water damage? You might want to consider TWO drives, keeping one at another location.
Jan 16, 2018 11:41:07 #
Jan 16, 2018 11:53:56 #
Bill Gordon wrote:
There is no need to rely on anecdotal experiences when it comes to hard drive evaluation. I am a customer of BackBlaze cloud backup service ($50/year) and have relied on their very useful compilation of drive failure stats when choosing my drives. Go to backblaze.com, scroll to the very bottom of the home page (to the last lines) and click on Hard Drive Stats. They have more than 40,000 drives on line and have been compiling stats for some years. Educate yourselves. You will be happy you did.
👍👍 backblaze produces some of the best actual failure data (from a huge pool of drives) available - highly recommended.
Jan 16, 2018 11:56:58 #
Jan 16, 2018 11:58:53 #
NBBPH wrote:
LaCie (Porsche Design) - they are small and portable and not too expensive. I have four of them.
Some of the worst drives available in terms of reliability. Purchased by Seagate (no idea why they’d want them)
Jan 16, 2018 12:11:31 #
rfmaude41
Loc: Lancaster, Texas (DFW area)
Gene51 wrote:
I do recall that Seagate did have a decent drive, their Constellation series, which was used in data centers for a while.
They do still make "enterprise class" drives; I have four of them in a RAID 0+1 configuration that is almost seven years old, always on and absolutely NO PROBLEMS.
Jan 16, 2018 12:15:21 #
Jan 16, 2018 12:42:44 #
James Slick
Loc: Pittsburgh,PA
Longshadow wrote:
I have two WD "My Passport Ultra" 1TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drives. One for the laptop and one for the desktop.
I'm very pleased with these "pocket" drives. I believe they are currently being superseded by a newer model though.
As with any external, don't unplug them without making sure the write buffers are empty and you "eject" (dismount) them!
(My primary backup on the desktop is by Carbonite.)
I'm very pleased with these "pocket" drives. I believe they are currently being superseded by a newer model though.
As with any external, don't unplug them without making sure the write buffers are empty and you "eject" (dismount) them!
(My primary backup on the desktop is by Carbonite.)
I have 4 WD "My Passport Ultras". Reliable and not expensive at all. (FWIW, I only use Western Digital drives when building PCs too, Not an ad, just my preference!)
Jan 16, 2018 13:01:41 #
LastMango wrote:
Follow-up to the Question. . .Mechanical or Solid State?
Solid State if you can afford it for the capacity you need and have a port fast enough to take advantage of the speed (USB 3, Thunderbolt or eSATA)
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