Suggestions for a good external hard drive to back up photos (Page 6): I use Western digital passport. You can get them in several sizes, and they are fairly cheap.... If you can...

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

gmccaleb wrote:

I hope I'm asking the right question. I need to back up my photos and take them off my laptop. I've read all the Archived posts here about them and saw several that seemed unreliable. Can you suggest something for me to purchase? As you can tell, my knowledge of technology is limited.

Thanks in advance.

I use Western digital passport. You can get them in several sizes, and they are fairly cheap.... If you can afford the SSD one, get it....

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

chrissybabe wrote:

I told the story earlier about the guy who lost 5 ... (show quote)

Amen. Members of this forum spend many thousands of dollars on cameras and lenses, and except for film, the entire goal of all the equipment and acquired knowledge is to create a data file (digital image). They then entrust many thousands of those files to a $60 cheap hard drive, often with no backup. Really?

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

TriX wrote:

Amen. Members of this forum spend many thousands of dollars on cameras and lenses, and except for film, the entire goal of all the equipment and acquired knowledge is to create a data file (digital image). They then entrust many thousands of those files to a $60 cheap hard drive, often with no backup. Really?

Father, son, grandfather backups (dating myself, aren't I?)
If I include Carbonite, I also have a great-grandfather backup.
My 2Tb WD Gold was about $125. (It's probably a burned-in Black drive.)
If one drive dies or is purported to be dying, replace it POST HASTE!
Never, ever, ever have your files only in one place!
Acronis True Image is a handy package to have on-hand also. Used it once to clone a boot drive before it went. Worth every penny!
Oh, and not just photos, documents and application data also.

James Slick Loc: Pittsburgh,PA

Longshadow wrote:

img src="https://static.uglyhedgehog.com/images/s... (show quote)

therwol Loc: USA

gmccaleb wrote:

I hope I'm asking the right question. I need to back up my photos and take them off my laptop. I've read all the Archived posts here about them and saw several that seemed unreliable. Can you suggest something for me to purchase? As you can tell, my knowledge of technology is limited.

Thanks in advance.

I have 2 Seagate and 5 Western Digital consumer grade external hard drives that range in size from 1 to 2 Terabytes. I started buying these things more than 5 years ago. None have failed. I only connect them as needed. I know that they are said to be prone to failure, and that's why even picture I've taken is on at least three of these things. I also keep my camera cards for another backup. I've been told that I'm wasting money by doing that. It's my preference.

SSDs are now considered more reliable than spinning hard drives. One could be mounted in an enclosure. The problem that someone mentioned is that if one of these fails, you can't get anything off of it.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Brand doesn't matter , redundancy does. Speed isn't really that important either if they are backup drives , working drives that you want your files from fast, then speed matters.

The simplest option is raid as you have duplicated data automatically, I also have a fondness for software raid rather than hardware raid since the hardware raid requires a specific piece of hardware while software raid just requires a working copy of the operating system. If you opt for the higher performance of a hardware raid controller then buy 2 one as a spare.

drive capacity there is always a sweet spot currently 4 TB has the best per GB price it does take a long time to replicate a drive, smaller drives may be preferable.

chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand

If you use a piece of software call bcvkup 2 on your second redundant drive after copying your data to the first drive then it will operate in the background to copy over only the additional data so that you have a mirror image on both drives. Just requires a little initial planning.

blackest Loc: Ireland

chrissybabe wrote:

If you use a piece of software call bcvkup 2 on your second redundant drive after copying your data to the first drive then it will operate in the background to copy over only the additional data so that you have a mirror image on both drives. Just requires a little initial planning.

What operating system is that for?

jccash Loc: Longwood, Florida

blackest wrote:

What operating system is that for?

https://bvckup2.com/purchase/

itsnoelb Loc: Edgewater, FL. Originally: FLINT. MI.

I use a 1TB Toshiba. About wallet,(a thin wallet) size. For my besties, I also post to Flickr however, Flickr only supports HQ Jpeg.

blackest Loc: Ireland

itsnoelb wrote:

I use a 1TB Toshiba. About wallet,(a thin wallet) size. For my besties, I also post to Flickr however, Flickr only supports HQ Jpeg.

If that drive dies , would you lose anything?

RoadRunner65

Read an article here on the "Hog" by Gene51 several months ago regarding external backups, I bought an HGST Ultrastar, 3tb 3.5" Internal Hard Drive refurbished for $59, Wavelink aluminum enclosure $22, from Amazon. This is a plug & play solution, works great. Total cost $81! Works so good, I ordered a second one. I concur with Gene51, I think this is a more robust solution and you won't break the bank.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

LastMango wrote:

Follow-up to the Question. . .Mechanical or Solid State?

You'll get larger capacity with a "mechanical" drive for less $$. A WD SSD 1TB USB 3 drive is $350 retail; but it is about the size of a big pack of Trident gum. Great portability.