donrent Loc: Punta Gorda , Fl

No doubt, there are some Ugly's on this forum who uses an external hard drive for image storage... I would like to hear your ideas and recommendations on using one and what you would recommend to buy....

lacsar Loc: Columbia SC and Newland NC

The last one's I bought are Seagate 500GB USB external hard drives. I bought two because I lost two in a power outage at my house. I store three copies of all my photographs. I create file folders daily by date and the camera I am using at the time. example 2012_01_26 A65. Inside that folder I file every thing I have taken that day with that camera. If i use another camera in addition to or only use another, I file it as an example 2012_01_26 Olympus E410.

The hard drives are powered by the USB Port so no additional power adapter is needed. This works well because if a bad storm is coming I simply eject the port and unplug the drive.

Hope this helps and not confuses.

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

I also recommend Seagate. I use two of the Seagate "FreeAgent" Go-Flex 640GB units. They are USB3 connections and are about the same size as a smartphone, this makes for VERY nice portability! Were $59.95 when I bought mine but memory and hard drives have been hit HARD by Japans natural disasters and are now selling for $99.99, but still a really good buy when you consider the storage capacity and the portability! It fits nicely in a shirt pocket and plugs into any USB port.

Here is a pic of one of mine.

donrent Loc: Punta Gorda , Fl

Thanks Guys, Sounds like it Seagate.....

traveler90712 Loc: Lake Worth, Fl.

We have several external drives (several terabytes worth) all networked with in our house.
After a shoot, we get rid of the garbage and copy the good pictures to one of the external drives. The backend processing takes place on the main computer, after that, we copy the "processed" pictures to one of the external drives.
At all times (well 90% of the time anyway) the originals remain untouched.
In the near term, we are planning to get a NAS to allow other users (with permission) to view our photography.

Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA

I use a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk external drive (1 Terabyte storage):
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/external-hard-drive/desktop-hard-drive

I bought mine on Black Friday for less than half list price.

Nikon_DonB Loc: Chicago

Myself I've always had infallible luck with Western Digital Hard Drives. I can't say that about Seagate, unfortunately! I build and work on PC's and I've replaced quite a few bad Seagates(with WD's)over the years. All I will buy is WD and I currently have 6 in different applications(desktop, laptop, external back-up). Good Luck.

PhotoArtsLA Loc: Boynton Beach

I have, on average, at least a dozen external hard disks, but the device I rely upon the most is a StarTech.com 4 disk system on an eSATA connection. This allows 4@ 3TB drives to be available at sufficient speed, even as a single disk, to handle losslessly compressed 1080i/p video. The disks are raw, and they just plug into the box, which has internal fan cooling superior to most external drives.

I only use Hitachi enterprise level drives (designed for 24/7,) formerly IBM's hard disk division, as the thermal recalibration of the dominant GREEN drives from Western Digital and others cannot handle video properly due to the thermal recalibration.

The StarTech box allows me to swap out disks when needed, as each drive can be shut down individually and ejected, and thus is a very fast way of keeping things moving. My data needs are in the Petabytes, and so I long for the introduction of Carbon Storage.

Here is the StarTech unit:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707252

I keep a special bookshelf for hard drives, instead of books. Not much height between shelves. Luckily, a normal bookshelf depth allows two disks, front to back, so quite a few fit on a single 36" shelf.

On top of storing images on a great many hard disks, I have archival Blu-Ray, as well as properly made DVD and CD backups. Properly made meaning: high quality media, recorded at 1X speed, on a good burner. I have twenty five year old CD's still in perfect, readable condition. Thousands of them, databased for instant access to countless millions of files of all sorts.

lacsar Loc: Columbia SC and Newland NC

I just bought a docking station for external storage using sata hard drives. I haven't had a chance to install it yet, but I am anxious to try it. Mine is different than yours, only one hard drive at a time, but it is supposed to be hot swappable. Thanks for letting us know what you use.

jdeanb Loc: Texas / central

I also have a Seagate 1T and store my pictures as well as other things that i would not want to loose. the one I have is formatted for both P C and Imac. Think was about mid $60 a couple months ago

TheBirdMan Loc: Southeast Missouri, USA

I have a Seagate 1 TB which I use to keep the back up files for all three computers I use. They run from $100 to $150 depending on the RPM (operation speed)
I have a Hitachi 2 TB which has all of my folders and files duplicated for my documents and images from the computer I use for all my image work. They run from $100 to 170 again depending on the RPM
When I finish editing and am ready to save image files I copy them to the 1TB hard drive on the computer then move them to the duplicate file on the 2 TB external. I also have a HP 500 GB that is about 3/8 inch thick by three inches wide by 4 or five inches in size that I carry with me for image storage on long trips. You can buy them for around $50 - 60

photo guy Loc: Chippewa Falls, WI

I too recommend Seagate. My family has Seagates that are External with a fan and require power but have not failed. I bought a Western portable over a year ago and it crashed after 9 months. Upon researching it I found out that I wasn't the only one that had it happen.

flytyer57 Loc: Mountain Home, Arkansas

Funny you should say that. The hard drive in my last computer was a WD and it died after 3 years. Luckily I had everything backed up to my Seagates.

MWAC Loc: Somewhere East Of Crazy

I have 2 Western Digital My Book 2TB hard drives and one Western Digital My Passport 500GB (for my son's laptop to store his itunes).

Nikon_DonB Loc: Chicago

It must have been a fluke...Nobody's perfect. But if I had to gamble it surely would NOT be on a Seagate! I think they suck!
Buy what you want!