mrtkarlin Loc: Ashland, Oregon

Any suggestions for a 4 or 5 Tb Thunderbolt /USB portable hard drive. I’m on a Macbook Pro, mid 2014 with Thunderbolt 2 ports. I use Lightroom to process pictures. I use the hard drive for storage of photos. I’m running out of room on a Seagate 2Tb. Thank you.

barryb Loc: Kansas

I don't know nearly as much as any of the computer nerds, but our tech guy at church will only get external disks by Glyph, blackbox pro. They are so durable, and he has had excellent responses from them. got it from full compass . good luck

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

There’s a current thread on this subject that you may find informative. It’s asking about Western Digital externals, but plenty of relevant info: http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-525642-1.html

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

If you are running a single hard drive as storage for your files, you are likely going to lose all your work, sooner or later. That's because sooner or later, hard drives fail. If it doesn't matter losing all your past stored work, then gamble away.

I run a 2 disk Synology NAS for my photography and another for my wife's business. Both are mirrored and update daily to a third NAS off site. I always make a Blu-ray disk copy of the raw files after any photo shoot, download a copy to my NAS and my working external hard drive, verify all copies are not corrupted and then put the CF and SD cards in a hold box. I have enough cards that I do not need to use those cards the very next time, so if there is a problem when I process the photos, the original cards will still be available for access if everything else fails (hasn't so far). After I process the shoot on the external HD and add the finished files back to storage, the cards go back into rotation for future shoots.
I personally do not use the cloud as a backup source. Just a personal choice. Instead, I have other external hard drives back up copies stored in a fire rated safe.

I do not buy pre-configured external drives. I purchase the hard drive boxes with fans and put bare drives in them and the NAS. The bare drives I use are Western Digital reds, blacks and HGST drives... always in pairs in the NAS boxes. I have had Seagate drives in the past, but personal experience with them left a sour taste for me. In all my years with the drives I use now, I have had 2 failures. One went to heaven on it's own and the other was because I dropped it.

Now you may see this as overkill, and depending on your circumstances, by comparison it might be. But my wife and I both have paying clients and cannot afford to lose our work to happenstance.

Jeffcs Loc: Myrtle Beach South Carolina

I too run MacBook Pro and my external HDs are WD with great success

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Doesn’t sound like overkill to me - sounds like you appreciate how valuable your data is and protect it with multiple copies including off-site DR. And I completely agree with choosing high quality drives (you’ve mentioned some excellent ones), mirroring them and putting them in an external enclosure that you chose (as opposed to purchasing prepackaged externals with no idea of the quality of the drive inside). Good practices that should be the standard instead of the exception.

woodworkerman Loc: PA to FL

Scott Kelby, publisher of Photoshop Magazine and many books recommends and uses G Drive External hard drives. I followed suit and have multiple 4 TB drives external to my desktop. Very reliable and quick. A 4 TB G-Technology G-Drive on Amazon is $169.95. A 1TB portable external is $64.95. Good investment for me.

woodworkerman Loc: PA to FL

I did forget to say I have 3 Macs, one of which is a Mac Book Pro that I use when I travel and I take it to work. I also carry multiple external drives for multiple back ups when I travel for 2 summer months taking pictures. (I'm a college prof and have the time off in the summer.)

JennT Loc: South Central PA

LACie best for Mac--- I have 2 6T and on 8T

JennT Loc: South Central PA

Re. --Only one external is dedicated to Lightroom and photoshop the second on is an extra back up,, the 8T is for finished images coupled with originals

rfmaude41 Loc: Lancaster, Texas (DFW area)

I use two different RAID arrays; one is a 2TB Two disc RAID 0, the other is a 4 disc, 4TB RAID 0+1 (some call it RAID 10). All of the drives are Seagate (enterprise) drives, have been running for more than 4 1/2 years, no failures, no problems.

Mike Adams Loc: Connecticut

In addition to the regular drive, I suggest a 3TB Air capsule to provide the security of a Time Machine backup.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Why do you run RAID 0 (striping) - for speed? Or did you mean RAID 1 (mirroring) on the two disc array?

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

With respect, I will have to disagree. While LaCie has pretty external styling (they have actually won awards), their lack of reliability is almost legendary. They have been purchased by Seagate, whose drive reliability is all over the map, depending on where the drive is built and the series, so we’ll see what happens in the future. Seagate’s enterprise class drives may be fine, but their consumer class drives have varied widely in reliability, some models having a 34% failure rate during the first year in service according to Backblaze’s published reliability data.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I will restate what I have posted in every (weekly) question on externals. Purchase a high quality drive such as an HGST or WD red or black (enterprise grade if possible), purchase a powered, fan cooled case, and install the drive rather than purchasing a prepackaged external. The reason being that you have no idea unless you open the case, what quality/model drive is being used (and it’s often the cheapest available). You simply cannot manufacture, assemble, distribute and sell (at a profit) a high quality drive, interface, power supply and case external for $69-$89. But if your data (which you spent thousands in photo equipment to produce) isn’t important to you, then buy the cheapest available, and you better have a backup, because sooner or later, you’re going to need it.