Portable External Drives?? Christmas is acoming and my better half is looking for a copla of these drives for her pics. As wildlife photographers we tend to accumulate a large quantity...

LittleRed

Christmas is acoming and my better half is looking for a copla of these drives for her pics. As wildlife photographers we tend to accumulate a large quantity on our sorties into great outdoors, especially her. She tends to shoot 2 or 3 more than I. In fact on our latest trip to the western Wildlife Refuges she came home with over 15,000 snaps!!
So could youse fine ladies and gentlemen give me some suggestions on what are the better ones. I contemplated on going with external ssd’s but to me the prices are a wee bit too much. The average price of over $200 for a 1T and close to $400 for a 2T is a bit much. Especially when you can get a regular 5T for less than $200. Hell, for the price of 1 1T WD Passport @ $250 (on sale for $230) I can buy 2 or 3 regular drives of the same size.
She’s at present a Mac Lady running about a 3 years old one so something good with this system would be necessary.
So I’d appreciate some ideas on some reliable suggestions.
Thanking you

LittleRed (Ron)

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

Can you clarify - is the goal a drive to permanently store images, or a drive to temporarily transfer images to while traveling?

toxdoc42

Do you carry a notebook with you?

Curmudgeon Loc: SE Arizona

Without knowing what equipment you have, this is what I did:
Windows 10 desktop, two internal drives--'C' 256 GB SSD, 'D' 1 TB SATA. Replaced 'C' drive with 1TB SSD. I have all of my programs and do all of my PP on 'C' drive because of the additional speed.

I have 3 external SATA Western Digital Passport Drives, one 4 TB and two 2 TB. All photos stored on 4 TB drive, backed up to the cloud and other drives.

External 4TB SATA drives for $98.00 at Amazon. No need to go any smaller anymore.

Hope that helps

nicksr1125 Loc: Mesa, AZ

A couple years ago I picked up an external 6TB drive at Costco for $129.00. I use that as my regular backup drive. I also have a couple 2TB drives that I take when I'm traveling to backup photos.

toxdoc42

nicksr1125 wrote:

A couple years ago I picked up an external 6TB drive at Costco for $129.00. I use that as my regular backup drive. I also have a couple 2TB drives that I take when I'm traveling to backup photos.

That is why I asked If they carry a computer. The Costco drives are e ternal USB drives and must be attached to a CPU to use them. There are some new fangled gadgets, much more expensive, which don't require a CPU. Some cameras/smartcard have built in Wi-Fi, somif you have a good wifi connection you can back up to the cloud.

LittleRed

DWU2 wrote:

Can you clarify - is the goal a drive to permanently store images, or a drive to temporarily transfer images to while traveling?

This drive will be used just for storing images before and after she does her PP. while travelling we usually retain the images on our SD cards. Most of them will be transferred once we get home.

LittleRed (Ron)

LittleRed

toxdoc42 wrote:

Do you carry a notebook with you?

Yes, we usually carry 2 laptops with us, she her Apple and I my Dell. But due to the high number of pics we take we don’t have much time to do anything with them. We do download a few on the fly but most are retained on our cards til we get back to our homebase and then downloaded. In past a lot were burnt onto CD/DVD’s but that method is now outdated since most new pewter’s don’t have the ability to use them ( like my wife’s Apple). Since my pewter still has a DVD drive one of my first jobs in the new year will to transfer all of them onto the new hard drives (whopee 🤯

LittleRed (Ron)

toxdoc42

LittleRed wrote:

This drive will be used just for storing images before and after she does her PP. while travelling we usually retain the images on our SD cards. Most of them will be transferred once we get home.

LittleRed (Ron)

If you have no way to back up your cards when you travel, you are playing russian roulette! Eventually you will get burned! Those little cards were never intended to be long term storage! If your images are important, you should be careful, diligent, about backing every image up! I bring a notebook, i happen to use a MS Surface, and backup to an external hardrive and MS One Drive every night!

LittleRed

Curmudgeon wrote:

Without knowing what equipment you have, this is w... (show quote)

Sounds like a super set up you have. However with us we do not have a Desktop, only our laptops. The one we did have went belly up and we don’t intend on replacing it at this time. That is why we are looking only at portable drives.

LittleRed (Ron)

LittleRed

toxdoc42 wrote:

If you have no way to back up your cards when you travel, you are playing russian roulette! Eventually you will get burned! Those little cards were never intended to be long term storage! If your images are important, you should be careful, diligent, about backing every image up! I bring a notebook, i happen to use a MS Surface, and backup to an external hardrive and MS One Drive every night!

We have been using the card method for storing our pics on the road ever since we went digital with never any problems. Never had one fail. We usually carry at least 20 cards to use with the biggest being 32. If the used cards are properly stored there should never be a problem. Can’t say the same about both a laptop with its HD or a portable HD as I’ve had both of these items crash while in the field with no warning. I think I’ll stick with my “solid state” SD cards.

LittleRed (Ron)

jtwind

Sandisk 2 tb ssb is $250. Have had one for a year and a half and they are great. Fast and tiny.

Robertl594 Loc: Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and Nantucket

jtwind wrote:

Sandisk 2 tb ssb is $250. Have had one for a year and a half and they are great. Fast and tiny.

Just bought one. Physical size is perfect and price is finally right too.

KLambar Loc: New Jersey

LittleRed wrote:

Christmas is acoming and my better half is looking... (show quote)

B&H today has Seagate 4TB Backup Plus Portable drive in silver for $79.00

xposure

Best Buy has a 5TB Western Digital Portable Passport on sale for $89. I prefer WD to the others I've owned as it is much more reliable and lasts close to forever,. My 500GB one is about 7 yrs old while my Seagates lasted about a week. I have 10TB network drives as well but I like the portables better, and if money were no object I would own SSD's. I am buying one of those WD 5TB for $89 this Thursday.