Need advice on portable HDD (Page 4): Ditto Gene51. In addition, I use 1 Tb SSD drives in aluminum enclosures to do the same thing as Gene describes above for HDD drives. The...

photoman43

Gene51 wrote:

I buy bare drives that are "certified" f... (show quote)

Ditto Gene51.

In addition, I use 1 Tb SSD drives in aluminum enclosures to do the same thing as Gene describes above for HDD drives. The enclosures come designed for 2.5 inch SSDs or NVMe SSD drives. Some of the cases hold two NVMe SSD drives. Check out the hard drive enclosures at NewEgg.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

photoman43 wrote:

Ditto Gene51.

In addition, I use 1 Tb SSD drives in aluminum enclosures to do the same thing as Gene describes above for HDD drives. The enclosures come designed for 2.5 inch SSDs or NVMe SSD drives. Some of the cases hold two NVMe SSD drives. Check out the hard drive enclosures at NewEgg.

👍👍 In addition to being an excellent photographer, I’ve found that Gene has extensive professional level knowledge (and judgement) about computing resources.

Jimmy T Loc: Virginia

Rongnongno wrote:

https://windowsreport.com/seagat-hard-drive-windows-10/
https://iboysoft.com/mac-data-recovery/seagate-backup-plus-not-mounting-working-on-mac.html

Thanks for posting. Really great info for me re windows 10.
Smile,
JimmyT Sends

Patrick1210 Loc: Baltimore, MD

I have used them all - Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba for system backup as well as using for my photos. I have not had a problem with any of those storage systems. My recent preference has been WD My Passport 2TB.

Jimmy T Loc: Virginia

TriX wrote:

👍👍 In addition to being an excellent photographer, I’ve found that Gene has extensive professional level knowledge (and judgement) about computing resources.

I hate to pile on, but I Concur!

Lithoman Loc: Southern Indiana

If you insist on HDD then a WD Passport is as reliable as any disk storage device. I have several and no failures yet. However, I’ve switched to an SSD and am very pleased. It is much faster, much smaller physically, and I’m hoping much less prone to crashing. But, ironically, I back the SSD up to two WD Passports.

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

SonyA580 wrote:

Looking on Amazon for a 2 TB portable hard drive to store/backup photo's. Choices are: Seagate Barracuda, Western Digital Elements and Toshiba Canvio Basics. All are in the same basic price range so I'd like to hear from anyone having experience with any of these 3 ...., good, or bad. Thanks!

I have a Seagate portable expansion drive (4TB). Works great.

KLambar Loc: New Jersey

Have you looked at LaCie Rugged Mini - 2TB $89.99

speedmaster Loc: Kendall, FL

You can't go wrong with Western Digital's Passport, USB 3. If you need to protect your data you can go with the Passport Ultra (some US$ more) but you can lock it with a password and the drive is encrypted. It can be set to lock every time you disconnect it and your data is fully protected using 256bit AES encryption.

I use it personally and I have dozens of them for the company's employees and very few issues. RMA is good and fast when needed and the fail rate, even being mostly used by traveling personnel is less than 3 percent.

jrm21

I've had trouble with WD and Seagate drives failing. Considering how many drives I have used over the years, my failure rate for any given brand is pretty low. Too low to say any particular brand is not reliable. Any electronic device can (and eventually will) fail. Every manufacturer produces a bad batch from time to time.

Backblaze publishes reliability statistics: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-q2-2020/
(there is probably more recent data).

But you also wrote "portable." Unless you mean for a laptop, a portable drive won't do you much good without a computer to connect it to.

For a truly portable solution, you might consider the WD My Passport Wireless SSD External Portable Drive. It's pricey, but has an SD reader and USB port that will copy files without the need for other devices. I believe they also make a less expensive spinning drive version. IMO, spinning drives are not a great idea as "portable" units being more delicate than SSDs.

DJon41 Loc: Utah

SonyA580 wrote:

Looking on Amazon for a 2 TB portable hard drive to store/backup photo's. Choices are: Seagate Barracuda, Western Digital Elements and Toshiba Canvio Basics. All are in the same basic price range so I'd like to hear from anyone having experience with any of these 3 ...., good, or bad. Thanks!

Get SSDs. They are big enough now to be efficient. I have two 250gb drives, they work great.

teammt

I have recently purchase 4 TB G-Technology portable drives. They are to new to talk about reliability but my non portable G-Technology drives have had no issues after several years. I understand G- Texh drives are made by WD but seem to get faster read-write speeds. I also still own and use Toshiba portables.

Dug E Pi

I had two 8tb Seagate Baracudas that both crapped out about 14 months each. Trying Western Digital now after some research.

maciej

I have older Seagates that still work but I now get SSD's Currently Samsung T5 has worked well for me.
I have had two mechanical disk drives on my laptops go belly up.

jeffcisp

Are you talking about short-term storage or primary backup? If it's primary backup, your external storage should be a mirrored RAID drive, otherwise when the drive fails, you have no backup.