photoman022 Loc: Manchester CT USA

Whatever external hard drive you buy -- make sure you purchase at least two, three would be preferable. External hard drives fail! I've had two fail over the course of years, but I always had my backups so I never lost anything. Buy two (preferably three)!!!!!

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Let me summarize: If you can afford an SSD, then by all means do so, and as Bill has suggested, insure that they come equipped with a Thunderbolt or USB 3.0/3.1 port (almost all SSD externals will). If you decide on a rotating media HD, rather than purchasing a prepackaged unit (where you rarely know what drive model is inside the case), instead choose a high quality, preferably enterprise class drive (or drives) and a seperate, fan cooled enclosure with a USB 3.0/3.1 or Thunderbolt interface, and insert the drive yourself (takes only minutes). Remember the following key points:

1) All HDs eventually fail. Make sure you have 3 copies of your data - a working copy, a local backup, and an off-site DR (disaster recovery) copy.
2) You get what you pay for. You can not produce a quality HD, an enclosure, interface and power supply, make a profit and sell for <$100.
3) While there are a host of anecdotal stories as to which HDs fail and which ones last forever, most all HD manufacturers have been absorbed by either Seagate or WD, and the reliability of the make/model will often depend on which individual factory (and in which country) the drive is produced. One of the most widely quoted sources on drive reliability, Backblaze.com, releases quarterly reports on their large pool of drives by make and model. Unfortunately, they rarely use/report on enterprise class drives.

StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

Three TB hard drive. It comes with 8gb RAM to which I added 32 gb myself for a total of 40 gb. I think you cannot have to much storage or RAM.
Steve

bpulv Loc: Buena Park, CA

Dave didn't tell us just how old his iMac is, but before investing in an SSD he should consider that on the older iMacs and other older computers, the relatively slow interface speeds will nullify much of the speed advantage of an SSD. It would be better for him to buy two or more hard drives for storage (one or more for backup), move all his files to external drives and then import files to the computer's internal drive only for editing. That will free up his internal hard drive space and give him the best possible performance when he is editing.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Plenty of other reasons to choose SSD (even if his Mac is pre Thunderbolt or USB 3). He will not own that Mac forever, and when he moves to a newer platform, it will certainly have the more modern jnterfaces. Much like buying FF lenses when you currently own a crop body, but plan to move to FF in the future.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

Going back to my first post on the thread, and trying to ignore the less-than useful followup by some, allow me to explain a little more. You can easily check this out for yourself. ....

SSD life is rated in numbers of writes to the memory chips in it. It doesn't mechanically fail like a spinning hard drive does, but it starts to fail in reliability. Operations that cause a lot of moving/deleting/adding of data add to the "writes" total.

That's why defragmenting of an SSD should absolutely not be done, because an SSD does not benefit from it the way a spinning drive does and defragging by design involves a tremendous amount of rewriting data to new locations.

It's also why an SSD is best used for the operating system and application installations, which don't get "changed" much in operation, while keeping data that is manipulated a lot on conventional hard drives. Sure, if you are just filing-away photos or anything else on an SSD for storage only without repeated modification, you're not doing much "writing" after the initial process. But adding/deleting/editing/modifying files creates lots of "writes".

And yes, an SSD can fail, suddenly or gradually, just as a hard drive can. So that is not a distinguishing trait between the two. Benefit of an SSD is if you have the system and programs installed on an SSD you benefit from faster booting and operation of the "system (Windows, Mac, Linux)". And you don't need a huge SSD to hold the OS and applications. Hard drive capacity is cheaper than SSD capacity for data STORAGE.

I have multiple Windows and Linux computers with 120 and 250 GB SSDs, which only contain the OS and many programs, and they don't begin to fill the SSDs. All of my many years of accumulated data is on a network-attached-storage (NAS) hard drive, which is backed-up regularly to additional hard drives.

conigk

If your Mac is on the old side, make sure that the USB port can accommodate a SSD. Min is 3.0 and it is too old 3.1 or 3.2 USB is needed). I have been using a Passport for Mac for my pictures and a Seagate as a backup. Just make sure you set Time Machine to back up the external drive with your pictures as well as the hard drive.

Davet Loc: Fort Myers, Florida

great, thanks

gessman Loc: Colorado

About using SSDs for long-term storage, from Wikipedia:

"As of 2017, most SSDs use 3D TLC NAND-based flash memory, which is a type of non-volatile memory that retains data when power is lost. For applications requiring fast access but not necessarily data persistence after power loss, SSDs may be constructed from random-access memory (RAM). Such devices may employ batteries as integrated power sources to retain data for a certain amount of time after external power is lost.[4]

However, all SSDs still store data in electrical charges, which slowly leak over time if left without power. This causes worn out drives (that have exceeded their endurance rating) to start losing data typically after one (if stored at 30 °C) to two (at 25 °C) years in storage; for new drives it takes longer. [7] Therefore, SSDs are not suited for archival purposes."

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

iCloud (Apple)
Microsoft Cloud
Google Cloud
Amazon Cloud
DropBox

There are many others, like Carbonite.

riderxlx Loc: DFW area Texas

Dave;
in your area there is a Best Buy, and some other computer type stores.
Right now; Today; Just go to Best Buy and get you an external hard drive.
Seagate, Western Digital, should be just fine.
They work well with MAC's.
I have several myself. Never had one fail on me.

NEVER NEVER keep anything on the local computer that you do not have saved on an external drive. You do not have to keep the external drive connected and running unless you need to re-save. It is Ok to keep stuff on the local computer to work with but after the work, re-save it to the external.
PLEASE do not let this get confusing and over complicated.
Just get you an external drive and save your stuff off the local computers drive. This will secure it.
This will ensure some security while you research all the other options and opinions which have been offered here.
These drives are not expensive. Since you stated you have a older iMac, you may not need more than just a 1TB-2TB drive. If so, get two for comfort.
Get you stuff saved off the local computer and then free up the local computers storage space by just deleting from the local drive.
You should be just fine. Let me know if I can help you.
Bruce.

therwol Loc: USA

Having read the first post, I was astonished to see that someone would keep important data on a computer for what must have been years without backing up all along. This is very dangerous and carries a risk of losing everything. Copy your stuff to a couple of external hard drives ASAP and move on. In the future, back up to external hard drives of any kind or the cloud regularly.

riderxlx Loc: DFW area Texas

You are right. That is what I was trying to impress upon him. Even if it is a flash drive.
My God, the threads on this is crazy over something so simple. It is like a monkey shit fight between some.
Yes, he just needs to copy his stuff off the local puter. And yes, many people do not so this.
It will eventually bite them in the ass real hard.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

I've shared this before on another post regarding data backup importance....

I was a computer tech in a school district where a lot of the original rectangular white iBooks were in use by teachers. And a lot of them were failing for a couple of different predictable reasons.
One day a teacher brought in her iBook that would not startup reliably. It was demonstrating hard drive impending complete doom, which we techs came to recognize frequently.
The big problem was that the teacher had her nearly-complete Master's Thesis on the iBook, which was needed in a couple of months to retain her teaching certification. AAAAANNNNNDDDD...
she did not have a copy of it anywhere else!

The story ended happily, or this teacher's career would have ended. I was able, just barely, to (for those who remember their Mac tech stuff) start the computer in Firewire Target Disk Mode, connect to another computer, and retrieve her thesis and other data before her hard drive crashed altogether.

I used this as a case study and attempted to spread the word for every teacher I dealt with, some of whom had vast photo collections and much work data existing ONLY on their poor-quality iBooks.

My very strong emphatic words to staff were: DO NOT KEEP ANYTHING ANYTHING ANYTHING SOLELY ON YOUR COMPUTER THAT YOU AREN'T PREPARED TO LOSE WITH NO WARNING AT ALL!!

therwol Loc: USA

Best to ignore it. I wish that people who decide to go off on one another would spare us reading it and use private messages, but I think that sometimes they want to suck us into it and see if we will take sides.