Dan Mc Loc: NM

I have been using TOSHIBA drives (have 2 TB and 4TBs) and favor them more than Seagate or WD.

dbjazz Loc: Long Island, NY

I have two - one for photos and one for everything else. So far (several years) I've had no problems.

SusanFromVermont Loc: Southwest corner of Vermont

Another thread, posted today, is worth reading. Same type of issue, and the person who posted is worried about retrieving photos. https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-578677-1.html

Drives are good until they are not! They can all fail. That is why backups are necessary. The WD portable drives are the cheapest version they make. They may last for years, or not. I've got several 2TB passports that have been fine for years, but then a 4TB My Book failed at less than 1 year old. I now use HGST with a 5 year warranty.

idahoshooter Loc: Coeur d'Alene

That's why I keep two WD portable backups, alternating every 3-6 months, one off-site. To conveniently backup current/recent photo's and files I use large USB3 memory sticks, they are quick and convenient.
You should always assume that your computer HARD DRIVE or any backup will fail at some point.
I have had poor success with Seagate portable drives. WD last longer.

Retina Loc: Near Charleston,SC

Very good advice. Redundancy is vital when failures occur. Backup your backup. All brands and models are subject to fail, spinning or solid-state. Of course there is no need to tell someone who just lost their drive. This is for myself and others who take chances when good habits slip.

Maybe more important than the brand is how you treat the drives when powered up. There is plenty of advice on that here already. One thing I do not see often is to avoid moving them when spinning.

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

I have various WD and HGST external drives as part of my working storage for business and photo processing and archiving. I have lost some HDDs in the past that I replaced with new drives, but none were WDs. My daily backups go onto a NAS Synology that I recently upgraded with 2 Seagate Wolf 12TB drives. I have another NAS sinology for my wife's interior design business. Both backup to another NAS Synology that is kept at my sister's house across town for off site storage. I haven't gotten to the point of cloud storage.

When I am out shooting, whether vacation or work, I have 2 portable hard drives backing up my cards through a RavPower filehub and a WD my Passport Pro wireless with it's own HDD and card reader. If I bring a laptop, I will sometimes download a shoot via the internet directly to my Synology (especially for work). On vacation, I don't pack a laptop and rely on the 3 HDD backups and the CF and SD cards which both record RAW files. Last year in Europe, I really went to the wire using my stock of cards and almost a full month of shooting.

olddutch Loc: Beloit, Wisconsin

For backing up Files, photos and computer, My Son uses a Drobo storage device, with is a desk top unit, that you plug in Regular size drives and as I understand it stores the files on more than one drive so it backs up its self.. They are made in different sizes to take 2-8 hard drives.., for my use I have a couple of WD Passports, to back up me Mac book and I mac... Some can be bought "Passport for Mac"but they have worked for me... LOL

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

Yes, the Drobo is another company making NAS systems. There are various Raid configurations you can set up, I have mine as 2 drives mirrored like it sounds your son's is also. The beauty is if one drive goes out, you can replace it and the system will rebuild it to mirror the other drive. That is a great backup, but you still need to have offsite backup for complete safety in case of fire or theft or...?

Chris981 Loc: Pacific Palisades

I have 4 WD drives. 2 are Passport Ultras. The 1st Ultra is main photo drive and the other is the back up. When I load from my camera card(s), I do so through LR to these two drives, at the same time, at import. Never have had a failure with a WD product but I back up with each import and shoot to two cards in the camera. You never know when something can fail you.

appealnow Loc: Dallas, Texas

I have two Passports. An older 1Tb and a newer, larger one because I have more than a terabyte of photos. I store photos on more than one in case one fails. I also like the different colors, so I know what is what.

coolhanduke Loc: Redondo Beach, CA

I have an 8TB WD My book Duo that I configured as a RAID drive for my main backup. I also have to smaller lacie drives I backup to and store at a remote location.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

Andy,
Consider deleting the Easystore software and purchasing Acronis. I've used it for 10 years. It's superior backup software - great tech support and reliability. it is software you own and not very expensive. Feel free to PM me. https://www.acronis.com/en-us/lp/personal/sem-b/?msclkid=edbd5e5e796e107a7c090236fad10f3b&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=EN%20-%20US%20-%20B%20-%20True%20Image%20ATI%20-%20AMER%20-%20Home%20-%20PS%20%20-%20M&utm_term=acronis%20true%20image&utm_content=Acronis%20True%20Image%20G

Mark

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

I have several in various sizes and have bought one for each of my kids. I love them and highly recommend them. I also use only WD drives in all our desktop computers. Never had a failure to this point...

bwa

AndyH Loc: Massachusetts and New Hampshire

Thanks Mark, I will definitely do that. I'm currently using the Windows backup systems, which are working okay for me, but take forever. Doesn't it seem odd that backup software is as ungainly and glitchy as it is in the year 2019?

Andy

Angel Star Photography Loc: Tacoma, WA

I have set people up WD Passport drives as a backup unit but I do not have them use the software that comes with the drive. I prefer to use Acronis as the backup software. I have ran thorough tests with Acronis to the point of obliterating the system drive and executing a restore. I highly recommend coupling Acronis with your WD Passport drive. Additionally, I recommend that you have another WD Passport to which you copy the backup data that Acronis creates on the primary WD Passport being used as your backup drive. It is not an absolute necessity but rather added insurance at a rather inexpensive cost.

As for myself, I have a NAS consisting of WD Red drives to which Acronis backups up systems weekly---supporting four systems in the home. I use WD Passports to keep additional copies of important data to which I may need immediate access but cannot connect to my NAS. Where it is important that the integrity of the data is critical and I wish to recover from an inadvertent disconnect, I use GoodSync to copy files back and forth. GoodSync or some similar application is actually a good piece of software to have not only for the sake of data integrity but also for simply copying files more effectively and efficiently than a copy-and-paste or drag-and-drop in the OS file explorer.