Which external hard drive for my pictures?

[ldibo]

Hi guys! I haven't posted here in awhile but I have a question. My computer is full of my pictures and I need to get them off. I'm looking at getting a 500gb external hard drive to put my pictures on. With all the brands etc. out there I'm so confused! I don't want to put them all on one and then have it crash. What does everyone here use? Any opinions on brand etc. would be extremely helpful in making my decision. Thanks guys!

Lynn

 

[handicap18]

Here's a thread about external hard drives we had going on last week. It should help you out.

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1361418

 

[ldibo]

Here's a thread about external hard drives we had going on last week. It should help you out.

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1361418

Thanks so much!

Lynn

 

[boBQuincy]

The one "given" about a hard drive is it will eventually fail. Because of this a hard drive should never contain the only copy of our photos. My feeling these days is there is little difference between the major brands of hard drives, they are all good but they will all quit.

The winning strategy is to save multiple copies of our photos on different media, or at least redundant media in different places. I am one of the most (but not *the* most) paranoid about this, keeping copies on : hard drive; server; cd/dvd; and external hard drive in a fire resistant safe.

 

[Groucho]

I agree with Bob, and since I'm always thinking about "when" not "if" they'll fail, I try to buy the hard drive with the longest warranty - which is currently Seagate by a long shot. 5-years out of the box. However, you may need to "build your own" external - today's buy.com email had a free-after-rebate external hard drive enclosure, grab one of those and a "bare" Seagate 500g drive, and there's your 5-year warranty external drive, for cheaper than a "prebuilt" one.

 

[jann1033]

and if you are planning on moving photos make sure you back them up before you do it..i moved mine exactly how adobe said to and i lost a lot( i have a lot but i'd say at least a hundred..the program just stopped working mid move for one of my biggest files.. i have had a lot of problems with this program as well so maybe that wouldn't happen much with other programs)...i had them backed up so i still have them on a disk but really glad i made a backup disk before i moved them

and groucho...just how unethical would that be if i asked you to send me a link to the free case?

 

[RitchG]

And I agree with Groucho and Bob; multiple storage is the way to go. I use a RAID (it is fast, and I can loose a drive without loosing data) for immediate storage, a large drive on a server for older stuff, and DVD-R for long-term storage (usually organized per project). So far, I've only lost pictures when I was working a shoot for a utility and _dropped_ my CF card into, er, sludge.
HTH.
---Ritch

 

[manning]

That would be raid-1 not raid-0.

 

[Anewman]

I agree with other that using any hard drive as the sole back up is risky, but with an external you can unplug it when not in use which IMO would add to its life expectancy. If it is not plugged in, it does not spin(or wear).


Frys currently has a 500gb Maxtor for $179.
http://shop2.outpost.com/product/4951741?JSESSIONID=FjhQ91VfLbgCfNbWBmX0CC4HGpYVH4616qwvfSN2cb7scclKvhf4!-1865504659!-1169589588&site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

 

[RitchG]

That would be raid-1 not raid-0.

Yeah, that is right; but I didn't want to dilute my main point of multiple storage destinations, and so I kinda didn't want to cloud the issue (or ldibo's head) with RAID types so I left off the type designator (and, in any event, the RAID is using Intel Storage Manager, so it's a "matrix" setup, sort of like a RAID-0 set of RAID-1 volumes).
---Ritch

 

[boBQuincy]

Sandisk is working on a write-once flash memory with large capacity and low prices. Ordinarily I would not consider something like this to be available anytime soon but Sandisk is looking to release this in the middle of the year.

SanDisk DevelopsRead-Only Flash for Storage

So you've got a bunch of great photos, and you want to save them
forever. What do you do? You could burn them to DVD, but who knows
if that format will last for 10 years, let alone 50. You could put
them on a flash card - but the same issue, along with longevity
concerns and cost, makes that impractical. So SanDisk thinks it has
the answer, with a cheap, read-only card to store your photos. It's
also got some problems, but they can be overcome. The key issue-how
do you load photos on a read-only device-is explained in our story.

Read-Only Storage for Photos:
http://ct.eletters.whatsnewnow.com/rd/cts?d=181-816-1-411-394899-47049-0-0-0-1