External Hard Drive question

[KarenB]

I have all of my photos stored on my laptop. I have this feeling that my computer is not going to last much longer and I have to decide what to do with my pictures. Putting them on an external hard drive was one suggestion. I looked around at Amazon but there are so many choices.

How big of one do I need? I probably have 1500 photos so far. Also, are they all compatible with all computers? Is one easier to use than another. I need something simple. Can the hard drive alternate from a PC to a MAC?

Thanks for any information!
Karen

 

[bicker]

Do you have all your photos in one folder on your laptop? If so, then you can right-click on the folder, and show its Properties. It'll start counting the number of folders and files, and the sizes. When it stops counting, that'll show you pretty-close to how much space you need (so far) for your photos.

With regard to what to buy, if money was not a big issue, my suggesting these days is to get "networked attached storage".

Link: http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=13436301

This appliance would plug into your home router and become available as an external drive on all the computers in your home. Many of these devices support RAID (of some sort), which means that if something happens to the hard drive, there still may be a way of recovering the data. The one we bought plugged into our router and just started working. It would be available to PC and Macs, just the same.

If money is tight, I would look instead to distributing your files among the various "free" online storage solutions.

 

[teacherforhi]

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Portable-External-HDDR640E04XK-Black/dp/B00307RM2E/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1293714388&sr=8-9

That's the external hard drive I have now, although Amazon says there is a newer version available. It's my second one from Toshiba. I had my first for several years until I dropped it on a concrete floor...

I use a PC at home and a Mac at work and I have no trouble going between the two. You just plug it into the USB port and drag and drop. As far as space, I have two seasons of Big Bang Theory and eight seasons of In the Heat of the Night riding around on mine, along with pictures, lesson plans, my iTunes library...you get the picture.

 

[golfgal]

I just moved all of our pictures from our desktop to an external hard drive. They were taking up way too much space-amazing how much faster that computer is now . I got one with 1 tetrabite, I think, from Amazon a couple months ago. It was in the $80 range.

 

[FireDancer]

I would suggest getting two external hard drives and copying the pictures to both. One can act as a local backup in case of a hard drive crash while the other can be kept off site in case something like a house fire destroys the computer and onsite backup.

Another option is to get one external hard drive and also upload the pictures to a service like Picasa or Flikr or a cloud storage site like Carbonite or Amazon S3.

 

[mrsv98]

I have a Seagate external HD and it is great. It comes with all the software loaded on it so all you have to do is plug it in the USB port on your computer. I initially backed up all three computers on the HD. Since then, the laptop died but I have everything saved thank goodness. I leave it plugged into the main computer and it updates regularly.

The terabyte ones are so inexpensive now I may get a second one and store this one in our safety deposit box.

 

[hugscot]

Just a thought that is not really a large amount of pics so you can probably put them on a SD memory card too if you have a slot for that or burn to a disk. Just check the file size like someone else suggested. I don't like the network drives because the one I had I consistantly had issues showing up to access plus it was much slower transferring files as it is only as fast as your network or most likely less if your send files wireless. If you have a 3.0 or 2.0 usb slot or sata slot those are pretty fast and would go with a drive external drive that fits one of the those.

 

[STLDisney_Freak]

We have one of these :-->
http://www.hddfiresafe.com/iosafe/hard-drive-nas-hardware.htm

Best thing I ever bought. It is fireproof and waterproof. After my parents house burning down two years ago and then losing everything including alot of the family photos I have all mine saved on snapfish as well as saved on the fireproof hard drive.

 

[bicker]

I don't like the network drives because the one I had I consistantly had issues showing up to access plus it was much slower transferring files as it is only as fast as your network or most likely less if your send files wireless.

I've never had any problems of that sort. Perhaps you had an older or lower quality device. The one I have was absolutely plug-and-play. I was even able to very easily partition off some space on it for different "users", etc., if I wanted. And its as speedy as anything on my network.

The real advantage of network attached storage though, and often the only reason why you should choose it over the other options presented here, is that the data is available to all devices in your home simultaneously. My wife and I can both be playing MP3s off it at the same time, for example, or I could be playing an MP3, while my wife is looking at photos, and our desktop computer is doing a backup.

If you're only going to be one user in your home, then it's a bit much to get network attached storage.

 

[Hannathy]

My DH just bought this to put all of our pictures and all of our files from 4 computers (including a laptop) on it and put it in the safe deposit box.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...p=&qp=&list=n&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960

We currently have about 15,000 pictures, my DS's games, all of our documents and assorted files and this will handle all of it and have a lot of space left.

I know nothing about computers but he is an electrical engineer and does know a lot about them and he said this was a good deal.

We always also make sure pictures have been up loaded to 2 computers before wiping a memory card.

 

[KarenB]

Thanks for all of the replies. It was a huge help. This is on my list of "must do" tasks for a more stress free/clutterless 2011. I will look at each of the suggestions and see which will work best for me!

Happy New Year!
Karen

 

[jlewisinsyr]

I would just use a service like Carbonite, it eliminates the backup files being stored in the same location as your originals and is very cost effective and simple to use.

 

[mrodgers]

I have a Seagate external HD and it is great.

Mine was great also...... for a few days.

Had a secondary hard drive which held all my photos fail. I could get it working for short bursts. I spent a lot of time starting to transfer over to my new Seagate external drive.

Then my wife ended up picking up a virus. I lost access to Windows on the main hard drive. Figured out how to use a Linux OS booted from a CD and was able to painstakingly slowly access the other bad drive and transfer files.

After all the work of transferring everything, I "restored" the Windows drive, my failed drive was all completed of transferring, and then that new Seagate hard drive that I just finished transferring everything to..... FAILED!!!!

 

[tvguy]

I just moved all of our pictures from our desktop to an external hard drive. They were taking up way too much space-amazing how much faster that computer is now . I got one with 1 tetrabite, I think, from Amazon a couple months ago. It was in the $80 range.

We picked up 2 Seagate 1TB external hard drives at Target for $59 each as Christmas gifts for our kids. My daughter has a Mac and was able to reformat it for a Mac, and backup everything from her Mac. My son uses a PC but hasn't hooked his up yet.
Must have been a Christmas sale, because they're $84 now.

 

[Hannathy]

The Seagate 2TB is what I referenced in my post above and it is on sale at Best Buy this week for $99

 

[safetymom]

I have been using external Maxtor now Seagate for years with no problems. You should back up the images on a regular basis.

 

[jlewisinsyr]

BTW, Seagate drives are pretty low quality now, go with WD Green drives.

 

[dawson5]

BTW, Seagate drives are pretty low quality now, go with WD Green drives.

I now have my second WD green going bad. The first one went last year and this one is going now. I am now actively looking at deals. These are about three years old. So the first went at two years.

I did replace the first WD green with a WD caviar black. It is running like a champ right now.

 

[safetymom]

I wouldn't take WD drive if you paid me. Every hard drive that friends and family had that failed was WD.

 

[jlewisinsyr]

I now have my second WD green going bad. The first one went last year and this one is going now. I am now actively looking at deals. These are about three years old. So the first went at two years.

I did replace the first WD green with a WD caviar black. It is running like a champ right now.

I wouldn't take WD drive if you paid me. Every hard drive that friends and family had that failed was WD.

And this is why when you look at reviews, they're all over the place and also why I don't even bother with back-ups locally, everything goes to Carbonite. Too many hassles with local back-ups (redundancy, etc.).