Need to get an external hard drive...

[wdwmom2]

I want to purchase an external hard drive to back up my computer, mainly my pics.

What brands should I be looking at, what brands to avoid????

Any info you could give me would be GREATLY appreciated!!!!!

I have been looking at the Seagates. Are they any good?

 

[VVFF]

All brands have their share of failures. However, Seagate had a particularly bad flop with one of their past series of hard drives and I personally have chosen to avoid them currently.

Right now I buy western digital but I also know that many people are unsatisfied with their latest "passport" series of external hard drives. These are the type that are smaller and use a laptop size hard drive.

For the standard size external hard drives though, they have excellent reliability.(mybook series)

 

[wdwmom2]

All brands have their share of failures. However, Seagate had a particularly bad flop with one of their past series of hard drives and I personally have chosen to avoid them currently.

Right now I buy western digital but I also know that many people are unsatisfied with their latest "passport" series of external hard drives. These are the type that are smaller and use a laptop size hard drive.

For the standard size external hard drives though, they have excellent reliability.(mybook series)

Something like this one??? http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=12517494

 

[VVFF]

Something like this one??? http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=12517494

Yes just like that one

 

[AndrewWG]

I would just add that although I am not particular to one brand or another (I own both Seagate and Western Digital), I am particular to whether or not the drive is portable. There are external drives and portable external drives. The regular externals must be plugged into a wall socket to work. The portable ones work by simple plugging into a USB port. I much prefer the portable ones myself. Much easier to deal with in my opinion.

edit: But they are more expensive and much smaller in physical size, not necessarily in capacity size.

 

[C&B Young]

I've got the WD My Book 500 gig too, and I like it. Transfer speeds are pretty good (over firewire anyways, not sure about USB). My only complaint is that sometimes it'll go offline and I have to reboot to make it "wake up". Hasn't crashed in over a year of continual use though.

 

[SrisonS]

I've been wanting to get an external drive too. I'm leaning more toward a WD My Book. Target had an amazing black Friday deal for the 1TB. I didn't want to brave those crowds just for that though. But thanks to everyone for the responses.

 

[shawn68]

I use a Verbatim drive. I have a 1TB that shows the space available on an LCD screen. No problems so far, and I use it to back up everything, mainly photos.

 

[boBQuincy]

Google ran some statistics on the drives they use and found no significant difference between brands. All of them showed a large jump in failures after 2 years of use (I don't know what the duty cycle was). I stay with name brands and go with price after that. We have had drives last for over four years and drives fail after three months.

One bright spot is the solid state drives, not much more than a larger version of our camera memory cards. Compared to hard drives they use much less power (run cooler) and have no moving parts (which are usually the failure point). SSDs are also much faster than hard drives in most real conditions.
Prices are coming down to maybe 3-5x as much as hard drives, not a bad tradeoff.

 

[pointandshoot]

I would just add that although I am not particular to one brand or another (I own both Seagate and Western Digital), I am particular to whether or not the drive is portable. There are external drives and portable external drives. The regular externals must be plugged into a wall socket to work. The portable ones work by simple plugging into a USB port. I much prefer the portable ones myself. Much easier to deal with in my opinion.

edit: But they are more expensive and much smaller in physical size, not necessarily in capacity size.

I literally just had one of those portables with my Disney pictures from a trip two weeks ago go bad. I think the stress on the USB connection over time cause the wire to short out. I had to get a powered USB hub and hold the wire in a certain position for 30 mins as I tried to copy the files to another drive.

As to the question, I think you need both a portable drive or a laptop with enough space for field backup and a good external drive, actually two, for home back-up. I have started buying laptop hardrives and sticking them external cases for field back-up. Plenty fast and cheap.

For home, I am going with firewire 800 2 TB drives.

Chuck

 

[KramBerries]

I would buy Maxtor instead of Seagate. From what I've heard, even Seagate buys Maxtor.

 

[Groucho]

I would just add that although I am not particular to one brand or another (I own both Seagate and Western Digital), I am particular to whether or not the drive is portable. There are external drives and portable external drives. The regular externals must be plugged into a wall socket to work. The portable ones work by simple plugging into a USB port. I much prefer the portable ones myself. Much easier to deal with in my opinion.

edit: But they are more expensive and much smaller in physical size, not necessarily in capacity size.

Actually, the enclosures are basically the same (especially now that the drives are all SATA, not IDE) - it's the drive inside. The ones that need external power are 3.5" desktop hard drives - generally faster, bigger, cheaper, and more reliable. Any that can run without an external power cord are 2.5" laptop drives. Since they're smaller and usually spin as a slower speed, the power that can be sent over a USB cable is sufficient. Not all 2.5" drives can run without external power, but many can. Capacity-wise, the 3.5" drives go up to 2tb and the 2.5" ones max out at 500g (or maybe 640g, I haven't been paying close attention lately.)

Either way, they are always a regular ol' hard drive sitting in a more or less generic enclosure.

For brand, I have tended to like Seagate but their 1.5tb drives seem to have gotten a bad rap (as well as many other 1.5tb drives) but they do have that sweet 5-year warranty. Western Digital is generally pretty good though they occasionally produce a clunker, too. I like Samsung drives a lot but I don't think you can buy a Samsung-branded external drive (could be wrong.)

If it were me, I'd buy a basic enclosure then put the drive in myself - which lets me choose the drive I want, easily upgrade it in the future, and more easily do low-level diagnostics on it. Of course, many people might not be comfortable with this step.

One other thing to look for in an external drive is an eSATA connector - chances are that your current PC doesn't have an eSATA port but your next one may, and it gives much faster speeds than USB or Firewire. (Pretty much the same speed as having the drive inside your PC.) It's not mandatory but nice if you feel the need to speed!

 

[AndrewWG]

I tried a couple HD enclosures when they first started to become popular and found that those things can run quite a bit hot and was worried about the hard drives life span running so hot like that all the time. I think the best one that I had at the time was an Ultra brand enclosure. I am sure they are probably built alot better nowadays. I would say this was more than 5 years ago at this point.

edit: I forgot to add that I have never had a problem with any connections on my portables BUT I also don't use them very often or even disconnect them from my laptop all that often. For the most part my laptop stays at home probably 95% of the time (unless I am on vacation or need to have it at work) and my desktop 100% of the time (of course). I can imagine that if you are constantly packing up your stuff and connecting and disconnecting them, that this could happen although I think it would be rare.

 

[Gianna'sPapa]

I have two Western Digital portable (Passport) hard drives, 130 gb and 750 gb. I also have two WD My Book's ( 500 gb & 1 B) on my home computers. I love the portables because of their size when traveling. When I get home from shooting I back up the images to the My Book's. I have yet to have a failure on the WD's, but I have enough built-in redundacy, if I should, the images are stored on at least two other drives. I have had such good luck with the WD's, so I won't own another brand!

 

[ukcatfan]

I like Samsung drives a lot but I don't think you can buy a Samsung-branded external drive (could be wrong.)

I have one and it gives me fits! It is the Samsung Story 1TB. It goes through the complete disk check with error corrections on booting probably 50% of the time. I am going to try a complete format soon to see if that helps.

 

[wdwmom2]

Wow, thanks for the replies everyone!!!

Here's my situation. I have a Dell desktop. Somewhere over 5 years old. Runs fine, a little slow sometimes which can be corrected by taking it to my computer guys to give it a through once over.

I am just worried that one day it may crap out on me. For some reason, I can't get it to burn CD's. I am sure it can be fixed. I just hate spending money on something that may need to be replaced in the not so far future.

The only things on it that I don't want to lose are my pictures. That is why I would like to back them up. So, I just began to look at external hard drives. I know nothing about them because I have never dealt with one before. I don't need it to be connected all the time, just when I want to back up new pics. So I could go several months in between uses.

I even thought about getting a couple thumb drives, larger ones. Or is that not practical.

 

[VVFF]

Wow, thanks for the replies everyone!!!

Here's my situation. I have a Dell desktop. Somewhere over 5 years old. Runs fine, a little slow sometimes which can be corrected by taking it to my computer guys to give it a through once over.

I am just worried that one day it may crap out on me. For some reason, I can't get it to burn CD's. I am sure it can be fixed. I just hate spending money on something that may need to be replaced in the not so far future.

The only things on it that I don't want to lose are my pictures. That is why I would like to back them up. So, I just began to look at external hard drives. I know nothing about them because I have never dealt with one before. I don't need it to be connected all the time, just when I want to back up new pics. So I could go several months in between uses.

I even thought about getting a couple thumb drives, larger ones. Or is that not practical.

Evaluate how much space you need. In windows, highlight the folders that contain all your pictures(and ONLY your pictures) and right click and click properties. The page that pops up will tell you how much space they are taking up. From this you can determine the size of external hard drive you will need with still having room for the future.

 

[Gianna'sPapa]

Thumb drives probably won't work well because of size limitations. Depending on what type camera you are using (megapixels ?), raw vs jpeg, etc, you will have different memory needs. I leave my My Books hooked up all the time on my home computers (2) and I keep my Passports (2) in my camera bag. I strongly believe in redundancy. Just for info, because of the high megapixel of today's cameras, I have switched from CD's to DVD's when burning discs.

 

[Experiment_626]

Anyone ever consider one of the online archive companies, such as Carbonite? Unlimited, automatic encrypted archiving for $55 per year sounds pretty good to me, even if I had an external drive. Sure, there's always a chance a company will go ker-flunk -- but an external hard drive can (and eventually will) take a surprise dirt nap too.

 

[cosmos]

I would buy Maxtor instead of Seagate. From what I've heard, even Seagate buys Maxtor.

Maxtor is a Seagate company. Seagate purchased Maxtor a few years ago.