Need to get an external hard drive...

[KarenAylwood]

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.

They had the 1TB external and the 500 GB portable, each for $60.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=12547949&findingMethod=rr

I bought the above at Target on BF (ok, call me crazy ). If it makes you feel any better, they flew off the shelves and I got there at like 4:00am to wait in line, the TB were all gone by the time I even got to the location they were at. There were plenty of 500GB's though.

I love how small it is and am definitely glad I chose the portable. I had an external (not portable- had to plug into the wall) from years ago, 150GB ($80 back then!) and it's lasted this long, it is a Seagate. I just ran out of room recently and needed a new one. I take a lot of pictures but figured the 500GB would last me long enough since I'm not downloading movies or anything. It's enough for something like 80,000+ pictures, and that's enough for the next few years!!

 

[Frantasmic]

Recently, Target and Office Depot both offered a 1 TB external hard drive for about $75. I bought one at each place and back up twice. They shouldn't both go down at the same time, so I have an insurance policy. If one does go bad, I'll just get another and back copy from the current one.

 

[VVFF]

I personally run a RAID 1 array with two 640GB drives. I probably should use 1TB drives in the future but there was a significant cost jump that I couldn't afford at the time.

Right now my computer is arranged as follows:

Operating system+Programs - 640GB Western Digital blue
"Something" Drive (haven't put anything on it yet...probably will be non-critical storage files - 640GB Western Digital blue
RAID 1 Storage Drive - 2 x 640GB Western Digital Black

Feels good to know I always have a backup of all my files should anything go wrong.

 

[manning]

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

Seagate owns Maxtor.

 

[MICKEY88]

I used to have several external drives, I found that I was filling them too quickly and searched for another solution, I now us this system

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5352947&CatId=2785

I bought this dock installed an esata card to connect with and now I just buy 1TB internal drives I upload to my pc, then copy to both drives in the dock so I have 2 backups,
the esata connection allows much faster file transfer..
I brought this with me to orlando this week, so each day I shoot at the parks I then upload to my laptop, then copy to the 2 1b drives

 

[dmccarty]

I have had Western Digital USB drives for most of the century without a problem.

Check the warranty period on the drive. WD usually has the best warranty period on these drives.

On my main systems I have two USB drives, one a 500GB and a 1TB. To both I manually copy my data including photos. The 1TB drive holds backups that run a few times a week.

I just bought another WD 1TB USB drive that I have manually copied my data onto. I need to run a backup of the system to the drive and then it is going to work with me for offsite storage.

Photos and non photos are also backed up on DVDs which I also keep at work. I also use two USB thumb drives that hold all of our important non photo files. 8GB is ALOT of space for spreadsheet, PDF, and text files.

Word of warning, WD is shipping with some software called Smartware which provide backups from the system to the drive. It looks like WD is now shipping drives that allow the Smartware to be NOT installed. The older drives can have Smartware disabled but it requires some work. My latest 1TB drive has Smartware. When you boot the system or attach the drive you get asked to install Smartware which I decline. Since I have not booted my system or reattached the drive since I made the connection a few weeks ago this is not a big deal to me. And given that the drive is only going to get attached 4-6 times a year the Smartware issue is not an issue for me.

But it might be for you. It does look like WD listened to their Customers because Newegg has drives sayng the Smartware can be opted out. WD was getting blistered by comments and getting quite a few returns because of the Smartware.

Nikon has a off site server storage service but it is expensive compare to just buying a 1TB drive every year to hold all of my data. For 100-200GB of Nikon service I could buy a couple 1TB drives every year.

Later,
Dan

 

[BeenHereB4]

This is so timely! I don't want to hijack here, but I've been looking for something too. My photos from my D80 are really making my newish laptop slow (I think - I really don't know anything about this stuff).

Anyway, Buy.com had this deal today that I thought I might try. It is only 500GB but I don't really have more than that right now anyway as I'm just starting out.

Any thoughts?

http://www.buy.com/prod/iomega-500g...ard-drive/q/loc/101/208646551.html?adid=17992

 

[Groucho]

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.

I use Mozy - it and Carbonite are the two big players and Mozy got slightly better reviews so I went with them (after I chose them for reselling through my employer, too!) The biggest problem is that depending on your internet provider, it can take a long time to do backups. I've got over 400 gigs backed up now, including all my RAWs from my K20D and K-7 and most of them from my K100D and DL (slowly filling in the blanks!) but it does take a long time! My internet provider only had 384k uploads (but 10m downloads). If you have 1m uploads or faster, it probably makes more sense. If I were starting over, I might just go with an external drive + DVDs and count on redundancy... but I might still go with Mozy anyway.

Cost-wise, I used an online coupon and long-contract discounts to get it down to something like $95/two years.

 

[aamuboi10]

I have had Western Digital USB drives for most of the century without a problem.

Check the warranty period on the drive. WD usually has the best warranty period on these drives.

On my main systems I have two USB drives, one a 500GB and a 1TB. To both I manually copy my data including photos. The 1TB drive holds backups that run a few times a week.

I just bought another WD 1TB USB drive that I have manually copied my data onto. I need to run a backup of the system to the drive and then it is going to work with me for offsite storage.

Photos and non photos are also backed up on DVDs which I also keep at work. I also use two USB thumb drives that hold all of our important non photo files. 8GB is ALOT of space for spreadsheet, PDF, and text files.

Word of warning, WD is shipping with some software called Smartware which provide backups from the system to the drive. It looks like WD is now shipping drives that allow the Smartware to be NOT installed. The older drives can have Smartware disabled but it requires some work. My latest 1TB drive has Smartware. When you boot the system or attach the drive you get asked to install Smartware which I decline. Since I have not booted my system or reattached the drive since I made the connection a few weeks ago this is not a big deal to me. And given that the drive is only going to get attached 4-6 times a year the Smartware issue is not an issue for me.

But it might be for you. It does look like WD listened to their Customers because Newegg has drives sayng the Smartware can be opted out. WD was getting blistered by comments and getting quite a few returns because of the Smartware.

Nikon has a off site server storage service but it is expensive compare to just buying a 1TB drive every year to hold all of my data. For 100-200GB of Nikon service I could buy a couple 1TB drives every year.

Later,
Dan

I have a WD 1 terabyte external drive also! it works great, now i can store all of my disney videos without worrying about whether or not my hard drive will fill up.

 

[Shutterbug]

I bought from Newegg an internal hard drive and an internal hard drive enclosure. Going this route lets me buy larger internal hard drives in the future which are much less expensive than external hard drives.