Gliderpilot08 From Canada, joined Jun 2008, 136 posts, RR: 0 Reply 1, posted (4 years 7 months 5 days 19 hours ago) and read 1281 times:
Hi Calfo!
Quoting Calfo (Thread starter): I'm looking into buying an external hard drive to save all my photos on to as I'm tired of the CD/DVD thing.
Any suggestions?
I hear ya. How big of an External Hard D are you looking for.
Personally, I have a SimpleTech 250GB hard drive that I bought from best buy last year for about 150 bucks.
Now, their not that cheap anymore, but if you are talking in terms of what brand is better than another, SimpleTech External's are a lot better for durability and quality but they are a little more expensive.
To put that into context, I bought my SimpleTech 250GB for 150 bucks. Now they are, on the high side, 200 bucks. A 650GB ZData External at Best Buy is selling for only 99.00 bucks but I'm not sure on the the quality or durability.
Just a few of my comments...
Regards
Luke
Gimli Advisory. Sierra, Oscar, Romeo on right downwind for Rwy 15
Paulinbna From United States of America, joined Feb 2003, 1114 posts, RR: 5 Reply 3, posted (4 years 7 months 5 days 18 hours ago) and read 1270 times:
Have you thought of an off site backup like carbonite. I had a external drive fail before what are you going to do with the hard drive once you fill it up.
Back to Carbonite for $50 you can get unlimited storage it took me about 6 weeks to upload 280 gigs.
Canon 50D user; 100-400 MM L IS 10-22 MM, 60MM Macro
JohnKrist From Sweden, joined Jan 2005, 1340 posts, RR: 5 Reply 4, posted (4 years 7 months 5 days 18 hours ago) and read 1270 times:
AIRLINERS.NET CREW HEAD SUPPORT
I have a Western Digital Elements 320GB that cost me $100 here in Sweden, no problems.
And I have used WD's hard drives in my home computer for years, and only HDD failure I had was on my IBM
7D, 17-40 F4 L, 70-200 F2.8 L IS, EF 1.4x II, EF 2x III, Metz 58-AF1
SFO2SVO From United States of America, joined Jan 2004, 392 posts, RR: 0 Reply 6, posted (4 years 7 months 5 days 15 hours ago) and read 1248 times:
First question I would ask is how important is portability.
I use laptop so I prefer USB-powered drives but the downside is higher cost and lower capacity.
Bell407 From South Africa, joined Dec 2004, 31 posts, RR: 0 Reply 7, posted (4 years 7 months 5 days 13 hours ago) and read 1240 times:
Hi All,
I have a 160 Gig Toshiba USB hard drive. Had it for about 2 years. So far have stored about 40 Gigs of data - mostly pictures.
However, best investment ever was purchasing the synchronising software package ViceVersa. Stops you having to do the whole cut and paste thing. It only looks for changes made on the PC hard drive and then updates those to the external drive. Remeber though that your first backup will always be the longest as all data must be copied first. Thereafter it's a breeze. I synchronise at the end of each day and take my external drive home with me knwoing that I have 2 identicle backups at any point in time.
Photopilot From Cuba, joined Jul 2002, 2439 posts, RR: 20 Reply 8, posted (4 years 7 months 4 days 23 hours ago) and read 1173 times:
Geez.... I got a Maxtor 500 Gig external USB from Best Buy for $135 Canadian this summer. Works great if a tad slow for really large uploads, but for bulk storage who cares. It works and the cost per Gig is cheap.
Also have a couple of Western Digital USB hard drives that are about the size of a cigarrette pack and 250 Gig each. Picked them up at WalMart for $85 Cdn each.
Ryan h From Australia, joined Aug 2001, 1451 posts, RR: 1 Reply 9, posted (4 years 7 months 4 days 23 hours ago) and read 1172 times:
I would also suggest getting a drive with a power switch so the drive can be turned off when not being used, otherwise the drive will be spinning all the time and possibly fail sooner than it should.
Lexy From United States of America, joined Jun 2006, 2362 posts, RR: 9 Reply 10, posted (4 years 7 months 4 days 9 hours ago) and read 1136 times:
Quoting Photopilot (Reply 8): Also have a couple of Western Digital USB hard drives that are about the size of a cigarrette pack and 250 Gig each. Picked them up at WalMart for $85 Cdn each.
I have a number of these as well as a external HD attached to my home PC and it works great! Very reliable and never ever had a problem copying things over to it. It's great to have and if it fails, typically you can rescue whats on there if you know the right people, i.e. someone who knows what they are doing.
I have found the WD products to be just fine for what I need. But it's all about your personal opinions and your personal needs of course.
SFO2SVO From United States of America, joined Jan 2004, 392 posts, RR: 0 Reply 11, posted (4 years 7 months 4 days 5 hours ago) and read 1104 times:
Quoting Ryan h (Reply 9): I would also suggest getting a drive with a power switch so the drive can be turned off when not being used, otherwise the drive will be spinning all the time and possibly fail sooner than it should.
Spinning all the time is not all that bad. Spinning the drive up is more stressing. If you want to be a little greener, however...
But in the end of the day it's all luck. I had drives failing after few hours and still have 9G SCSI drives at work from the previous century.
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