External hard drive recommendations ???

domromer · Nov 23, 2007

I finally got all my photos together and it seems I have 110gigs of pics. I don't really want to store these all on my mpb. So it's time to buy an external hard drive. I don't really know much about them so I was hoping some of you guys could point me in the right direction. I'm looking to spend 150$ OR less. I'm looking for quality and storage capacity over speed.

Also is their a way to save the photos on the external and still be able to use iphoto as my main photo viewer?

Alex_B · Nov 23, 2007

get some standard seagate or similar harddrive .. and get some external usb or whatever housing, connect, and wohaa

jstuedle · Nov 23, 2007

Most drives are made by Seagate or Western Digital these days, so take your pick. An off the shelf external 320 gig is about $100 these days. A housing and a standard 320 is about $100. So either way it's about the same.

table1349 · Nov 23, 2007

Take a look at a 1 Terabite Western Digital World Book. About $300 but the case will contain two 500 gig drives. You can set it up to be a single 1 Terabite drive, or as two separate drives with one configured to be a mirror back up of the other. If you are running a photo business you can also connect this to a network as it has built connectivity.

TCimages · Nov 24, 2007

I recommend buying two so you can have a second copy on the shelf. If you buy the drive and enclosure seperate pay attention to the interface so they are compatible. This can be a little confusing.

astrostu · Nov 24, 2007

I'm a big fan of LaCie external drives. http://www.lacie.com/us/products/range.htm?id=10033

Garbz · Nov 24, 2007

I used to agree with you astrostu, but I've been thinking twice about them lately after hearing the story posted in the Beyond the Basics forum about how they handled a customer having a drive break. Giving them the option of replacing the drive or the data but not both.

BAB · Nov 24, 2007

I have Lacie and have not had any problems (knocking on the proverbial wood), but recently I have heard from several sources that Lacie are not reliable and problematic. Maybe I am a lucky one, I dunno. Seagate on the other hand, routinely gets great reviews and they have been making hard drives for a long time.

domromer · Nov 25, 2007

Thanks for all the input. I've narrowed it down to a few models now I'm going to see who has the best prices. I think I'm going to end up getting it off Amazon as I have some credit there.

TCimages · Nov 25, 2007

domromer said:
Thanks for all the input. I've narrowed it down to a few models now I'm going to see who has the best prices. I think I'm going to end up getting it off Amazon as I have some credit there.

If you change your mind, I highly recommend www.NEWEGG.com

sneshanian · Dec 4, 2007

BAB said:
I have Lacie and have not had any problems (knocking on the proverbial wood), but recently I have heard from several sources that Lacie are not reliable and problematic. Maybe I am a lucky one, I dunno. Seagate on the other hand, routinely gets great reviews and they have been making hard drives for a long time.

i had a lacie, the enclosure died on me a little after a year, so i bought a new enclosure and am still using the hard drive. i just purchased a western digital mybook and am happy with it. ive heard a few people having the same problem i had with my lacie, and thats what caused me to change brands for my second HD.

i would personally stick with western digital or G-tech (a bit more expensive), g-tech has been getting good reviews and we have been using them at my workplace with no problems for about a year (im a apple computer tech).

heres a link to their site:

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVE.cfm

EOS_JD · Dec 4, 2007

I know you might think it's more hassle than it's worth but if you have a large enough drive on your PC leave them there and use the external drive as a backup.

If (sorry WHEN) the drive fails you do not want to lose everything do you?

I speak from experience and now have a total of 9 hard drive devices at home ranging from 500Gb (external Seagate Drive) to 40Gb (Epson P-2000).

Back up: backup: back up: backup: Back up: backup: back up: backup: Back up: backup: back up: backup:

D-50 · Dec 4, 2007

You definately need a back up or two. I have an unbackedup HD die on me and I lost everything. After talking with many people the consensus seems to be all Hard drives will fail eventually. Of course this process is sped up by knocking it around, but definatly buy two, the odds of both failing simulaneously are slim so if one dies go out that day buy another and back it up again. You may say you dont have the money now but afteryou lose all you photos you'll kick yourself for not spending the extra 100-150 for backup, data recovery on an HD cost at least $1000 if its a mechanical failure.

JDS · Dec 4, 2007

DVD's are a fairly cheap alternative for backup purposes as well. Get the gold archival ones if you want them to be purposefully built to last a really long time.

Once you burn a DVD, make a copy of it. Store the copy at a friend's house - if yours burns down you'll still be out of luck if all your backups are there.

Atropine · Dec 4, 2007

I have a 500GB WD MyBook, but I really cannot recommend that one since it is noisy as hell from day one. I told my friend to buy a Seagate Freeagent when he was looking for an external HD and I must admit I am a bit jealous now. The Seagate is practically noiseless and looks a lot more nicer with a cool early eighties (atari, commodore) retro feeling to it.

But if you have a serious/professional need for your back-ups you really should look for a RAID'ed solution. LaCie 2Big 1TB (500GB usable) disks provides that, and costs about $300. May sound steep, but what is the cost for lost originals?