"image tank" or portable hard drive

[Apex]

im looking for something to easily store my photos on a drive other than the one on my computer. i only have an 80g drive on my laptop with vista so in reality its only 60g.
i want something that can create folders for different things and im not sure if an image tank can do that. also, it would probably be cheaper and more cost efficient to get an external hard drive. there is more space on them and seem to be cheaper.

does anyone have any experience with image tanks or would you just advise me to get an external hard drive?

 

[JimmyO]

Take a look at simpletecg portable hard drives. There pretty small, pretty cheap, and dont need to be plugged in so you can use them with your laptop on the go. The 120 gb is only like 75 bucks.

 

[Apex]

how reliable are they? my brother recently had 500g worth of stuff on a western digital die. ive never heard of simpletech.

 

[JimmyO]

I didnt have problems with mine. I like to think of it as a huge jump drive =)

They are very easy to use and it really helps when your working on more then one computor.

 

[Clutch]

how reliable are they? my brother recently had 500g worth of stuff on a western digital die. ive never heard of simpletech.

I too use an external HDD to back up my photos, documents and music. I additionally burn all my images to DVD as a precautionary measure. The computer geek in me says to keep it simple and be a believer in redundant back up practices. No matter what fails I have another copy of my images somewhere.

As of yet I haven't done so but I plan down the road to make fresh copies of my DVDs about every other year or so. The media is inexpensive but replacing the pictures from that special trip or event is impossible.

Back up, back up, back up! It's boring but the day will come you'll be glad you did it!

 

[Fangman]

I agree with the above. Back-up on DVD's for something that is important, but I would recommend a portable hard drive - the largest you can afford, both for pictures and a total back-up of the rest of your hard drive. Once you have suffered a failure of the inboard drive once - you will never be without regular back-up of its contents - system, programmes and all the data such as address books and documents.

 

[Apex]

thanks for all your advice.

i also talked with others about this and i was told buying an internal drive and getting an enclosure for it would be my best bet. this sounds about right considering that i could get a well built drive for cheap and i know exactly what drive i am dealing with.

comes out to a reasonable price in my opinion

500g 7200 rpm sata drive from seagate :$100
external enclosure: $30

 

[eclipse13]

Once you have suffered a failure of the inboard drive once - you will never be without regular back-up of its contents - system, programmes and all the data such as address books and documents.

Truer words were never spoken. My HD crashed last summer and when I ordered a new HD for my laptop, I also ordered an external HD and not I backup my photos immediately, and my music, documents, and programs weekly. Before this I thought I just couldn't afford the external HD, but after losing all of the photos that I did, I realized that I couldn't afford not to have one.

 

[nicfargo]

I bought a Smartdisk Image Bank from Best Buy. It holds 80g. It doesn't need a laptop or anything to run. It has slots for most card types (CF, SD, etc). It has a small LCD to tell you how much is on the card, the HDD, and the percentage of the transfer. I really liked mine and it worked like a charm. It also can run on built in lithium battery if you don't have access to an outlet. I thought it was pretty slick. That doesn't mean I wasn't afraid of failure at any point during the wedding I did two weekends ago. But you can have failure with a laptop HDD just as easily...so I figure it's about the same.

Here's a link to it on Best Buy's website
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8280996&type=product&id=1171058630936

 

[RyanLilly]

Do you want to travel with it much? My thought is, if you are on the go and are taking a laptop any way a small external drive is great, or two of the same in a type 1 raid(exact copy on each). At home a couple internal disks and cases are quite cheap these days.

I have a friend who did not want to bring a laptop to Africa, and did not want to trust an image tank, so he just brought 80gigs of CF cards!

 

[Apex]

im not gonna be traveling but i just wanted to be able to organize and store my pictures aside from my laptop.. things get cluttered more when i have to worry about space, i am very odd when it comes to this.

i would have to say after more review however that a portable hard drive would still be the best choice for me.

 

[mrodgers]

That SmartDisk Image Bank is interesting as a travel companion. Transfer your card over nightly for a weeks travel and have freshly emptied cards every morning.

If backup/storage space is what you want (it's what I want), I am thinking of getting a USB hard drive enclosure (newegg.com link) For $10, you can plug a regular internal hard drive in and plug it into USB. I see Western Digital and Maxtor 80 gig internal drives for $30-35 on newegg. Grab a couple of those smaller 80-120 gig drives and have one for main storage, one for archive, and one for backup. With the $10 USB drive enclosure, you can use it just like an external drive on any PC you wish. I think that is a pretty cheap alternative, or more expensive, but still very cheap if you go with high capacity drives.

I prefer multiple small capacity drives over a single large capacity myself. I'd rather have 3 separate 80 gig drives then a single 200-250 gig drive. Heck, I even have about ten 5 gig drives laying around here somewhere.

 

[Mystwalker]

Seagate FreeAgent Pro comes with software that will allow you to auto-backup directory/s of your choosing.

Costs more then your $100+$30 ... I think I got my 750GB for $169 or something.

Any HD will eventually die so you will also want CD/DVD/Tape ... something else. I'm paranoid.