Running out of room - External drive needed.

I've been using Western Digital "Mybook" 2-terabyte drives for several years now. My most-recent one however is the new USB 3.0 incarnation, which is a higher-capacity, 3-terabyte size. Fairly small, seems reliable so far. Somebody might be more up on this, but I "think" there might be some kind of an issue with the 3-terabyte sized drives and Macintosh automated system back-up software apps like Time Machine...maybe something to do with block allocation size?? I dunno...I do not do automated back-ups. I payed like $129 for this 3-TB at BestBuy, which at that time, was a great price per gigabyte of storage space.

Uh oh. Derrel's gonna be a BestBuy IT pro.




J/K, Derrel. I use the same drives for my external photo storage needs. Along with 2 TB drives, 1 TB drives from earlier years. Except one of the 3TB drives is flaky, with fairly frequent file errors that appear to be hardware-related. Guess I'm going to have to test out the WD warranty support.
 
Been there, done that,


6 TB times.
 
I've been using Western Digital "Mybook" 2-terabyte drives for several years now. My most-recent one however is the new USB 3.0 incarnation, which is a higher-capacity, 3-terabyte size. Fairly small, seems reliable so far. Somebody might be more up on this, but I "think" there might be some kind of an issue with the 3-terabyte sized drives and Macintosh automated system back-up software apps like Time Machine...maybe something to do with block allocation size?? I dunno...I do not do automated back-ups. I payed like $129 for this 3-TB at BestBuy, which at that time, was a great price per gigabyte of storage space.

Yes, your suspicions are correct.

The 3TB sizes will also not allow windows users to "Image" Their PC because of these block sizes.
 
Rotanimod said:
Yes, your suspicions are correct.

The 3TB sizes will also not allow windows users to "Image" Their PC because of these block sizes.

I can image my PC all I want. It's not like I don't have a camera.
 
I am using a 3TB thunderbolt drive for my working drive. It is plenty fast enough to work on. Then I backup to a Drobo FS
 
External SSD doesn't make sense. Even as a USB3, I suspect the limiting factor is the USB3, not the speed of the drive itself. Save a bunch of $ and go with 'regular' hard-drive based external drives.

On my main computer (Windows 7), I use the 128gb SSD for Windows, current documents, and photo shoots 'in process' (typically about 2 weeks). Because the SSD is lightning fast, I put all my 'work files' from Windows, Photoshop, and Lightroom on the SSD as well. When I'm done with all my processing, print making, DVD making, etc for a shoot, the whole thing goes over to an internal 1TB hard drive - external in your situation. The hard drive is strictly 'bulk storage' for photos and a bunch of other miscellany not accessed on a near-daily basis. I have a clone hard drive as primary, on-site backup, and another external drive for offsite backup. I should be safe from fire/theft/tornado/flood/viruses/self-induced problems/old-fogey memory lapses/you name it.
 
I fear you underestimate the power of the "old fogey memory lapses"...they can be pretty da..................
 
I actually know more about PC than Mac, as I only made the switch about 6 months ago. I still prefer the mac over the PC since I made the switch, but my wife still uses a PC. I think I will look at the traditional hard drives that are USB 3.0 compatible. I just didn't know if there was a big advantage in the SSD over the traditional for external drive. And I will probably end up with 2 of whatever I get so that I will have some redundancy.

Thanks for the help!

SSD is good, but until they come out with some affordable reasonable sizes it's just a gimmick.

Not if you want performance.. as a boot drive, they rock! As a Data drive, they rock!

But as a drive thats wallet friendly and size friendly.. they suck
 
I would buy a 228gb SSD drive, you can get a STartec disk duplicator for $59 that will do a bit for bit copy. Switch hard drives, expand partian. And not you have twice the space. The startech then can be a USB drive, you can use your old drive ( I wouldn't, I'd keep as backup), or get a 1 or 2 terabyte bare drive for data... The startech will accept two... So this solution could give you 4TB of additional disk space in addition to doubling you SSD space. You can do incrementally. JD
 
I actually just got a new computer so I can tell you real world transfer times. My old system was USB 2.0 and I have an external seagate 1TB At USB 2 speeds it took a touch over 7 minutes to transfer 5 gb of images. On the new system it takes about 2 minutes to go to the external drive and about 1:15 seconds to go to the internal drive. So I have an internal 2 TB, external 1 TB and a back up 1 TB wi-fi setup. My D300 files are only about 19 mb I think, but LR4 has almost no lag time even coming from the USB 3. This is all from a Lexar 400x (60mb/s) CF card which is actually probably the limiting part of the set-up. The processor is an i5-3330. I toyed with the idea of a SSD, but this system is way faster than I am :) I think an external USB 3.0 drive is a pretty inexpensive way to go.
 
I have just picked up a WD 2T My Passport works on usb2 or 3 I picked this as it does not require to be plugged into a power source this was fairly important for when we are travelling I only need to make sure the laptop is charged before we head off road or free camping. I have no idea about the speed in comparison to other drives but I have not had any lag when opening files. I did load up a huge amount of music and photos immediately I got the drive home.
 
I have my photos on an internal 2TB Seagate 24/7 drive, with automatic backups to an external 2 TB USB3 drive, also from Seagate. Nothing else is on that drive besides photos. My workflow is shooting Olympus raw and then converting the raw files to dng. Originals are then copied to a third USB drive for archival purposes. This third drive is actually three drives, each 1TB 2.5" USB 3 drive. One is attached, one is elsewhere at home, and the third is in a drawer at work. These are rotated every week. I have around 800 GB of raw files, so I'm good for a while.

I also do some jpgs, usually for time lapse and large-scale panorama work (gigapans), and these are on the 2TB drives. I have a pair of matched 640GB drives for time lapse and gigapan work with these backed to an external 500 GB drive.

Yes, I'm paranoid. :)
 
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I have 8 tb internal, and three 3tb external. I keep one of the external at work, so if anything happens at home. I am sure I have another backup somewhere to. I have been in IT too long. I trust nothing. JD.
 
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