which external hard drive to get

[wheresdavid]

question, I have about 25 DVDs full of photos and I want to store them "somewhere" else. I dont have a computer and i will be traveling for another year so i dont want to buy a computer ( i may buy a used laptop for the trip but i dont want to store my photos on it).


the following question is in regards to storing the 25 DVDs worth of photos on something that i will leave in the USA, not take with me on the road while i am traveling.

so, my question is how should i store my photos? I am thinking i should store them on two seperate external hard drives. if this a good assumtion? or is there a better way to store the photos?

If it is a good idea any recomendations on external hardrives? i probably need about 160gigs or something like that.

thanks

Dave

[luke_church]

so, my question is how should i store my photos? I am thinking i should store them on two seperate external hard drives. if this a good assumtion? or is there a better way to store the photos?


If you're travelling and have a means of writing DVDs, then you are much better off writing your files to multiple DVDs and mailing 1 or 2 copies of them to another location, say a friend back home. Then keep one copy with you.

Hard disks are fragile, they do not like heat, cold, vibration or power spikes. They are nowhere near as tough as decent DVDs. The only thing hard disks do better is bright light and possiby moisture. Hard disks are also expensive, heavy and have 'steal me' written on them :)

If you still want to buy an external HD, I have used Western Digital external drives (I think they're now called 'MyBook's). They're not very fast compared to internal drives, but they're cheap (£100 per 500Gb), and I haven't had a failure yet. I now run 6 of such drives, the oldest being 3 years. They run 24/7/365.

HTH,

Luke

[luke_church]

PS.

There's a document from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology, US agency) on how to look after optical media here:

http://www.clir.org/PUBS/reports/pub121/contents.html

You should probably look up the stuff on environmental concerns if you're travelling a lot, esp. in hot damp areas of the globe.

Enjoy :wink

[pathfinder]

If you have access to the WEB with a good bandwidth, get yourself a smugmug account, and upload them to smugmug, and sleep well at night, secure in the knowledge that Baldy and his crew are watching over them and keeping them safe and secure.

Having accesss to the original files is excellent, and I am not saying a smugmug account would replace keeping the original files safely, but it will help keep you secure in the knowledge that your precious images are not going to vaporize into bits in the ether. That is one of the primary reasons I opend my smugmuggy account several years ago. I had a 160Gb hard drive and a second 160Gb back up hard drive go into a death spiral and crash land. Fortunately, I had a back up copy of my images on a third drive as well. I am a belt and suspenders kind of guy.

I agree - double hard drives are easier to use than writing multiple, fragile DVDs. I do both for important images. And I keep my keepers on Smugmug as well at www.pathfinder.smugmug.com

Give this suggestion serious thought.

[rustic]

If I'm reading your post correctly, it looks like you're looking for something that you are going to leave on a shelf for a year, not something that you are taking with you, correct?

I'll second the recommendation of the Western Digital MyBooks. I have a USB2/Firewire 250 Gig drive from them that I've been happy with, and I've heard good things from others about them as well. I often check out the customer reviews at http://www.newegg.com and have had good luck going with what the masses recommend.

I'd certainly agree with pathfinder that if you have the time, uploading them to smugmug is a great idea. You can be pretty sure that they won't lose them:) If not, I would say one or two hard drives and a couple of copies of the DVDs stored in a dark place would be a good idea.

[digismile]

The WD MyBook is getting better. Western Digital now has a 1 Tb (2 drive) MyBook Pro II that offers Raid mirroring for piece of mind (if one hard drive goes, the other can take over) or Raid striping for increased speed.

Supports USB 2.0 or Firewire 400/800. Currently on sale at Dell.com for $404.10 USD. I have seen this drive at Costco here in Canada, so it might be available at other discount outlets.

[luke_church]

the following question is in regards to storing the 25 DVDs worth of photos on something that i will leave in the USA, not take with me on the road while i am traveling.

I appear not to be able to read. :doh

Sorry, I missed that bit, ignore my random commentary on vibration damage to disks whilst travelling.

[claudermilk]

OK, 'cause I was going to ream you for that. :smack

I'd get a well-rated enclosure and matching drive from Newegg. Keeps the cost down & you can pick & choose each component. I agree a pair of redundant drives will be your best bet--and setting up a SM account to store the best JPEGs as well (saved my butt once already :bow). I would definitely NOT depend on those DVDs to survive the year, even stored properly--I've run afoul of that myself.

So in answer to the original question: yes a pair of external drives is a good idea.

[denisegoldberg]

If it is a good idea any recomendations on external hardrives? i probably need about 160gigs or something like that.
I use a Maxtor OneTouch external drive. Well really, I use two of them...

Product info is available at http://www.maxtorsolutions.com/en/ToolBox/Product_Grid/index.html

--- Denise

[Art Scott]

Personally I like to purchase internal drives (Seagate ) and buy the external enclosure separately, because the ready to use externals come with a 1yr warranty for the most part and the internal, Seagates at least, come with a 5 yr warranty and it takes all of about 5 minutes or less to assemble the internal into the enclosure and your ready to go.

Seagate has been my choice for several yrs due to quietness and 5 yr warranty......also back in the day when computers wouod weight in at 900lbs to 1 ton and I worked for NCR here in Wichita, we ran the gamut of harddrives and even then Seagate was our best workhorse with fewest failures.

just my .00002cents worth

[ChrisJ]

The new Seagate FreeAgent externals all have a 5-year warranty (I think). The "Pro" versions have backup software.

I've been happy with my external Seagate (not a FreeAgent)...

[jh4wvu]

After losing a lot of pictures from two hard drive crashes within a year I decided to purchase an external drive for extra storage (I still backup everthing on DVDs)

I just bought a Western Digital 1 TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive (WDG2NC10000N) (http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-World-External-WDG2NC10000N/dp/B000NKJ2X8/ref=pd_ybh_1/104-6884592-0718307?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=027AK7CX5Q56CRKKRGC5&pf_rd_t=1501&pf_rd_p=280800601&pf_rd_i=ybh) from Amazon for $437.99.

It basically has two 500 GB hard drives which can be set up with RAID 1 for extra protection. Of course you could use both drives for the full 1TB.

I was considering purchasing everything seperatly but when figuring the prices this was actually a better solution. Unlike some of the other external drives you are able to change out the drives yourself without having to send it back to Western Digital.

I am using this on a gigabit network at home with both PC and Mac accessing the device. They have another model that has the Firewire/USB connections.

Hope this helps someone decide. I feel it is definitely worth the money.

Chris

[wheresdavid]

thanks for all the advice. i do have a smugmug account with about 7000 photos (can it be that many). i checkd out the my books on cnet and they there was several bad reviews. i saw that seagate had a good rating and i also saw that their Seagate FreeAgent 320GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drivewas on sale at bestbuy for $99 so i had a friend order me one. i will also get another external hardrive as a "backup". thanks for the help!!!!!!




After losing a lot of pictures from two hard drive crashes within a year I decided to purchase an external drive for extra storage (I still backup everthing on DVDs)

I just bought a Western Digital 1 TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive (WDG2NC10000N) (http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-World-External-WDG2NC10000N/dp/B000NKJ2X8/ref=pd_ybh_1/104-6884592-0718307?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=027AK7CX5Q56CRKKRGC5&pf_rd_t=1501&pf_rd_p=280800601&pf_rd_i=ybh) from Amazon for $437.99.

It basically has two 500 GB hard drives which can be set up with RAID 1 for extra protection. Of course you could use both drives for the full 1TB.

I was considering purchasing everything seperatly but when figuring the prices this was actually a better solution. Unlike some of the other external drives you are able to change out the drives yourself without having to send it back to Western Digital.

I am using this on a gigabit network at home with both PC and Mac accessing the device. They have another model that has the Firewire/USB connections.

Hope this helps someone decide. I feel it is definitely worth the money.

Chris

[pathfinder]

thanks for all the advice. i do have a smugmug account with about 7000 photos (can it be that many)........

I see that you do have a smuggy acct - I missed it earlier. A very lovely collection of images, especially the portraits of the people.

[urbanaries]

i checkd out the my books on cnet and they there was several bad reviews.

Crap! I just bought a 500GB my book yesterday, an IT server friend of mine recommended them over Maxtor and other brands. *crossing fingers*

[ivar]

Crap! I just bought a 500GB my book yesterday, an IT server friend of mine recommended them over Maxtor and other brands. *crossing fingers*My brother has had a 500GB my book for a while, and has been very happy with it :thumb

[urbanaries]

My brother has had a 500GB my book for a while, and has been very happy with it :thumb

Yeah, and he probably didn't post a review to that effect on Cnet! That's the thing about reviews....human nature dictates a skew toward negative feedback. :thumb

[ivar]

Yeah, and he probably didn't post a review to that effect on Cnet! That's the thing about reviews....human nature dictates a skew toward negative feedback. :thumbwell that, and Cnet is not a popular site in the Netherlands :D