Hard Drive for storage of photos ? Recommendation

External 3.5 drives all need a separate power supply.
External 2.5 drives are laptop drive, and get enough power from the USB port.

There isn't a standard name for the driver you are looking for, different brands use different names for their USB powered drives. I think the max size in 2.5" drivers is 1TB at the moment. Solution to drive failure is to have multiple copies, perhaps on different media. Personally I have 3 external disks. I got rid of my 3.5 disks as the power leads become awkward once you've a few disks.

Disk1 - Working drive. Most recent stuff
Disk2 - Backup a week or so ago.
Disk3 - Backup a month or more ago

I use Karens Replicator to synch them. Once a year, or 2 yrs I make a DVD backup of the really important stuff. All but one of the drives is encrypted, and they are stored in different locations. Because if you have a break in, or a fire, you don't want them all in the same place. I also do an AV scan on them occasionally too. As the dissk get too small I replace them with a bigger drive and sell the old ones, after wiping them securely. I guess I have about 400GB of stuff I backup. Probably only 200GB of is really important to me. I don't have a good enough connection to back that up online. Also it would take ages and eat up the ISP cap.

I don't do the above on a strict schedule. Just when it occurs to me.
 
stobear said:
I have a large collection of photos and videos which I have on an external HDD, but its a mechanical device that is prone to wear and quite delicate to handle, so I have been looking at USB flash drive but my original thought was it would never hold my collection. I use 33GB of a 1TB HDD, and there are 64GB USB available for around 100Euro. Some reviews of these show youtube clips of them being dropped, driven over, washed etc and survive. Its not a mechanical device so is that much sturdier than a HDD.
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Be aware that USB drives often have a finite number of times they can be written to and backups/synch software might do that a lot. They are often a lot slower than a regular hard drive. They can also get lost easily, or just simply corrupted. They are very compact though.

The is no perfect backup medium. You need multiple backups to get better odds. IMO.
 
the one i've got looks like a cigarrette box, quite charming... but delicate to handle, sothe things is to make sure it's always in a safe place...
 
Click, in Dundrum TC, on Mezz, have a 1TB portable Imega one on sale for €119 reduced from €179. Really light.
 
Whatever you do, keep your photos on at least two different storage media, preferably not in the same space or building if possible to reduce the risk of losing them through drive failure or catastrophe.

ONQ.
 
There are alot of websites that are springing up to allow people to store pictures online for free.

The settings can be set to private so you are not sharing them with the rest of the web.

It is always good to use several different sources for backing up 'valuable memories'.
 
Sue Ellen said:
We got [broken link removed] 1TB in DID recently for €67.99 - would it do the same job?

Edit: Iomega 1TB which I think is the same one from Pixmania quoted above.
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pj111 said:
Went into DID today and it has a power adapter so it must be a portable one that I'm looking for.
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Harvey Norman are advertising a 2TB desktop hard drive in their Back to School & College newspaper for €79.00 at the moment. Doesn't seem to show up on their website though.
 
I use photographs to record my site work and for personal photos. etc..

At the moment I'm using a Western Digital My Book 1Tb - this needs a separate power supply and has both Firewire and USB II connections.

I've previously used a Maxtor.

For occasional or specific uses I have 4Gb and 16Gb USB drives with an Iomega 80Gb USB-only Powered HD - last one was a birthday present.

All are good drives in my experience.

However, all were bought (apart from the Iomega, which was also my first external storage medium when they were offering 100Mb discs) following a lot of review, balancing costs with reported reliability and durability.

If you're buying a very cost effective drive, make sure to check the manufacturer and see who they supply to - it may give an indication of reliability.

ONQ.
 
I have a 1Tb Iomega portable drive since my WD 250Gb external drive went belly-up. :( Luckily had all the photos backed up to DVD but lost alot of music.

The Iomega drive seems fine but the one thing I'd say about it is that the jack into the drive is not very sturdy. Its the same width as the USB jack but is much flatter and I can't help but feel that its going to get snapped some day when its plugged in.
 
I backup my photos/music etc on to 2 different hard drives. There's always a possibility that one of them could fail, they are complicated bits of engineering. If one should fail, then I'd buy another and get back to 2 copies on hard drives.

And also keep really important photos on DVDs too. Can never be too sure.
 
RMCF said:
If one should fail, then I'd buy another and get back to 2 copies on hard drives.

And also keep really important photos on DVDs too. Can never be too sure.
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Do you keep them in two different physical locations, to protect against total loss due to theft, fire or flood?
 
I'm looking into this at the moment also. The online option doesn't appeal to me at all I have to say...especially for something like family photographs/videos...you have no idea who can see them and where they are being stored.

I'm planning to buy 3 x 1TB external hard drives from 3 differnt manufacturers. I'll keep one near my PC, one in the attic (wrapped) and the other at my parents place.This should do the job I think. I make that about 200 euro all in without a monthly charge. Does anyone see any shortcomings with this approach (apart from the commitment to making regular backups?)
Thanks,
F
 
Just bought one of these - 2TB from Pixmania for 61.99 which seems excellent value to me.
 
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