# External Hard Drive Recommendations



## justinsfa (Mar 28, 2009)

With the new camera obviously came gigantic picture file sizes.

I currently have a WD External Hard Drive from Best Buy. I believe it is 750GB.

Below is the link to what I have:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=WD7500H1U-00-NDW-LN&cat=HDD

Our IT guy at work told me that I need to get something else because the one I currently have has working/moving parts inside that may be prone to failure, thus losing my content.

He recommends getting a storage device with no moving parts.... Anybody have any recommendations or can add some advice on what to get? Lord knows I dont want to lose these photos.

As far as size goes, I have been on 2 trips so far and already have 2k images (I am planning on deleting about 3/4 of these due to low quality of content, focus, etc).

Thanks as always for the help!
-CHURCH


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## Formula4Fish (Apr 24, 2007)

justinsfa said:


> Our IT guy at work told me that I need to get something else because the one I currently have has working/moving parts inside that may be prone to failure, thus losing my content.
> 
> He recommends getting a storage device with no moving parts....


It would help if your IT guy could be more specific about what he's recommending, such a make, model, and prices.

As near as I can tell, solid-state storage devices max out at around 256 gigabytes, and the cost per gigabyte is outrageously more expensive. Using the link you provided to computergeeks.com as an example, the largest capacity SSD (solid state drive) I see there is a 256GB Kingston at $570. You would need 3 of those at $1710 to get the same 750GB capacity as the $88 WD drive. 

A far less expensive "loss proof" solution would be a RAID array (an acronym for redundant array of independent disks) providing RAID level 1 or better.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID for a good explanation of RAID technology.

Another possibility is two of the $88 external drives with identical copies of your photos. The odds of both of them failing at exactly the same time are astronomical.

The down side of those "My Book" drives is they require a 110v power adapter. I prefer the slightly more expensive 1TB "WD Passport" drives because the are USB port powered, and fit in your shirt pocket.


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## Whec716 (Apr 7, 2010)

I would suggest that at minimum you use an online backup. There are many of these such as: BackBlaze, Mozy, Carbonite.

You can get a Raid type solution like Drobo: http://www.drobo.com/ as well. The problem with Drobo or any other hard disk backups is if the backup is sitting next to the computer and you have a fire/flood or theft, you are still out of luck.


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## justinsfa (Mar 28, 2009)

Whec716 said:


> I would suggest that at minimum you use an online backup. There are many of these such as: BackBlaze, Mozy, Carbonite.
> 
> You can get a Raid type solution like Drobo: http://www.drobo.com/ as well. The problem with Drobo or any other hard disk backups is if the backup is sitting next to the computer and you have a fire/flood or theft, you are still out of luck.


Ah! Excellent point!

Do the picture files stay the same size or do they automatically get downsized?


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## Formula4Fish (Apr 24, 2007)

justinsfa said:


> Do the picture files stay the same size or do they automatically get downsized?


If they get downsized, there's very little point in storing them there. Once they're downsized they're next to useless. You want to save your originals (negatives, if you will) in an absolutely untouched unaltered state. Any downsizing, cropping, or retouching would be done on a copy, never the original.

When considering online backup, you will want to also think about what your upload speed is, how many photos you will want to store there, the format (JPG RAW) of your images, and what file sizes you will be dealing with.

On one of my typical photo shoots, I rarely shoot less than 100 and often 300 or more photos. I use an 18 megapixel Canon 7D and save both high resolution JPG's and CR2's (raw). JPG's average about 7.5MB each and CR2's average about 24MB each.

A photo shoot Oct. 21 produced 575 photos... The total size of the JPG's are 4 gigabytes and the CR2's are 13.7 gigabytes. At typical upload speeds, it would take well over 7 hours to save both formats on an online storage device.


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## justinsfa (Mar 28, 2009)

Formula4Fish said:


> If they get downsized, there's very little point in storing them there. Once they're downsized they're next to useless. You want to save your originals (negatives, if you will) in an absolutely untouched unaltered state. Any downsizing, cropping, or retouching would be done on a copy, never the original.
> 
> When considering online backup, you will want to also think about what your upload speed is, how many photos you will want to store there, the format (JPG RAW) of your images, and what file sizes you will be dealing with.
> 
> ...


Yep.... thats the problem. I take entirely too many photos to begin with... 1500 on this last week long trip. (of course, I go through and delete 60-70 percent of them)

I am going to go with 2 different forms of external drives. The one I have and an additional one. One will stay with the computer. The other will go in the gun safe.


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## Whec716 (Apr 7, 2010)

The online backup isn't that bad.

You store your photos on your external backup - and then the online backup is done by morning. Now you know your photos are safe and, you have access to them anywhere in the world.


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## Pocketfisherman (May 30, 2005)

You can always burn a folder of pic files to a DVD or Blue Ray disk for storage off of the hard disk.


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## Dgeddings (Sep 16, 2010)

I'm a systems engineer for profession, what I'd recommend is a lower end NAS unit with a raid controller for your issue, you can arrange multiple hard drives in a raid 1 and the disks will be dupliacting each other, if you write something to one it automatically gets mirrored to the other disk 
something like this would be a good solution
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822165289

keep in mind though, a raid controller is a good solution for what your looking for but you need to keep multiple revisions in a backup format as well, reason being if you delete a file it's gone there is no getting it back without a backup, the other thing is if a file gets corrupt its corrupted on both disks at that point


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## oc48 (Aug 13, 2005)

lots of good advice on here. I personally use http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108065

it's a raid NAS box that's very powerful and has apps for your iphone to remotely use the photo viewer and for me (DS Audio) use my NAS box as my own personal music cloud (i have over 500 gigs of music)

Although USB external hard drives are very, VERY cheap. Another 'poor mans' solution could be using multiple USB external drives and software like Chronosync (Mac only) or some kind of replication software to mirror your usb drives. This way, like one of the users said, if you use one of your drives as a master, the other one can manually be sync'd when you want to so it provides protection from accidental deletion, bad drives, etc.

All of these suggestions listed in all the posts will work perfectly. It just depends on how much manual intervention you want to perform and your comfort level in moving data around. (not to mention different price points for each option)


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## nightgigger (Oct 13, 2008)

I like the idea of reducing the mean time between failures through redundancy.
Get a second USB drive to backup the first one. back it up as often as you like.
The longer between backups, the more data at risk. These drives are getting cheaper all the time. Fry's seems to put good ones on sale. I use the i-omega and it works well.


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## txdougman (Jul 12, 2005)

Good posts! Subscribing to this thread. 
I have a 1TB seagate EHD.


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## DSL_PWR (Jul 22, 2009)

I would get this and be done with it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136749

or go the Drobo route and that will solve your issues as well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822240010

just add harddrives


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