Questions about purchase of external hard drive to back up digital pics

[Edelweiss]

I am looking for an external hard drive to back up my 7000+ digital pictures. I hope a computer technology guru on VFTT can give me some advice. How many GB's should I be looking for given my propensity for taking LOTS of digital shots. Is a firewire connection preferable to USB? (My Mac has both.) Someone suggested I look at these brands: Maxtor, Western Digital, Seagate, but are other manufacturers just as good if I can get a better deal? Are there any reputable online stores which you've dealt with in the past that also offer good service and great deals?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Joanne

 

[Papa Bear]

I am looking for an external hard drive to back up my 7000+ digital pictures. I hope a computer technology guru on VFTT can give me some advice. How many GB's should I be looking for given my propensity for taking LOTS of digital shots. Is a firewire connection preferable to USB? (My Mac has both.) Someone suggested I look at these brands: Maxtor, Western Digital, Seagate, but are other manufacturers just as good if I can get a better deal? Are there any reputable online stores which you've dealt with in the past that also offer good service and great deals?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Joanne

I recently got a Acomdata 150Gb for a little over $100. It comes with very nice backup software. Basically you backup everything the first time, and then subsequent backups are "incremental", i.e. it just does the new files. I have used it for backups, selective restores, restores of entire trees and computer to computer transfers. I got it at CompUSA on the day after Thanksgiving. This particular store was quite good on that hectic day. I never bother with service contracts. These things never break now-a-days or if they do it's catastrophic. But for myself, I make sure everything is in (at least) 2 places. For this it's on my PC and on the portable hard drive. (Plus a lot is also on my wife's PC). Both have tons of storage.

As for how much space you need - calculate what you use now (I use about 30 Gb) multiply by 4 or 5 and use that as a minimum. With 30 Gb and a 150 Gb portable drive, I'm in good shape for the foreseeable future.

USB is generally available on most systems old or new. Fire wire is newer. I (personally) would be sure it had USB, or both but not just Firewire. It (like most all units) will work with both PCs or Macs

 

[DougPaul]

To estimate the required size, estimate the average size of a photo file from your current photos and multiply it by the number of photos you wish to be able to save. Warning: more alway turns out to be better... Or just get the biggest you can afford--you will most likely fill it eventually.

Warning on external enclosures: many do not have fans and the disk will run hot which can drastically shorten its lifetime. Get one with good cooling.

Yes, those are well-known manufacturers of disks.

To check prices, see http://www.pricewatch.com/.


Somehow this seems a bit off-topic for this BBS...

Doug

 

[Paul the Explorer]

I have an E-book 320 gb that I bought at Service Merchandise for about $200...works fine...get more gb than you think you will need..you will use it !!!

 

[BobK]

Be sure to have USB

I have a SimpleDrive 160GB for about 8 months. I use the included backup software for regular backups (on my main PC) with full & Incremental backups. In addition, I also do periodic copies of my kids Laptops (3 in college) when they come home on vacation. I simply create a new folder with their name and date, then copy all of their "My Documents" folder to get their documents, music, favorites, etc. With USB, the 12-20GB takes around 30 minutes. Since not all PCs (or laptops) have Firewire, it seems having USB will give the best flexibility, and the speed (for me anyway) is fine.

Keep the unit off (unpowered) unless you are actually backing something up. Since it is portable, be careful carrying it around. Drives really don't like to be dropped.

 

[Neil]

I am assuming the purpose of the External HD is to saveguard against data (picture) loss. I decided against a hard drive and just bought a DVD burner because thinking fire and theft I wanted to easily remove the copied data from my house. With R/W dvd's incremental backups are possible. The obvious weakness is the limited space on a DVD but I was impressed with the number of pics I could get onto a single disc.

 

[Tom Rankin]

I know you saw this Doug, but to everyone else:

Darren is considering creating another sub-forum for photography.

Go to Carmel's Thread and vote YES!

 

[michaelb]

It terms of drive size, buy the biggest you can afford in the range you want to spend. You can never have too much space, but if this one isn't big enough, in a year or two you can buy another. Drives are cheap and easy.

You don't mention what kind of mac you have. But generally, most macs are whisper quiet, and so you don't want some annoying buzzing fan running when you are using it. So I would go with a quality fanless enclosure for the drive. The cheapest and most versatle way to do this is to buy the enclosure separately from the drive, and to put the drive in yourself. It is not hard to do and takes a few minutes at most. That would get you the best bang for your buck.

It seems to me that the long term history of using external firewire and USB harddrives is that quality does matter, so it is worth considering not buying the cheapest option. And there are two points of possible failure: the drive enclosure and then the drive itself. There are literally thousands of different enclosures out there, all more or less the same, most cobbled together out of junk for PCs, so it can hard to choose. But I would stick with buying from a known quantity with a well regarded history, and for mac users looking to buy quality drives at reasonable prices, I would go with Other World Computing.

For firewire only, which should be fine since you use macs:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item-specials/Other World Computing/NPFW7250GB/

Dual interface, with USB and firewire, one of these:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/eliteclassic

They would also be my choice for just the enclosure (and then somewhere like newegg.com for the harddrive, or shop around for the best deal on a seagate with a 5 year warranty).

 

[HuiYeng]

I have an Iomega, bought it directly from iomega.com (mine is only 120GB) it comes with both USB and Firewire. All I can say is Firewire is wicked fast. The unit is quite quiet too.

 

[Willoughby]

Do a backup now!

Lots of good advice here. The most important thing is to do a backup! Ideally you will set up a procedure that you can follow - I could never do DVD backups, I'm not that organized, for me it needs to be automated - but just do a backup. Do it now. I set up a backup drive for my parents - they didn't follow the procedure - but when the disk drive failed (in their IBM computer, completely stock, no heat issues) at least they only lost months of data and not the full 9 years' worth.

My experience is that disk drives DO fail, usually just after the warranty period runs out. (Although I've also RMA'd drives that were under warranty - you get a working drive back, but lose your data.) I will usually pay extra (or at least search harder) for a drive with a 5-year warranty over a 3-year warranty. I also make sure that anything I care about is in at least 2 places, and that I've practiced restoring from the backup before disaster strikes.

P.S. Geek talk for those who care: my home system runs a 320G RAID-1 array to protect against drive failure, plus I do automated backups to an external USB drive. I use Linux software RAID and it has protected me through several drive failures. When I travel, I move the external drive off-site. The eventual plan is for live off-site over-the-net backups...

Of course I store all my hiking pictures on this system. Also I usually name my computers after mountains - hopefully that makes this post on-topic for VFTT!

 

[Neil]

Lots of good advice here. The most important thing is to do a backup!

That's the best advice on this thread. Do it right now. As soon as I got home with my dvd burner I hooked it up and made copies of important folders. THEN, I started fooling around figuring out how it works.

So, get going!

One question. What's the difference between a backup and a copy? My (Nero) software that came bundled with the burner gives you the choice. I did both for one set of folders and they took the same time and space.

 

[bikehikeskifish]

I have a Maxtor 300Gb NAS (Network-Attached Storage) drive for the house network. It contains a built-in printserver too. (For the technical folks, it is running a mini Linux kernel and Samba, out of flash memory.)

I like the NAS feature because ALL the computers can back up to it (we have more computers then family members -- I've been a computer 'geek' for 25 years now.) It's slower, but I can schedule unattended backups.

It also has a USB-2 interface. In order to keep the price down, they do not include firewire, or gigabit ethernet. It is a 'consumer appliance'. It works fine for my needs. It has power-saving mode where the drive spins down after a period of inactivity.

It also supports one of the popular jukebox standards, although I don't use it as such. Any iTunes running in the house will spot the backup of my MP3 library.

It also contains a fan in the enclosure to keep the temperature down. I leave it in the basement with the router where it never gets above 70 degrees.

Once a year, I burn the entire year's worth of photos onto a DVD for offsite storage (my office) in case of disaster.

HTH,
Tim

http://reviews.cnet.com/Maxtor_Shared_Storage_Plus_Drive_300GB/4505-3382_7-31272119.html

 

[yvon]

Lots of good advice here. The most important thing is to do a backup!

I always do a backup (copy of all my files) once a month. 2 years ago, I did a backup of all my files a sunday afternoon. Monday night, I put the switch on, on my PC and POW!!!, almost everything inside burnt. I was glad that i did a backup a day before. I was not happy because, I had to buy a new computer.

 

[yvon]

One question. What's the difference between a backup and a copy? My (Nero) software that came bundled with the burner gives you the choice. I did both for one set of folders and they took the same time and space.

I think, when you do a Backup, you have to do a restore to get all your files. But when you make a copy it is like on your HD all your files are ready to used.

 

[skiguy]

Is a firewire connection preferable to USB? (My Mac has both.)

Lot's of good info in this thread. IMO backup storage is not a place to go cheap. Plan for the future so your backup drive can be used with future systems. Your Mac may have eSata capabilty by using your Express34 slot. Transfer Speeds are much faster than Firewire 400/800 or USB 2.0. Here are a couple of links. A combination connecting drive gives the most flexibility and go for the most Gigs you can afford.

http://www.wiebetech.com/products/TeraCard_Express34.php

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10869&printit=1

 

[Edelweiss]

Thanks SO MUCH everybody! I have been saving my pics to CD's and wanted to burn DVD's instead for convenience, but discovered that my I-Mac G4 doesn't have the capability to burn DVD's. So..... it looks like I'll also investigate buying a DVD burner. I still want the external HD though - this may seem a bit paranoid and redundant but I DON'T want to lose my digital pictures!
Thanks again for all of your help!
Thanks also to Darren for the new Photography forum!
Joanne

 

[Rob S]

Joanne,

A friend at work and I build portable hard-drives for ourselves and friends for the express purpose of backing up data and keeping files in sync between our work machines, our laptops, and our home machines. We have a source that enables us to purchase hard drives dirt cheap ..... our latest deal was 250GB for 55 bucks ....... brand new ...... and we've found a couple good enclosure manufacturers ..... (and some crappy ones too). Next time we get together for a hike in the Cats, I'll bring one along and you can check it out, and I'll be happy to instruct you how to use it. No obligation to buy, we always have at least a couple laying around.

Lots of good advice on this thread, and frequent back-ups are always a good idea. But, I think I know what you are looking to do ...... as I do the same thing. PM or email me if you'd like more info sooner rather than later.

Rob

PS - Not sure yet, but I'm hoping to hike in the Cats next weekend (1/13 or 1/14). If you and Dick are hiking, or are in the area, maybe we can get together and discuss this further ......

 

[LivesToHike]

Backup.

I backup at least once a week, and sometimes upon demand right after downloading valuable photos from a memory card and doing some edits on copies of the originals. That way I've got two copies around.

I use USB Drive carriers coupled with a ATA/IDE harddrive (you name the brand - usually the $50-60 drive that a local computer or office supply retailer has on discount) - I currently have 2 - one that I keep in the house. And one for offsite storage - that one gets updated far less often. I never leave these drives online - I turn them on, backup my photos, flush the writes and shut them down. I'm a computer type also that deals with storage systems as part of my job. SATA & IDE drives are not all the reliable - we see them die all the time... ... so multiple backups are helpful.

I know others have dealt with DVD and CDR backups as well - I do alittle of these as well, but more often to hand off a photo album of a family gathering to other relatives. Archival quality disc's are probably a whole topic on their own...

I'm thinking of moving my photos off our computer onto another USB drive that can be moved around. Eventually I'll probably go the NAS route as suggested by Tim - Good idea. But I'll definitely continue to do some offline backup as well.

--LTH

 

[Brambor]

My solution is photo-centric. Here is what I did:

First I realized that storing photographs and backing up my home computer can be two different things for if I lost my OS and none of my precious photographs or documents then I could simply reinstall the operating system or move to a different computer with no loss of sanity.

My photographs are in two different locations. First I have a pro account at flickr.com where I currently have over 3000 photographs. If my neighborhood spontaniously exploded then I would still have my photographs.

Now we can finally arrive at my hard drive solution. I requires some hardware skills as you will have to build the final unit. I purchased a hard drive enclosure by Sans Digital. It cost under $50 dollars for the enclosure.

The enclosure takes Notebook size hard drive (2.5"). I purchased 120GB Western Digital Hard drive for under $90 dollars. The total cost was under $150

The enclosure fills many different needs. It connects through USB to any computer and shows up as a hard disk. So it is as if I had a hard disk in my computer or any computer I'm currently at. That is practical for me as I do image editing at work or at home or at my son's notebook or at my friends house ... you get the picture ;-)

The enclosure is small and lightweight - portable. It has an internal battery with a decent battery life. I can turn it on anywhere without the need for electric outlet. Best of all it recharges through the USB cable so taking it to foreign countries works great as I can plug it to any computer and charge it and don't need any power converter. I can carry it in my pocket. Besides being a hard drive it also has slots for Compact Flash Card or SD or SM cards. I use Compact Flash cards in my digital camera. I can plug my card into this
enclosure, turn it on and press the copy button. It automatically copies the entire CF card onto the hard drive. I can then erase my CF Card in my camera and continue shooting.

I have recently filled up one of them. It has pictures from many years, scanned photos or digital photos, retouched photos, RAW files. I also have sounds on it that I collect and important documents like installation files to CANON RAW software in case someone in the future needed access to RAW files and could not find compatible decoder.

After I maxed out on space I purchased another one of these enclosures and started the year 2007 with clean slate. If I need to print any of the older images I go to my drawer, take out the hard drive enclosure and plug it into my USB cable.

Be careful about backing up to CD's - they do deteriorate with age.

Here is a link to the hard drive enclosure:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822110001

Here is a link to the hard drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136007


P.S. One warning - The enclosure can not handle partitions larger than 32GB so you have to split the 120GB drive into 4 partitions. They show up on your computer as 4 drives.

 

[bikehikeskifish]

P.S. One warning - The enclosure can not handle partitions larger than 32GB so you have to split the 120GB drive into 4 partitions. They show up on your computer as 4 drives.

Cons: ... Only supports FAT32, so hard drives larger than 32GB cannot be formatted with Windows XP.

That's too bad... There must be an enclosure of similar size, weight, and capacity which doesn't have this restriction. Makes it undesirable for Linux backups too.

Oh, and just for completeness, your solution is not strictly 'photo-centric'. Your data is. I view my work product (being a software engineer) in much the same way you view your photos (pun intended). I can easily grab the NAS device on my way out the door in case of a fire. Occasionally, I burn DVDs and keep them in my office for complete disaster recovery.

Tim