External hard drives - which one?

[pstruck]

I know nothing about such things, but need an external hard drive for back-up duties and storage of digital images.

What do I need to know in chosing which will suit my needs?

Anyone got any recommendations?

[Skier]

You mention back-up duties AND storage of digital images. If you are going to use it to store digital images separate fom your back-up regime you are taking a huge risk - what will you back up your digital images to? A simple external drive may be suitable or you might be looking at a NAS to be safe.

Can you give us an idea of how much data you need to back up, how much storage you need for digital images and will this extrenal drive be the sole location for those images? It may be worth adding an additional internal hard drive for your images and backing them up to the external hard drive.

Regards

Skier

Edited by Skier on Wednesday 24th March 21:00

[pstruck]

Sorry, that's a bit misleading. I store my digital images on my pc, so this would be purely a back-up, of those as well as other files from my pc.

I would probably look to buy a 1 TB hard drive - should be more than adequate for my needs.

[DrainTheSpuds]

pstruck said:

I would probably look to buy a 1 TB hard drive.

In which case, have a look at this. I've had its predecessor, the 500GB version, for almost three years, and it's been faultless. Highly recommended.

[Skier]

Ah ok, that basically makes things relatively straightforward. if you're not bothered about physical size then I would buy an external SATA caddy and an standard internal hard drive. This gives you flexibility and the option to cheaply replace or upgrade the drive if required. Just search for '3.5" sata drive enclosure' and buy a 3.5" SATA drive.

If you want small, portable and neat then get something like this:

http://www.dabs.com/products/western-digital-1tb-m...

Regards

Skier

[CO2000]

I'd look at getting two & mirroring them (& if you're really worried a third kept elsewhere)

Edited by CO2000 on Thursday 25th March 16:25

[FlossyThePig]

How much data will you want to copy at any one time. 1TB drive plus USB2 can equal a very long time.

Consider eSata or network connection.

[Clivey]

Skier said:

Ah ok, that basically makes things relatively straightforward. if you're not bothered about physical size then I would buy an external SATA caddy and an standard internal hard drive. This gives you flexibility and the option to cheaply replace or upgrade the drive if required. Just search for '3.5" sata drive enclosure' and buy a 3.5" SATA drive.

If you want small, portable and neat then get something like this:

http://www.dabs.com/products/western-digital-1tb-m...

Regards

Skier

This.

That way, you know what you're getting, and it's easier to access the connectors should you need to. I've found the most reliable drives to be made by Seagate, the least reliable are Fujitsu and Maxtor (avoid the latter two).

Having said that, I have been very impressed with my LaCie external HDDs (I have a 250GB FireWire 400 and a 500GB USB 2.0).

Edited by Clivey on Thursday 25th March 15:15

[PJ S]

http://www.storagedepot.co.uk/Hard-Drive-Cases/sc8... - that and a pair of hard drives, set to RAID1, and your data will be well and truly backed up.
£200 ish for 2x 1TB mirrored storage - does your photo library warrant any less spent on having it to hand in case of the main computer's drive going down?