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Archive 2014 · What's the best external portable hard drive?

  
 
Sean Reagan
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


Looking for a...

2TB
Portable hard drive
$100 or less

Not sure which brand is the best.
Photographer for 10 months and I need to store all of this work elsewhere.



Oct 14, 2014 at 10:11 PM
sjms
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


today?
last week?
or next month?

everyone has an opinion and they're all different.



Oct 14, 2014 at 10:30 PM
Sean Reagan
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


What's yours?


Oct 14, 2014 at 10:31 PM
Gochugogi
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


I've been happy with the Seagate Backup series. Not much more bread than a raw drive and 2TB goes for a benjamin. Of course, that's only for the plain jane USB 3 interface. If you need the flexibility of eSATA, Thunderboalt, etc., you pay out the arse.

Could be sunspot activity mess in' with mah sh!t but my LaCie and WD drives had a high failure rate while my OWC and Seagate go on and on.



Oct 14, 2014 at 10:42 PM
Paul Mo
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


These: http://www.adorama.com/WDUP2TBBK.html

You can go wireless if you prefer - but you'll pay for it.

http://www.adorama.com/WDBDAF0020B.html




Oct 14, 2014 at 11:59 PM
sjms
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


Sean Reagan wrote:
What's yours?


I have an array. A Drobo 5D as a base external backup. That is 7.2TB total currently

In addition I have a manual back up USB 3 western digital 2TB.

For travel with my surface pro 2 i can have up to:
3 750GB 2.5"drives in OWC cases
1 512GB SSD in a OWC case.

For long term storage some form of fault tolerant array will be necessary that will save your data, at minimum, to 2 separate drives to reduce the chance of permanent loss. I have images going back to 1999.

at $100/2TB you should be definitely thinking of a 2 drive setup.




Oct 15, 2014 at 05:52 AM
jeetsukumaran
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


You should definitely pursue local backup options as you are doing.

But, regardless of the hardware, you also want an off-site backup.

You can double your expenses by implementing this yourself poorly (i.e., your secondary back-up will only get populated whenever you are at the second site) or greatly increase your expenses even more and do it adequately (set up scripts etc. to sync the two).

Or, in this day and age, you can do it sensibly and economically by delegating it to professionals: i.e., use the cloud. In today's world, cloud-based backup makes financial, infrastructural and ergonomical sense. There is very little you, as an individual or even a company that does not specialize in backup, can do that comes close to what a (good) professional backup service can do in terms of ensuring your data is safe from physical and other hazards.

If have a tech-y side, you can just purchase space, and set up your own rsync scripts on cron. But for $50-150 a year, it makes sense to use a commercial service like CrashPlan. Not all such services are equal, not just in terms of the back-up security, but also in terms of their software. You want something that incorporates a sub-file or chunk-based synchronization. That way, if a backup session gets canceled or cut-off (because, e.g., you closed your laptop), it will just pick up where it left off within a file, instead of restarting the entire file again. Or worse, entire directory. Crucial for the big files that we deal with in photography. As a bonus: see if they offer version-control, with rollbacks going at least 3 months or several revisions.

Of course, if you are going to be spending time off-the-grid (or, same difference, most parts of the world, such as your in-law's place over thanksgiving, where the internet is slow-as-molasses), the cloud is less viable. But chances are your connection will be restored, and until then your portable local backup will fill in the gap.



Edited on Oct 15, 2014 at 09:01 AM · View previous versions



Oct 15, 2014 at 07:16 AM
sjms
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


in addition, get into the habit of culling your shots ASAP. this will reduce the chance of loading your backup with monumental amounts of useless junk that takes up space.


Oct 15, 2014 at 07:49 AM
jcolwell
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


I've been using Transcend StoreJet "shock resistant" micro drives for a few years. I started with a 500 GB USB 2 drive and moved to a 1 TB USB 3.0 drive after lending the 500 GB drive to my wife.


Oct 15, 2014 at 09:01 AM
jeetsukumaran
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


If only the NSA would allow subscription-based access to our own data that they store. A solid, high-bandwidth, always-on, extremely-secure back-up, with revision history going back years, and managed by the best technology and technicians that money can buy. I would be completely on-board with that!


Oct 15, 2014 at 09:54 AM
leftcoastlefty
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


All hard drives are inherently unreliable, although some brands do seem to last longer. Check this out:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/

(And by putting a price limit on your purchase, you are really saying that price trumps quality. Just saying.)



Oct 15, 2014 at 05:44 PM
jcolwell
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


Oh. My reply about the Transcend StoreJet was with respect to what I use for travel (i.e. "portable").

If you're just looking for an external 2TB drive for archiving stuff, then I recommend Western Digital (WD) Green drives, with a VANTEC NexStar CX USB 3.0 enclosure. I just bought one set today for about $145 CA. I now have four internal Greens (9 TB) and four matching Greens in external enclosures (most are older USB 2 interfaces). I keep the external drives in a fire/water proof strong box when not actually in use.

I've had two drive failures (one internal and one external) in the last ten years, across the twenty-three drives that I have owned, starting with 250 GB drives back in 2004. Fourteen have been WD and all of my current archive disks are WD. One of these disk failures was my fault, when I plugged an external drive into the wrong power supply.

The other, "unassisted" failure was a Maxtor drive.



Oct 15, 2014 at 06:09 PM
EB-1
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


leftcoastlefty wrote:
All hard drives are inherently unreliable, although some brands do seem to last longer. Check this out:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/

(And by putting a price limit on your purchase, you are really saying that price trumps quality. Just saying.)


Those are desktop or NAS drives, not mobile drives.

EBH



Oct 15, 2014 at 08:45 PM
EB-1
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


I have five of the 2TB Seagate/Samsung Backup Plus slim drives. I like that the drives are natively SATA with a bridge board rather than some drives that have the bridge and USB port integrated on the drive. In the latter case there is little to no chance of recovering data if the bridge is damaged electrically or mechanically. The internal Samsung drives can be pulled in about 30 seconds with a simple screwdriver and used in various devices.

EBH



Oct 15, 2014 at 08:56 PM
runamuck
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


I use a pair of WD 2TB UB3 drives. A recent crash meant replacing the hard drive. After I got everything set up I hooked up the external drive and let it go, copying the files onto the new drive.


Oct 18, 2014 at 04:12 PM
wtlloyd
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


You just missed a deal, got one a week ago at Adorama for $91 shipped.


http://www.adorama.com/WDUP2TBTT.html?emailprice=t&sub=News&utm_term=Other&utm_medium=Affiliate&utm_campaign=Other&utm_source=rflaid41619



Oct 19, 2014 at 10:18 PM
John Patrick
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · What's the best external portable hard drive?


I am a big fan of the Fantom drives. Here's the 2 GB one that's USB3 and eSATA:

Fantom Drives 2TB GForce3 USB 3.0/eSATA Aluminum External Hard Drive (GF3B2000EU)

John



Oct 19, 2014 at 11:55 PM





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