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ideas on the sturdiest external HD?

phishphood

phishphood

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So anyone have any suggestions for the sturdiest external hard drive? I'm looking for around 320-500GB, single platter. 2.5"-based is a plus since I only need the USB cable to power it too. Price is always a factor, but just looking for now I guess.

Summing it up, I'm heading down to Costa Rica in Dec. for 10 days and plan on taking quite a few pictures. Also have 7 other friends heading down w/ me, and I'm assuming they'd like to be able to dump their mem cards/sticks as well. I'll most likely be running it off of my EEEpc unless I find a good deal on one of those card reader/HD all-in-one thingies which scare the bejeezus outta me. Thoughts appreciated, thanks.

Oh, there will be at least 2 DSLR shooters on the trip, hence the need for lots of file storage.
 
Hey Mitch,

I had a similar issue when I went to Switzerland for 14 days. The devices I looked into were Independent Storage Devices, where they were probably what you were describing that are scary. Just like any harddrive, these fail just as much.

My biggest suggestion is to use the money you'd use for a harddrive, and buy a crapload of compactflash / sd cards. Spread out your images so if one goes bad, or you lose a bag, etc., not all's lost.

I did that as well as brought along an old independent storage device to back things up on, thankfully nothing failed on me.

Goodluck!
 
I like Seagate's FreeAgent.

I've had many of those and love them. I did have one loose some data ONCE but I'm pretty sure that was just a bad drive as I've been traveling with another for a long time and it's been rock solid. FWIW I never depend on just one drive (like Tony said).
 
Last time I went, shot over 30GB b/w my brother and I. Didn't have that much flash memory at the time (do now...). I used a card reader/storage bank every night to back up. It's basically an external HDD with a built in reader that backs up the data when you power it on (uses 4 AA). I forgot which brand mine was, but if you have the money, spring for one of the Epson multimedia drives (allows you to view the images on the drive).
 
Looking into the Iomega drive Mitch. There is a nice 500GB leather cover one that is really nice. It's much smaller than other stuff. I bought a Seagate freeagent and that thing went bad on me after 1.5 year. Yeah they have a 5 years warranty but I lost 500G of photos, movies and stuff |( . .. I just don't trust Seagate HDD any more..
 
Yeah, I'm still doing more researching. Seeing how quite a few people have tried and liked them, I might go with one of the portable storage units (card reader/HD in one). I really am thinking of not bringing my netbook. Internet would be nice, but....having to lug it around doesn't sound like the best idea. Ideally, I'd bring a PSU and since most have USB on-the-go (read/write to another separate usb device) I'd dump the SD cards to the PSU, and then copy them to an external HD too. Kept in different bags, that's about as redundant as I'll get while on the go and still a semi-decent price (enclosure + HD can be had for ~$100, PSU will run around $200?)
 
Elite said:
Looking into the Iomega drive Mitch. There is a nice 500GB leather cover one that is really nice. It's much smaller than other stuff. I bought a Seagate freeagent and that thing went bad on me after 1.5 year. Yeah they have a 5 years warranty but I lost 500G of photos, movies and stuff |( . .. I just don't trust Seagate HDD any more..
Click to expand...

Seagate has the best track record for HD... you just got a fluke.

FWIW relying on one drive is your fault :p If it's important to me, I back up onto many drives and use an online services as well (for instance www.YouSendIt.com)
 
Check this out, it is on sellout.woot today

http://shopping.yahoo.com/#woot


ioSafe 1.5TB Fireproof/Waterproof USB 2.0 Hard Drive with 3 Year Data Recovery Service
 
Heh, thanks Jay. While it is somewhat tempting to get for the heck of it, there's no way I'm going to be taking that thing to Costa Rica with me in a backpack.
 
If you're going to go the external USB HD route, I'd just pick up one of the many 2.5" USB storage enclosures and then buy a separate 2.5" SATA HD. This way you can spend money on a quality drive rather than on a fancy enclosure and packaging. I do this with a Vantec EZ Swap EX.

http://www.vantecusa.com/front/product/view_detail/224

The best thing about this is that you can mount the 3.5" bay into your PC and then just eject the 2.5" cartridge when you travel. When in the bay in your computer, the HD is accessed via ESATA. When travelling, it's USB. I put a 250GB Hitachi drive into it and carry it around with me whenever I travel.

If you want to step up and don't mind spending a little more money, you can put an SSD (solid state disk) drive into the enclosure. This would give you the reliability of flash without the inconvenience of swapping a ton of memory cards.

Something like this would work:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820141419&cm_re=sata_ssd-_-20-141-419-_-Product

You 'd have 32GB of solid state storage in a 2.5" USB enclosure for under $120. (Cheap
 
Someone sent me a link to a Kingston 40GB SSD for like $60 not too long ago. I'll see if I can dig it up if you decide to go that route.
 
Anyone have an opinion on RAID drives? I was thinking DROBO just because I have many friends using them and they say they've been flawless for them. Ditto on 1tb drives. I've been reluctant to use any HDD over 500gb due to the errors but I'm working with (lat time I researched this topic) two year old specs.
 
DROBO is slow and what it does, you can find better. I forgot what it uses (I think RAID 0,1,5, and 10). For the money, I would go elsewhere.

If you want access to the drive while offsite, then I would take a look at the Synology line. Great speed at an affordable price.
 
GreshamH said:
Anyone have an opinion on RAID drives? I was thinking DROBO just because I have many friends using them and they say they've been flawless for them. Ditto on 1tb drives. I've been reluctant to use any HDD over 500gb due to the errors but I'm working with (lat time I researched this topic) two year old specs.
Click to expand...

what kinda RAID set up are you running?

If you are just looking for speed, i suggest the X 25-M from intel. EASILY kills any raptor in raid 0 set up :)

fwiw, i have a 250g mybook by Western Digital thats been working fine for me for the past 5 years. I recently bought a new 1tb mybook by Western Digital thats been running for about 1-2 years now and no failures yet....



EDIT: Nevermind, I assume you are looking to run them in RAID 1 or something since this is a thread about reliability. My bad ignore my post :)
 
+1 on the X25... although you can get similar performance for a lot less money by going for the OCZ Vertex. (That's what I am using on my computer. I can boot into Windows 7 in a little over 10 seconds!)

You don't need a fast SSD drive for photo backup though, so I would just go with the cheapest one possible if you're going to through it into a portable USB case.
 
Mine is for video, audio, photos, AI/EPS/DSS/Etc files. I need the speed!!!
 
Eight said:
+1 on the X25... although you can get similar performance for a lot less money by going for the OCZ Vertex. (That's what I am using on my computer. I can boot into Windows 7 in a little over 10 seconds!)

You don't need a fast SSD drive for photo backup though, so I would just go with the cheapest one possible if you're going to through it into a portable USB case.
Click to expand...

10 seconds?! my PC is still in its initial boot screen. :( still takes me ~30 seconds even with the x-25m LUCKKKYY. but man, made a huge difference in performance compared to my older raid set up.
 
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