Decent external hard drive - what size, brand and price?

tara747

Hi

Sorry to sound silly, but I am keen to back up all my precious photos and have decided to buy an external hard drive. Any advice? What size would I need and are there any unreliable brands I should stay away from? Also, what proce would I expect to pay? There doesn't seem to be much difference in price between 250GB and 1TB!

I don't intend to store music on it if that is of any relevance re size etc.

Thanks - any advice would be really appreciated.

googler

'Name' brands are Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung, Maxtor, etc.

I'd avoid no-name brands from discount stores like Lidl, Aldi, etc.

However, even buying a name brand is no cast-iron guarantee - on occasion, these can fail too - so keep your photos on it as a backup, but keep them in your original storage too.

If you have a CD or DVD writer, consider taking copies to disc as well for double safety copies.

tara747

Thanks googler.

I have copied most of them on CDs as well, but wanted a belt-and-braces solution! They are all on the original hard drive (my PC) too.

macman

No point in buying a 1TB drive if you only want to store say 250GB. Check the size of your archived files and allow some extra on top. For most people 500GB is probably enough.

althas

Do you want it to be portable?

I have a Seagate 500gb USB powered drive for my backup. They cost around £60-£70

tara747

macman - will do. I think I would spend a few extra £s to get twice the storage though - I love taking photos.

althas - not really bothered about portability tbh, esp if it costs more!

Esoog

You'll find no matter what drive you look at they'll be a lot of good reviews (on amazon for example) and a lot bad reviews since all kinds of things can happen, even getting knocked around in the post.

The most important thing to do is as already suggested (and you do) and keep a backup of backup on DVDs etc, then buy a "decent" brand from a reputable place like Amazon so you can get a replacement if yours fails in the guarantee period.

"Decent" brands (my opinion) as mentioned earlier; Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung, Western Digital

The Samsung Story drive (1.TB/1.5 TB) is meant to be quite good, I opted personally for a WD from Amazon but only because the offer on the story had run out

I should add I've had a few internal Maxtors and most of them have failed after a few years I've had an external Iomega 500gig that's still going strong after about four years or so - I think I got it after seeing it on the grabbit board here , Seagates seem to have a reputation for failing too; google seagate click of death

closed

buy a few dvd's, cost pennies, and hold 4.7GB