External Hard Drive Recommendations Please

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Rich
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Popped in here to benefit from your extensive and expert collective wisdom, kissed some arse so now its down to business.

Looking for a external hard drive to sit next to my pc (intel i5, win 7, usb 2.0) pretty much permanently connected to use as a back up from Lightroom. Would prefer if its portable so probably usb powered, but do have spare mains sockets available if needs be.

Thought 1TB would be a good starting point, currently using a WD My Passport 250gb which is getting full, could do with a good clear out. Generally I don't keep thousands of photos, camera is 16mp so not massive files and no intention of changing in the near to medium future

Hoping to spend sub 100 quid, but little bit over would be ok depending on your advice, any more information needed just ask

Thank you
Rich
 
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I recently bought a Toshiba Canvio 1TB for £40 from Tesco. Works a treat. I don't have it permanently connected though, only when I want perform a backup.
 
everyone has horror stories on each make to be honest.

personally ive had nothing but issues with:

WD MyPassport (the 2.5" USB3 type)
Lacie "Rugged" portables

whatever you get though, get 2 so that you always have at least 2 copies of your data and rotate 1 off site (friends/family/work address).
 
neil_g said:
whatever you get though, get 2 so that you always have at least 2 copies of your data and rotate 1 off site (friends/family/work address).
Click to expand...

I second this - but another option is to use the free version of crashplan, which can backup over the internet to other users of the free version of crashplan. So you can backup your stuff to another location, and whoever is there can backup their stuff to you (if they want). It's encrypted, so you can't read each other's stuff, and you're sharing your bandwidth with them, but if you trust them enough to hold onto a physical disk, then holding onto encrypted data should be fine too.
 
depends how much data you have any what your upload speed is like though.

even on my VM 150mb, the upload is capped at 10mb which would take an eternity to upload lots of TB :D
 
Thanks all for the suggestions so far, have to say my old WD still works fine although my daughters Seagate failed in no time at all

Very good point about getting two, at the moment I back up anything important to the aforementioned hard drive and then onto an old laptop stripped of pretty much everything bar the essentials

Keep the suggestions coming please, just been looking on Amazon and so many to choose from, definitely want to use something tangible, not the cloud or any other web based system

Thanks again
Rich
 
neil_g said:
depends how much data you have any what your upload speed is like though.

even on my VM 150mb, the upload is capped at 10mb which would take an eternity to upload lots of TB :D
Click to expand...

Yep, volumes matter, but, better to have a copy offsite that always updates, even if slowly, rather than have a copy onsite you forgot to take out of the building. I just wouldn't remember, so for me, using a backup service to get the data offsite was essential.
 
Just go on to ebuyer and get two of the cheapest you see!
 
Went for the Samsung M3 in the end, who knows what it will be like, every single model I looked at had mixed reviews.

Just picked one that had been around a while, no fancy encryption business and didn't break the bank.

No doubt someone has had a terrible time with one of these, but its all done and dusted now though

Thanks again for taking the time to reply with advice and suggestions

Cheers
Rich
 
FWIW another failed WD portable landed on my desk this morning.

the WD Scoripio Blue inside appears to be completely dead. the owner is now looking at several hundred pounds for recovery.

2 hard drives is much cheaper..
 
Look at the cloud option also, you only need a breakin or house fire and its all over.
 
I've got a couple of those Samsung M3 drives, they are seagate drives inside and both have been fine upto now.

Echo sentiments in getting another, just in case. Some would suggest different manufacturer in case of defects with the manufacturing for an entire range :)
 
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