External Hard Drive????

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Ok, so currently due to not being able to afford a decent computer for my photography I am working off my old and slow laptop. which don't get me wrong does the job. But the fact that the disk drive no longer works it makes backing things up to disk very difficult.

With this in mind I was looking at maybe investing in an external hard drive to do my backing up on to. Plus it mean all photography is in one place.

But what I was wondering (cause I am not very computer minded)........if I use one with my laptop, can I then take the hard to say my sisters computer to enable use of her disk drive and printer??? I know there are some that connect via the US.

Also what would be a good size to look at getting, I want something that will give me plenty of room, and I have seenvarious Gb sizes, but it is all consusing (I am an enthusiastic amature tog if that helps).

Plus and input on what people have found are any good? To help spread cost I notice one of my catalouges has external hard drives but I don't know how good they are (Buffalo drivestation)..........

Any help would be great and thanks in advance for looking.
 
hi there, i would agree with buyin an external hard drive, just think how you would feel if the laptop failed and all your images were on it. (cry), i have had over the year 3 different makes of HD and would say that the Seagate 500gb seems to be quick and reliable. seagate hard drive also comes with a backup program already build into itself, but to be safe always do a hard copy onto disc, it only takes a few mins and you can sleep easy knowing you have covered all that you can.
 
PS the good thing about external hard drives are that they are portable they can go where you go, and they are simple as plug and play
 
Didn't think about the bonus of an external hard drive if the laptop fails......

Plus I thought that once I do get around to getting a new computer it would make it easier to move images about from one to the other.

Shall have a look at those mentioned and see which may suit me best.

I guess with size/space of the hard drive it is more a case of what I can afford (after all you can never have too much space to fill with images, lol)

Stupid Question No.1: Is 320Gb a lot of space when it comes to storing images (ideally I would be keeping original RAW, it's Jpeg equivilant and a processed copy of the image).
 
I would agree with the above comments, its a must, not only for your photographs but for any other documents etc you wish to bac up, i am sure most of us have regreted not having one in the ealier days.
Personally i have two, one of which is 250gb Gedcom, it really is a back up with confidence, although i now others that bac up on external hard drives and DVD.

The only part i cannot get my head around is bacing up automaticlly, not sure i can do it on my systems....

If you get one mae sure its compatible with your laptop, as you say its an old one...
 
Rocket said:
If you get one mae sure its compatible with your laptop, as you say its an old one...
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I say old.....it is two year old (which by the pace technology travels today makes it seem old). And was a cheapy make do with for the time being type laptop.

Stupid Question No.2: How would I know if it is compatable?
 
External hard drives cost virtually peanuts now,I have 2 and all my shots are in 2 locations either on the PC hard drive and the external or on both externals.That means the chances of losing your shots are virtually nil
 
I have a dead pc at home with loads of images and other stuff on it (I hope) that I am hoping to get around to recovering one day, so I learnt the hard way. This prompted me to buy a portable drive to back up to. I got a 1Tb one for about £100, does the job nicely and plugs in via USB to any computer with a spare usb port. It also has the bonus that iTunes and other stuff can be kept on there instead of my hard drive freeing up space to make this crappy laptop work a bit more efficiently.

So I'd say do it and do it fast!
 
I have just purchased a 500gb drive from aldi.

It not only connects via usb but also buy e-sata (assuming your pc has the same connection), this allows fro much faster copying.

I have also started trialing software called NTI shadow, this automatically "shadows" or copies selected data to another location whenever you change the original. So I have an external drive where I store my images, whenever I amend this drive it automatically saves it to my new drive at the same time!
 
Generally, the bigger the drive, the cheaper the cost per GB of storage is. 1TB drives are available for under £100 now, 500GB for around £50. Other popular sizes are 640 and 750GB.

You can NEVER have enough hard drive space:) I have 2.56TB and counting....
 
i#ve got 2 seagate drives from maplin - 500gb and the latest one only cost me £64. Has a 5 year guarentee and they work brilliantly!!
 
if you are running vista then you can go into control panel, select back up then enter where and when to back up auto.
 
I thought you might be running on a real old system , but being two yrs old its most likly winXP, so you won't have any probs, just connect it through your usb....

KTanner said:
Stupid Question No.2: How would I know if it is compatable?
Click to expand...
 
Rocket said:
I thought you might be running on a real old system , but being two yrs old its most likly winXP, so you won't have any probs, just connect it through your usb....
Click to expand...


Win XP it is..........................you will have to forgive a daft blonde for not explaining herself correctly :bonk:
 
Pippy_Neville said:
I have a dead pc at home with loads of images and other stuff on it (I hope) that I am hoping to get around to recovering one day, so I learnt the hard way.
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Pippy,

Take the hard drive out of the dead system and shove it into your other system and you can get your other stuff off the old drive.
 
Pippy_Neville said:
I have a dead pc at home with loads of images and other stuff on it (I hope) that I am hoping to get around to recovering one day,
Click to expand...

Hi Pippy

a quick easy way to get data off a drive is to buy a USB to IDE Adaptor cable from Maplin - if your hard drive is SATA there is also a cable for that

basically it turns it into an external drive
 
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