Rugged hard drives

JonathanRyan

JonathanRyan

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My current portable hard drive appears to be failing and since (a) it's important and (b) they are cheap I think I'll just get a new one.

I shoot tethered on location and run periodic backups to a USB drive. Then I stick the laptop in my bag and hard drive in my pocket and head home. The plan is that if the bag with the laptop in it gets nicked/run over/microwaved then I have another copy on me - so the drive is kind of important.

Anybody used those rugged drives? Lacies used to be all the rage but they seem pricey and I don't really like Lacie as a brand. Contenders seem to be Adata and the Transcend milspec. Any thoughts? I think I'd really like a WD Passport with their Nomad case but it looks like they may have discontinued it.

Needs to be USB. USB 3 would be nice. 500 GB is enough - 1TB is fine. Shock resistance should be useful, waterproof not so much (I can't imagine a realistic scenario where I get it so wet that a regular drive would fail. If it's raining that hard it would go in a ziplock bag.) Mac compatible, obvs. But I wouldn't trust any bundled software anyway so I'm pretty sure any drive will work with a modern Mac.
 
neil_g said:
if you open up a lacie its nothing like rugged. unless you count a couple of small bits of foam supporting the drive and a thin rubber outer rugged.
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Yeah - one reason I don't like the brand is that they appear to get any old kit, glue it together in cheap ways and then put a fancy case on it. And please, nobody make any comparisons with Apple :D
 
I would use the solid state hard drives that we see a lot more of nowadays. I have one that is the size of a credit card (a little thicker obviously), with no moving parts and is 128GB. You can get these a lot larger in terms of capacity. It weighs a few grams, has been dropped, wet, lost and found! and is no problem at all. It is also USB 3.0 so is fast. Mine is verbatim but you can get various ones now.

Chris
 
Do you mean a thumb drive, Chris? I've found those very slow in the past compared to a spinning metal HD. Is there a particular one you'd recommend? I guess 64GB should be enough for a day.
 
Hi Jonathan, no, although I have some USB 3 pen drives with 64GB capacity that are like lightening too. The portable hard drive that I was referring to is a very small verbatim one. Link here http://www.verbatim.com/prod/solid-state-drives/external/store-n-go-usb-3.0-external-ssd-sku-47623/

These are light as a feather and don't feel particularly rugged but it is the size of a credit card and has no moving parts at all. I have a few of them and as far as large storage with portability these are great for me.

Hope that helps

Chris
 
Oh those look good :)

A little pricier than I had in mind though :(

Actually I have a 128 GB SSD kicking around. Any reason why I shouldn't put that in an external caddy?
 
Hi Jonathan, your asking the wrong person. When it comes to IT issues so long as it work I am happy. The ins and outs of how things work is beyond me! Clueless!!

Chris
 
The USB3 WD Passports are good.

I have a 500gb and used it to back up my photos from the laptop each day I'm away travelling, left laptop in the hotel and then kept HDD on me. Took it through -10c snow up in the Grand Canyon ridges, to +30c humid tropics in S.E Asia and it has never skipped a beat. Taken a few knocks too as it's been carted around from A->B and is fine. They are so small compared to the larger external drives I sometime use, easy to store in your pocket or bag.

Well priced and fast too.
 
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Adam - do you have the Nomad case for it? I tried calling WD but they can't say if they still make it or not......
 
JonathanRyan said:
Actually I have a 128 GB SSD kicking around. Any reason why I shouldn't put that in an external caddy?
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I've got one of my spare SSDs in an external USB 2.0 2.5" caddy, works well & very portable
 
My two shoot drives are Passports in Nomad cases - they feel bombproof tbh, if you can get your hands on one then they're almost certainly a much better option than the Lacies - which namely seem to have a bit of orange rubber to make them look all industrial, and for that reason are the industry standard.


No reason to stop you putting an SSD in a caddy, nope, just get a decent USB 3.0 one
 
JonathanRyan said:
Adam - do you have the Nomad case for it? I tried calling WD but they can't say if they still make it or not......
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I just use it as is, despite what I've subjected it to it's not even scratched. It feels very well made and tough, if you shake it, there is just no movement or play at all, especially compared to the same size Samsung offerings others in my family use.

Unless you put it loose into a big bag of rocks or other hard objects, personally I can't see a need for the case. See if you can find one on display in a shop somewhere and have a feel of it, would probably reassure you.

That said, if you do want the case: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Western-D...572?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item565a843a4c

$6 cost + $5 postage to the UK, so only about £5-£7 all in for the case! So cheap it's rude not to.
 
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That's all true. Just bought a couple of cases - if I worked it out right they should be under the import duty limit.

If they turn up I'll but a Passport and then think about eBaying the spare one to pay for it :D
 
I had a Freecom Toughdrive for years when I was consulting in the UK, just threw it in the bottom of the bag, abused, and never had a problem. That said, these days, just get an external SSD, short of drowning it, you won't break it!
 
OK so AFTER I bought the Nomad cases (and after they have been despatched) I finally read the WD page properly.

It seems these only fit some versions of the Passport drives. They seem to have upgraded the range to the new "ultra" which is thinner than the original My Passport. Can't find any measurements online so I guess the only way to find out if they fit is to buy one and see :( It's possible it will fit but I may not be able to use it in the case (not a big deal TBH).

I suspect the ultra range is the reason you can't easily get Nomads any more.
 
That was one of the ones I mentioned in the first post. I'm guessing nobody here has tried it.
 
I have a Western Digital Passport in an Amazon gadget case that is a hard shell. I looked at the 'rugged' ones, but I couldn't justify the price (and the reviews didn't seem so good) so this is a good compromise. Takes about an extra ten seconds to put it back in it's case, but I can live with that. At least it keeps the wire with the drive, otherwise I'd lose it...
 
You're probably the kind of person that wouldn't spill coffee on your drive while it was running..... ;)
 
JonathanRyan said:
You're probably the kind of person that wouldn't spill coffee on your drive while it was running..... ;)
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It was tea on the last one. :-( Fortunately the Passports seem to be reasonably indestructible compared to other similar ones.
 
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