Cheapest place to get a external harddrive from?

Matt Sayle

Matt Sayle

2017MSA Young Photographer of the Year(Motorsport)
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Matt Sayle
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I have filled up the comptuer and my external hard drive with pictures so I was wonderinf where is the cheapest place to get one from??

Thanks,
Matt

this is the result of over 100,000 pictures in year
 
Maplins have a 1TB Seagate on offer for £79.99.
Just bought one and its fine.
Trev
 
Hi Matt, my other half came up with a blindingly good idea for mine. I got a caddy. That means that I can buy as many HD's as I like (SATA ones) and just stick them in the caddy and off I go. It just sits on top of my PC and is recognised as an external drive by windows. Works a treat and I can swop out 500GB SATA's as often as I need. :)
 
AliB said:
Hi Matt, my other half came up with a blindingly good idea for mine. I got a caddy. That means that I can buy as many HD's as I like (SATA ones) and just stick them in the caddy and off I go. It just sits on top of my PC and is recognised as an external drive by windows. Works a treat and I can swop out 500GB SATA's as often as I need. :)
Click to expand...

i use a similar idea but dont bother with a caddy as it takes alot longer too change drives than what i use.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/Shar...ction-of-a-25-35-SATA-HDD-to-your-PC-Via-USB)
 
AliB said:
Hi Matt, my other half came up with a blindingly good idea for mine. I got a caddy. That means that I can buy as many HD's as I like (SATA ones) and just stick them in the caddy and off I go. It just sits on top of my PC and is recognised as an external drive by windows. Works a treat and I can swop out 500GB SATA's as often as I need. :)
Click to expand...

Don't like the idea of this Ali. My concern is all bare hardrives just laying about over time. I buy the Mybook external drives, all nicely built and protected from the elements by a good case, I am building up a library :D:D. The other day I put one on the new mac and allowed it to become a Time Machine hard drive. This means it backs up the entire drive every hour. The first back up was amazing. Bear in mind I have only been using this Mac for 4 weeks - 1.1 million items / 182 gigs were backed up, I knew we had been busy but not that busy. The first back up took hours but subsequent ones are just updates.

Externals are so cheap compared to what they used to cost, the 1Tb Mybooks are about £60 - £70 if you get them from the right place

stew
 
I've got a Mybook Stew and it' slow, clunky and just awful with power wires and usb's for every one. I don't honestly have bare hard drives lying all over the place! I'm a woman, what do you take me for! :) I label them and keep them in ziplock bags in my cupboard.

As for changing them, it's not slow at all, pick one up, slot in another open explorer or bridge and off I go, unless they are permantley hard wired, you can't get much more simple or quick. :)About as complicated as a memory stick! :)
 
I prefer to stick to a number of smaller drives as, if the worst happens, you might only loose 100GB of photos rather than 1000GB! I have 2x 125GB drives that I picked up from 'saverstore' (previously known as Watford Electronics I believe) and though comparatively small, gives me 4 times the storage of my laptop.

Of course being smaller drives, they were a total bargain. You probably won't be able to get external drives that small any more, but you might get a 250GB for £30/40 possibly.
 
You can buy caddies that protect the HDD as well, just stick your hard drives in the enclosures (plastic or metal case with SATA connections on the back) and then take out and plug new enclosures into the caddy that is connected to the computer (rather like mikeward but with protected HDD's).

However why not stick another HDD in your machine, you may just be able to get an internal one, or if you have a spare HDD anyway you can just buy an enclosure and stick the HDD in (I bought an Icybox, however they can start at £10ish if you want a plasticy one). An ESATA version would be the quickest (as it means you will get the same speed as an internal SATA drive (E stands for external...), and far faster than USB or Firewire (ESATA will do around 70MB/s, Firewire and USB around 20-30MB/s if you are lucky), however you may need to buy an adaptor to plug into your PC (or an Esata-sata wire).

If you are using it as a backup drive and have windows there is an easy powertoy that will auto backup all the data for you too. :)
 
I've just bought a Seagate 7200 500Gb from Tesco - £49. Works very well indeed.
Cheers, Mick.
 
You can also buy an item similar to what Ali suggested, but rather than being external, it sits in one of the 5.25" bays on the front of your PC. SATA HDDs slide in the front and lock in place. I believe you can also buy cases for hard disks too.

Edit: Hdd bay here.
 
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