External hard drive reccomendations

Iren

Iren

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Irina
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I am looking for something small/portable, reasonably priced to use with matchbook pro.
I've got advice (from another topic) to get few devices for backup my photos, so ideally two external hard drives.
 
Pretty much any USB 3.0 hard drive will do the job, they're commodity items nowadays. Pick a size and capacity to fit your budget.
 
Been using Toshiba Canvio Basics 1TB Portable External Hard Drive recently, amazon has them for about £50.
 
Iren said:
I had it before and it broke and i lost all my photos from several years :(
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WD my passports in my experience are terrible for reliability.

had several personal ones in at work where they'd failed. and because the USB3 port is soldered to the drive inside you can't do the old trick of removing and putting into a new enclosure.

but yes as above, always have at least 2 copies of your data at all times.
 
I've been using Toshiba drives since 2009, 1TB and 2TB sizes in the desktop variety (i.e not portable, needs external power supply) without failure - I used to have one attached to my Macbook to do hourly backups using time machine.

We had one of the portable Samsung M3 drives (also available badged as Maxtor) that failed within a couple of months, and like Neil said about the WD passports, the USB port is soldered direct to the drive so you cannot replace the caddy & control circuits.
 
Iren said:
I learnt my lesson hard way, but I am also thinking of online storage as 3rd option, but not too keen pay on the monthly basis.
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Mega gives you 50GB of cloud storage FREE, which these days is not much but is very handy and very easy to use and you can get various paid options;

www.mega.nz

I also use Seagate HDDs, like these:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Ex...id=1478302343&sr=8-1&keywords=seagate+5TB+HDD

which I've had no trouble with over about 7 years or more in sizes from 2TB to 5TB.

Or you could get a caddy like these:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/gjr/USB-...6&sr=1-2-fkmr0&keywords=sumvision+apex+2+usb3

and put your own sata hdd in.

I also have had quite a few of these over the years both USB2 and USB3 and found they worked perfectly.
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I have had two Western Digital drives fail. So far Toshiba ones have been very reliable.
 
Do you really need portable if it's for back up? I have some portable ones for shooting on location from time to time. But back ups are all on (much cheaper, and often easier to fix) desktop hard drives.
andyscott said:
Samsung t3

Far better than a spinning disk
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Is it far better for a back up drive? You could buy a bucket load of spinning disks for the price - which incidentally, would be a far better back up.
 
Jayst84 said:
Do you really need portable if it's for back up? I have some portable ones for shooting on location from time to time. But back ups are all on (much cheaper, and often easier to fix) desktop hard drives.

Is it far better for a back up drive? You could buy a bucket load of spinning disks for the price - which incidentally, would be a far better back up.
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To quote the OP "I am looking for something small/portable"
 
Iren said:
I learnt my lesson hard way, but I am also thinking of online storage as 3rd option, but not too keen pay on the monthly basis.
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If BT is your broadband then they do 500GB free online storage with some of the packages, may be worth looking to see what your service provider does, but the user interface on the BT one is pants.
 
Suomi said:
If BT is your broadband then they do 500GB free online storage with some of the packages, may be worth looking to see what your service provider does, but the user interface on the BT one is pants.
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I didn't even notice this, many thanks.
 
To me, the essence of a backup drive is that it stays safely at home (or office) rather than travelling generally, so a larger, heavy drive is entirely appropriate. When travelling I would tend to store images on a computer AND the memory cards in the camera until I got home.
 
As Toni points out keeping the images on the memory cards is a good option if you can. For the Maine trip I had one big SD card which stayed in the camera, and CFs which when full was put into a separate bag, camera copying the images to both cards. Each night the SD card was downloaded to the computer and then returned to the camera without reformatting the card. Then what was new on the computer was copied across to the portable hard drive which was left locked in a bag in the hotel room when out. Finally once all that was done each night I tried to upload to the cloud, and here you at the mercy of the hotels wifi speed.
 
Jayst84 said:
Do you really need portable if it's for back up? I have some portable ones for shooting on location from time to time. But back ups are all on (much cheaper, and often easier to fix) desktop hard drives.

Is it far better for a back up drive? You could buy a bucket load of spinning disks for the price - which incidentally, would be a far better back up.
Click to expand...

I don't have desktop or dedicated space, so I edit on my laptop in various locations at home and need something I can plug in, back up and put away
 
ancient_mariner said:
To me, the essence of a backup drive is that it stays safely at home (or office) rather than travelling generally, so a larger, heavy drive is entirely appropriate. When travelling I would tend to store images on a computer AND the memory cards in the camera until I got home.
Click to expand...

I don't have desktop or dedicated space, so I edit on my laptop in various locations at home and need something I can plug in, back up and put away
 
I use standard 3.5" SATA desktop drives plugged in a quickport device: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SHARKOON-Q...UTF8&qid=1484948689&sr=1-1&keywords=quickport

When the drive is not in use, i keep it in a plastic case such as: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clear-Driv...4948839&sr=1-15&keywords=sata+drive+protector

I have used WD, Seagate, Samsung drives and haven't had any of them fail on me (yet).

The perfect backup setup for me is: 1 backup copy at home, 1 backup copy in another location (in case of fire), and 1 backup copy in the Cloud (which is always up-to-date).
 
Iren said:
I don't have desktop or dedicated space, so I edit on my laptop in various locations at home and need something I can plug in, back up and put away
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You need at least 2 backups and I would say 1 in the cloud as well, all my photos are on 2 x 4TB hdds and in at least 2 different cloud backups, as well as on Blu-Ray discs.

Might seem a bit of overkill but among then are many family and location ones which I could never repeat.
 
Iren said:
I don't have desktop or dedicated space, so I edit on my laptop in various locations at home and need something I can plug in, back up and put away
Click to expand...
Yeah, so you could get more for your money with a standard external HD then, as you don't need to pay for a pocket/portable one. Then you don't have to worry about failures with soldered on USB hubs and things either.
 
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