external hard drive for photo back up

[spudhead]

ok as title can anyone suggest a decent external hard drive for photo back up ? I am running capture 20 and need some external storage for large uncompressed raw files.
I have a couple of laptop one windows 10 and an older one windows 8 thanks in advance

 

[WeeMalky]

Western Digital do some good deals on refurbished products some are just returns I believe never used always worth a look

Recertified: Shop Recertified Digital Storage Drives | Western Digital

With recertified storage drives, get top-quality devices for less.

shop.westerndigital.com

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

I've got a suggestion on one you should avoid (if that helps). I got one of those Lacie 1TB rugged external hard drives and its good for what they are designed for: rubberized outer-shell protects it from drop/shock damage. However the thing is almost as big as 3 non-rugged external hard drives stacked together and the USB3.0 cable doesn't always fit snuggly. I wouldn't buy that again.

 

[Uncle Kevriano]

I've avoided WD since I have had 2 fail, so I tend to stick with Iomega, Seagate and Toshiba, all of which have proved very reliable.

 

[spudhead]

thanks people I have a small 1tb Toshiba and that ok

 

[spudhead]

so I looked at the link wee malky added and I bought a 4tb thanks

 

[Tim Mayo]

I like the Samsung T5 drives for portability. For something larger then I can recommend the Synology DiskStation DS220+. I've been using the older DS218+ model for years without any issues.

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

I like the Samsung T5 drives for portability. For something larger then I can recommend the Synology DiskStation DS220+. I've been using the older DS218+ model for years without any issues.

Yeah those T5s are nice compact units.

 

[Osval]

As said by @Kevriano, stay away from WD. I have lost lots of pictures and videos after catastrophically failing two of them (1Tb each) within a week (MBR damaged, so, no can do)

 

[santoso.video]

I have used a Seagate Backup Plus 4TB extensively since 2017. I think the model is in their basic line now. It has worked really well for me.

 

[ScotCampbell2]

Samsung EVO 860 or 870 for “permanent” installation. Samsung T7, T5, X5 for external “portable” use.

I’ve used the EVOs in my MacBook Pro and Mac Mini for image storage/processing and other computing purposes - never a hiccup and extraordinary read/write speeds. I’ve heard good things about the T5 and guess the T7 and X5 return similar performance. All offer the usual security options. Crucial seems aligned with Mac computing though not exclusively and are just a notch off Samsung.

 

[AlphaWorld]

I think the words that should be displayed at the start of every photo processing program are:

HARD DRIVES FAIL!​

Yes, I know some of you have been able to use a hard drive for years without it failing, but sooner or later, every hard drive fails.

If it's spinning metal, bear in mind that the bearings will wear out, if nothing else, especially if it's permanently attached to your photo processing PC, and therefore spinning all the time.

If it's an SSD, well, they have write limits, and when you've written that much they fail, too (if you are lucky, they may fail to readonly, letting you read the data back, but that it not guaranteed).

There are several ways to protect yourself, but the simplest one is also the one that tends to get neglected... Take backups! More than you think you need. The rule of thumb, back in the day when storage was expensive, was to have three backups of everything. These days, with external 4TB and 5TB drives costing very little, I use a fresh drive for each full backup, and just let them accumulate. I mostly use Seagate and WD for backups because they are readily available. Ideally I'd alternate them, in case a particular drive model turned out to be faulty in some way (every brand has the occasional bad model). Make sure to keep some of them off-site, in case your house or apartment burns down. Another option I've seen advertised is a special fire-proof container. Don't use a regular fire-safe - they are designed to protect paper, not hard drives. There's also the option of cloud backup.

At the moment my backup media of choice is a USB-powered 2.5" external drive. All the 3.5" external drives I've seen use some version of wall-wart transformer, and I don't want to have to go scrabbling through a drawer of transformers to find the one I need for a specific drive USB looks like being around for a while yet, so USB powered drives look like a safer bet.

 

[Ralph]

I recently had a harddrive just stop on me. Yep lost this downloads I can no longer get sadly.
But that said I have got my bird photo's on a 4 TB WD harddrive and I have had it for a while.
I told my wife my other one died and she bought me another one and I backed up all my bird photo's on to that.
When not in use there is no need to have them connected as I think this help shorten the life of them.
I have got another harddrive for anything but birds.
But can come in handly to free up my lap top late at night then transfer them to my bird ones.
So I have got the 2 for birds one is a full back up one and as mentioned what I do with the other.

As Alphaworld (Tony) said the price is quite cheap these days to replace them and I do think they start to get you warning signs
that they are going to break down to. Like on original bird one is getting hard to get it to be plugged in and for my laptop to say its there.
I think this is a sign that its on its last legs.
On brand I had a Seagate which broke down real quick. So I only use WD .

Now with the new camera I might have to look at a 5 tb due to file size. meaning it is going to fill real quick.

 

[Jeff A]

Regarding currently manufactured hard drives, I have a suspicion that regardless of the brand, they are mostly coming from the same place. I wonder if anyone is tracking hard drive reliability by brand and model??

 

[Jackson]

I have a 2 TB Samsung T5 SSD and like Timothy, I’d recommend for portability.

My general impression is that a SSD is more reliable than a hard drive for most applications but I have no data to back up such a statement. I think your individual use case can have some influence on whether this is true. If you are using the drive for mostly archiving purposes and want to store the data for 10+ years untouched, my impression is that magnetic media of a hard drive will retain data longer than charged based storage of an SSD, but again I can’t really support this argument with data.

Several years ago, Google did a study on hard drive reliability. But this was before SSD’s were available and a cost effective alternative. The authors of the study wouldn’t divulge the manufacturer of their hard drives though (I guess they decided this information gave them a competitive advantage).

 

[Uncle Kevriano]

SSD is most definitely the way to go, no moving parts to fail, which is always the issue with a normal drive. If they ever come down in price enough I will start using them.

 

[Reciprocum]

SSD is most definitely the way to go, no moving parts to fail, which is always the issue with a normal drive. If they ever come down in price enough I will start using them.

Totally agree, before, with USB-3 connected external HDD, backup was an hour long procedure that I only did once a month. Now with TB3 SSD storage (Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q) it is 10x faster and I do backups weekly or even more often (if I just ingested a payed session RAW batch I immediately do a backup, it's only 6 minutes long now).

Edit: this drive is extremely small, light and portable, totally silent, also backwards USB-3 compatible, so I use it to propagate/transport my latest MacMini backup to all other machines in the house (Win10 PC also with a TB3 USB-C port, MacBook, even the iPad-pro can power it and use it via its single USB-C port). But the "catch" to take full advantage of such a drive is to have thunderbolt ports in as many of your machines as possible otherwise it defaults to USB-3 speeds due to connection bottlenecks.

 

[nashgill]

Backblaze publishes their drive reliability stats. https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html
I use a Samsung T5 SSD for travel use, and a Synology 4 disk NAS for home, backed up to a cloud backup provider. I read report of the Samsung T7's getting pretty hot under use, so I just went with the T5.