External Harddrive advice

• User495 wrote on 2012-05-01 09:42
  I have 2 now, so I'm trying to decide which to use for what
  
  
  I plan to use one, purely for Photos
  
  while the other as a system backup of sorts
  
  Seagate vs Western Digital
  
  
  also should I use the software that comes with the drives? cause I 've been neglecting those since I got my Seagate drive (new one is the WD)
  
  so yeah, advice would be appretiated
  
  
  note: I noticed that you guys may be misunderstanding some of what I said
  
  

  
  
  • I have 2 External Harddrives, Seagate, and Western Digital
    
    
  • I'm not sure which to use for what
    
    
  • I want to use 1 for Photos
    
    
  • and 1 for system backup
    
• Sumpfkraut wrote on 2012-05-01 11:45
  The differences between various Seagate and WD drives probably amount to subjective preferences rather than significant objective shortcomings or advantages, and there's too little information to guide you here really.
  
  Do you wish it to be portable? What about shock resistance, is that an issue? Should it look pretty or do looks not matter? What about heat production in long usage sessions? Would you even use it for longer periods of time, or would you just store it away, sometime browse through one or two folders for a few minutes, and be done with it?
  Because if you don't have any high expectations for "comfort" functions like that, you might well get away with a significantly cheaper product than we would be inclined to offer you.
  
  
  Either way, I can tell you that I have bought a WD Passport Essential and am very pleased by it. It's very small, doesn't need an additional power connection and is thus superbly portable, and according to reviews it's quite shock resistant too, not something I would want to test with mine though - falling down from a ledge has been the ruin of my old external HDD so naturally this is important to me. It doesn't get hot either, even with constant usage, lukewarm at worst. The cable is very short though. It also has encryption functions, but I don't need those.
• Knightmehre wrote on 2012-05-01 12:44
  Seagate's are typically known for being a little crappy so I'd go with WD
• User495 wrote on 2012-05-01 12:46
  I probably won't connect them for long durations because their purpose is primarily just as backup drives
  
  so that isn't an issue
  
  and WD is noticeable smaller than Seagate, however the difference isn't really big enough to say one is much better in terms of portability (though smaller is always better in that regard)
  
  I'm mostly thinking whether I would want to use the smaller one for Photos because of portability I may need it when I travel and take pictures or maybe it's better to use it for system backup because I can take around files that I might need , but again the size difference is minimal, but it's still something I'm taking into consideration
  
  
  and thanks for the response
  
  

  Quote from Knightmehre;853046:

  Seagate's are typically known for being a little crappy so I'd go with WD

  
  
  oh, dang I've had my Seagate for about 4-5 months now with no problems, now that's something to think about
• EndlessDreams wrote on 2012-05-01 14:52
  If the photos are important, I wouldn't put them only in external drives since they do fail pretty often. To me, the two companies is about the same. It really just depend on your "luck" whether or not you got a HD that fails pretty quickly or one that is fine.
• User495 wrote on 2012-05-01 15:58

  Quote from EndlessDreams;853140:

  If the photos are important, I wouldn't put them only in external drives since they do fail pretty often. To me, the two companies is about the same. It really just depend on your "luck" whether or not you got a HD that fails pretty quickly or one that is fine.

  
  
  if that's the case, what should I do with the photos?
  
  I figured having a harddrive dedicated to storing photos would be better if I plan to use my camera more later down the line
  
  also it is of enough importance that I wanted to make a backup for it
• TA wrote on 2012-05-01 16:16
  Sev... a hdd exclusively for photos is probably a bad idea unless you're archiving hundreds of thousands of game screenshots or something.
  
  If it's super important, I'd recommend burning it to bluray and keeping them in a case and in a fire safe. HDD's fail. Blurays don't. Ever.*
  [SIZE="1"]Unless they get scratched badly or smashed or something. But with proper care, they don't fail! Cases, and fire safe![/SIZE]
  
  As for externals, last I heard WD externals suck, but they have much more reliable internals, and a very good advanced RMA policy.
  
  It doesn't really matter what you get. I got a 2TB Seagate external recently. Hasn't caused any problems yet, but it hasn't even been a month. I'm mostly keeping animes I've watched and probably won't watch again and raw video footage prior to encodes and whatnot on there, and keeping my [s]porn[/s] important stuff on more reliable internal drives.
  
  I keep my super important stuff redundant on 3 hdds, a usb stick, and on blurays in a firesafe.
• User495 wrote on 2012-05-01 16:20

  Quote from TA;853176:

  Sev... a hdd exclusively for photos is probably a bad idea unless you're archiving hundreds of thousands of game screenshots or something.
  
  If it's super important, I'd recommend burning it to bluray and keeping them in a case and in a fire safe. HDD's fail. Blurays don't. Ever.*
  [SIZE="1"]Unless they get scratched badly or smashed or something. But with proper care, they don't fail! Cases, and fire safe![/SIZE]
  
  As for externals, last I heard WD externals suck, but they have much more reliable internals, and a very good advanced RMA policy.
  
  It doesn't really matter what you get. I got a 2TB Seagate external recently. Hasn't caused any problems yet, but it hasn't even been a month. I'm mostly keeping animes I've watched and probably won't watch again and raw video footage prior to encodes and whatnot on there, and keeping my [s]porn[/s] important stuff on more reliable internal drives.
  
  I keep my super important stuff redundant on 3 hdds, a usb stick, and on blurays in a firesafe.

  
  
  1600x1200 photos, so far 1.56 GBs worth is being stored on it
  and planning to use it for photographs from now on, so that I can make room on the SD card in the camera is the main reason behind it, CDs just seem like abit of a hassle when the images start piling up
  
  
  another reason I started using External Harddrives is cause of how - it's been a long time since I've used CDs to store things, but back then if I don't use a CD for awhile, the thing gets wiped somehow, but it doesn't happen to all of them, just , but it happens, and I never scratch any of my CDs either
  
  though this talk of Harddrive failures is making me abit paranoid and wonder why these exist if they were expected to fail xD
• Sumpfkraut wrote on 2012-05-01 19:18

  Quote from Seviraph;853181:

  though this talk of Harddrive failures is making me abit paranoid and wonder why these exist if they were expected to fail xD

  
  They're not expected to fail, it's just that a small percentage does from time to time.
• rzetlin wrote on 2012-05-01 19:54
  Personally I prefer Western Digital hard drives - I find them reliable.
  
  Regardless of what hard drive manufacture you choose, it is always good to have a backup.
  
  As somebody who had suffered a hard drive failure due to a power surge (and lost all photos, videos and music), I know first hand how time consuming and expensive it is to recover lost information.
  
  Always buy two hard drives - first one is to storage your information and the second one as a backup.
  
  With the inexpensive cost of storage it is not more excuse not to backup unless you enjoy losing your stuff.
• Yoorah wrote on 2012-05-01 22:28

  Quote from TA;853176:

  If it's super important, I'd recommend burning it to bluray and keeping them in a case and in a fire safe. HDD's fail. Blurays don't. Ever.*
  [SIZE="1"]Unless they get scratched badly or smashed or something. But with proper care, they don't fail! Cases, and fire safe![/SIZE]

  
  Blu-ray does fail. Similarly to CDs and DVDs, a lot depends on the media quality and storage conditions. As far as I know, accelerated aging tests have yielded results that are all over the place and cannot be trusted, even with reputable organizations like NIST. It's not a bad idea to keep a duplicate of the data on Blu-rays anyway, but I definitely would not depend on it.
• Pierce wrote on 2012-05-02 08:16
  Use the cloud.
• User495 wrote on 2012-05-02 09:28

  Quote from Pierce;853766:

  Use the cloud.

  
  
  this doesn't really help
• Excalibur wrote on 2012-05-02 23:40

  Quote from Seviraph;853783:

  this doesn't really help

  
  
  What he meant to say was: "Buy a whole bunch of servers across the globe and sync your files with each one of your servers."