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Paul McFarlane
13th May 2008, 12:15 PM
Question to those in the know:

I need to relocate my collection of aviation photos from my company laptop. I have been looking at external and portable hard drives for the job.

I notice there is a plethora of cheaper ones on shopping websites, but I'm not sure of the pitfalls (if any) in getting one of these. I guess the biggest concern is that if the drive fails to function all those photos are lost.

I know a lot of users have flickr accounts (as do I) but I now have over 40GB of photos and really don't think that flcikr is the answer. Tell me if I'm wrong though.

Look forward to hearing you all..

Paul

Kurt A
13th May 2008, 12:17 PM
Buy two. Either way, back up in more places than 1.

Erik H. Bakke
13th May 2008, 02:58 PM
Just be aware that Windows operating systems, XP in particular, has problems with a lot of USB drives.
I long ago lost count of how many times I got "Delayed write failed when writing $MFT".

I recommend running some fairly heavy stresstests on your computer and drive if you want to use that combination. The best results can be expected if you use a drive with an external power supply.

I can't say anything about the current state of things, though. It's been several years since I've trusted my photo collection to any version of Windows. I now have about 260Gb of photos, which I store in my own database application as well as in files on disk.

Also, I highly second the suggestion from Kurt about using two drives. A good rule is to always have a backup of your work, and to never overwrite your primary backup until you've made a backup of your backup.

Sooner or later things are going to crash at the worst possible time, just when you're making a backup, resulting in both the original and backup being lost.

Rhys Xanthis
13th May 2008, 03:11 PM
Buy a Western Digital Passport, come in a variety of sizes.

Michael Morrison
13th May 2008, 03:14 PM
Hi Paul,

I agree with Ryhs...the western digital's are quite nice and if you get the passport series they are also quite small and portable.

Should be able to source 160GB ish for under $150

There are cheaper ones like $99, but I'd spend a bit more.

Kent Broadhead
13th May 2008, 03:16 PM
I backup to an external drive (LaCie) and burn to disc which I store off-site.

External drives are so cheap these days you'd be silly not to do it.

Kent

PS. Easy with the Mac - been drag and drop for decades......

Chris W
13th May 2008, 04:09 PM
PS. Easy with the Mac - been drag and drop for decades......

Or just use the Time Machine feature.

Andrew McLaughlin
13th May 2008, 05:44 PM
I run two external hard drives in parallel and back up everything on my C: drive to both of them every month, overwriting the previous month's backup. If one fails, you still have the other.

I also burn a DVD off of stuff I'm currently working on (for the next issue for example) each week, and keep that off site.

Raymond Rowe
13th May 2008, 06:48 PM
I run a WD 160 GB hard drive with all my photos on it is backed up on a friends Portable drive and the photos i want are on my laptop so i can use them when needed.The portable drive i bought is one of the best money ever spent.

Paul McFarlane
14th May 2008, 10:17 AM
Thank you to all for your thoughts and ideas.

I think I will go and purchase two units and transfer the data to both.

Many thanks again.

Paul