External Hard Drive

[gbrehmer]

I would like to purchase an external hard drive for my Dell Lap Top computer to store my pictures. Is there any brand thats better suited for this than others? Do I need to spend more for better quality or are they all essentially the same just with different manufacterers? I'm looking for 500GB or larger.

[Murtasma]

You should be fine with any of the major manufactures such as Seagate or western digital.

[sk66]

Just get the largest size suitable with the fastest connection your laptop is capable of.

I have a 1TB Lacie Quadra for "networked" and a 500GB WD Passport for "portable". Both of my drives support firewire 800. The Quadra also supports ESATA. With the large file sizes of RAW images, faster transfer rates do make a notable difference.

[WooD]

I use WD passports.

I've never used a Seagate external, but the last two hard drive crashes I've had were both Seagate internal drives.

[Murtasma]

If you really care about protecting your data I would get an external Raid enclosure so you can mirror the drives.

[Big Nick]

Originally Posted by Murtasma

If you really care about protecting your data I would get an external Raid enclosure so you can mirror the drives.

Raid 5 is more preferable. Raid 1 and 3 are not as much for redundancy as for increasing performance

[PnwGuy]

Originally Posted by WooD

I use WD passports.

I've never used a Seagate external, but the last two hard drive crashes I've had were both Seagate internal drives.

WD and Seagate are the two frontrunners on drives, both internal and external. Unfortunately all hard drives fail. As a computer tech I tend to see a higher failure rate with Hitachi drives and I didn't have much luck with Lacie drives when I first tried them about three years ago. I stick to either HD or SG.

[sk66]

Originally Posted by PnwGuy

WD and Seagate are the two frontrunners on drives, both internal and external. Unfortunately all hard drives fail. As a computer tech I tend to see a higher failure rate with Hitachi drives and I didn't have much luck with Lacie drives when I first tried them about three years ago. I stick to either HD or SG.

Lacie had problems when they were using Hitachi drives (they were the first to offer large small format drives I guess). My Quadra has a Seagate 1tb Barracuda in it....

And that does bring up a point...If you are buying an external drive by someone other than a drive manufacturer (i.e. not WD) then you really need to be MORE concerned with what drive is INSIDE the enclosure.

[Johndoe234]

Based on your system configuration you need to buy a hard drive. Otherwise it will create problem. Also the memory of your Hard-drive also based on that only.

[PnwGuy]

Originally Posted by sk66

Lacie had problems when they were using Hitachi drives (they were the first to offer large small format drives I guess). My Quadra has a Seagate 1tb Barracuda in it....

And that does bring up a point...If you are buying an external drive by someone other than a drive manufacturer (i.e. not WD) then you really need to be MORE concerned with what drive is INSIDE the enclosure.

Ahhhh...that makes sense then. I did not know that. Thanks for enlightening me. Maybe I'll give them another shot.

I tell people I'm a professional computer tech, not an expert. I get paid to do it, I don't know everything. :-)