Can anyone recommend a portable HD?

[EmyB]

I'd like a USB powered portable hard drive to back up my personal photos. I can't imagine needing more than 500GB but I think they're all 1TB now anyhoo.

I have a tendency for digital things to die on me. So far I've lost a previous portable HD, a pentax DSLR and a HCSD card. I'm not rough or anything, they just DIE!

So my top priority is stability and reputation for reliability. I hear some new ones have a 5-10 year warranty but I can't find which ones.

Anyone with a HD they are happy with they can recommend?

Thanks heaps,
Em

[Kheyo]

Here ya go

External Hard Drive Review 2011 | Best Portable Hard Drive | USB Hard Drive - TopTenREVIEWS

Fairly well laid out feature comparison and rating system. Google can provide further detailed reviews if you want to really know what your buying.

And the top there seems to be a Western Digital, which I can vouch for being a really good drive as far as reliability goes. Just don't drop it because I have seen the odd drive that was a little more sensitive to shock, but they seem to be manufacturer anomaly. Seagate is decent as well, but I remember them having a bad go at one point. I used to use samsung drives in my laptops and I remember them to be quite sturdy drives and able to take some light accidental abuse, but with all drives it's better to be careful then think the strength of the drive will survive

[cyber3d]

If things die on you, I suggest getting two back up drives. Use the main one for daily backups and once a week or month clone that drive the the backup of the backup.

[Kheyo]

Originally Posted by cyber3d

If things die on you, I suggest getting two back up drives. Use the main one for daily backups and once a week or month clone that drive the the backup of the backup.

Or even burn the new additions to that drive to disc regularly.

[Zeke Menuar]

I use standard laptop hard drives placed in a USB drive enclosure.

The drive is partitioned into two partitions. One partition is about 10gb has a Linux OS installed on it. Usually Linux Mint, YMMV.
In most cases you can boot off of this partition if needed, Otherwise it acts like any other backup drive.
It's great for emergencies or when using someone else's computer. Plug it in, set the bios to boot off the external drive and get to it.

The rest of the drive is for data.


I have two HD set up like this.

[Kheyo]

Originally Posted by Zeke Menuar

I use standard laptop hard drives placed in a USB drive enclosure.

The drive is partitioned into two partitions. One partition is about 10gb has a Linux OS installed on it. Usually Linux Mint, YMMV.
In most cases you can boot off of this partition if needed, Otherwise it acts like any other backup drive.
It's great for emergencies or when using someone else's computer. Plug it in, set the bios to boot off the external drive and get to it.

The rest of the drive is for data.


I have two HD set up like this.

90% of all external hard drives are exactly that. A normal hard drive stuffed in an enclosure (very very few are proprietary if any at all), and at one time it was cheaper to build it yourself, however, now for whatever reason, pre-built external drives are cheaper then buying a regular drive and the case and building it yourself.

[inkista]

+1 on the Western Digitals. I usually just grab a MyPassport at Costco. These are the tiny ones that use the 2.5" drives for notebooks.

However. I'd also recommend reviewing your handling of these things if you're losing them that frequently and that regularly. Maybe getting a padded or hard-sided case to put it in would be a good idea, if you're not particularly careful with your gear.

Zeke: highly recommend learning to use Clonezilla for backing up your drive. Anyone who multiboots needs this tool. I have a netbook that triple-boots into three different OSes with six separate partitions on the hard drive. Clonezilla was the only tool I found that could clone the entire hard drive onto an external maintaining all the boot sector stuff I'd slaved so hard to get working properly, and faultlessly clone all the partitions in all the different formats I was using (in my case, FAT32, NTFS, EXT3, and HFS+). Most backup packages assume you're only using one OS and one hard drive format. Clonezilla more than lives up to its name. Having it made it dead easy to swap in a larger hard drive on the netbook. Clone. Swap. Go.

[Kheyo]

Originally Posted by inkista

However. I'd also recommend reviewing your handling of these things if you're losing them that frequently and that regularly. Maybe getting a padded or hard-sided case to put it in would be a good idea, if you're not particularly careful with your gear.

or if you have the money, SSD's are far more resilient to abuse due to their lack of mechanical components, quite often they are better sealed for weather, but that's dependant on the manufacturer. But Inkista is very right if your losing them often you should really step back and try to figure out what's happening so this isn't a problem any more, and save you money

[ceremus]

Any drive from the major manufactures should be fine. Not too much difference between the different brands these days, just look for one with a 3-5 year warranty on it.

Also if you really want your data to be safe, buy two drives and keep them synced up on a regular basis. Hard drives are mechanical devices and as such it really isn't a question of if they'll fail but when. That doesn't exclude drives that are new, either. Don't assume your data is safe just because it's on a drive that's brand new. Any component can come up with a fault, new or old.

[jdepould]

If you're using a Mac, I'd recommend getting a FireWire drive, since it has adequate power going through the single connection. Most USB drives I've seen require two ports: one for power, one for data.

We have a slew of G-Tech drives at work (we buy them in bulk), and I've been using the LaCie rugged drives personally. My desktop drives at home are the silver WD MyBooks.