Favorite portable hardrive?

[Randy Stout]

Good day all:

I am off to Florida soon, and anticipate taking a lot of pictures! I have an Epson 2000, but it won't have near the storage needed for a week of heavy shooting. I am interested in what the consensus is about the best portable back up drive.

I have access to my inlaws computer to view the images, so don't plan on taking my laptop (lets me carry more photo gear)

So, I am looking for a tough drive, preferably powered via the USB port (one less power supply to carry). Capacity in the 200-300 GB range?

Any thoughts?

Thanks, and good pictures to you all

PS: Was out today in 21 degree weather taking duck pictures. Very still, so not too bad on the hands, but I am still following my glove thread looking for the best rig. I wonder if neoprene type gloves would work?

Randy

[Grady Weed]

Being a PC tech for over 17 years now I highly recommend the Kanguru drives. Go here http://www.kanguru.com/ and shop by budget. You can't miss.

[Steve Ashton]

I have a pair of Lacie Rugged drives and never had a problem.

[Doug West]

Another vote for the Lacie line. They're just small enough to fit
in a shirt pocket, so taking up space in your luggage won't be
a concern. I just plug a drive into my laptop and transfer my
images to two external Lacie Drives. That gives me three backups
and alot of peace of mind.

Doug

[Rocky Sharwell]

I have been very happy with my two pocket sized Simpletech 250GB drives.

[Roger Clark]

Who actually makes Lacie, Kangaroo, etc drives?

I use small seagate usb drives. I have 250 GB drives and supposedly 320 GB are out.
I've had trouble with some portable drives being recognized on some computers,
especially linux, but never a problem with seagate. I also use hitachi 1 Terabyte
drives which are impressively small but require an external power supply, which is also
impressively small.

Roger

[Alfred Forns]

Would suggest Other World Computing portable drives Can get with quad interface !!! Have had real good luck !!!

[Robert O'Toole]

WD Passport (http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11236539&whse=BC&Ne=4000000&eCat=BC|84|31022|4298&N=4017767&Mo=9&pos=2&No=4&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&cat=4298&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&ec=BC-EC10626-Cat31022&topnav=)

3 x 5 x .5 inches, 250 GB, USB powered and $139 (see the link above).

Have been using these drives for a few years without a problem. Arthur Morris uses these for backup also, and as far as I know without any problems either.

On the other hand I have seen more than a dozen Lacie HDD fail over the years, ask Arthur Morris about his Lacie experiences, or see his website archives, here is a link (http://www.birdsasart.com/bn159.htm)
This is a direct quote from the Birds As Art (http://www.birdsasart.com)website
"LaCIE WARNING

Less than nine months ago, for more than $3500, we purchased six LaCie Big Disk 500 gb drives from Zones ( a very reputable company) in hopes of simplifying the back-up system for our digital photographs. To date, five of the six drives have failed, an incredible three of them twice each. I asked the folks at LaCie if they would replace the units rather than repair them, but they refused, opting only to repair them. When I spoke to one of their reps, he told me that the product is a reliable one, that I just had "bad luck." (That was before two of the drives failed on the same day last week jeopardizing one-half of my digital image collection. I am now working with the nice folks at Zone in hopes of either having my money refunded in full or getting Zones credit for our purchase. We are planning on going to some sort of Raid 5 or Raid 10 system (with mirroring) quite soon. Had I not had a third back-up on a Maxtor 300gb external drive, I would have lost about 250 gbs of valuable digital images. Subscribers are warned against purchasing LaCie Big Disks. And considering the quality of that product, and the with the level of customer service that we have received, I would advise that you not purchase any LaCie products. Other who have had problems with any LaCie products are invited to e-mail us at birdsasart@verizon.net.
"
Anyway be careful out there!

Robert

[Jason Vaclavek]

I would opt for the WD Passport.
I've had mine for about 2 years now with no issues to report.

[Grady Weed]

Whatever hard drive, Raid system mirror, external drive back up you go to, remember one thing, NOTHING is full proof, NOTHING. I have repaired PC's and built custom networks, recovered valuable data for 17 years now. I have seen everything fail, everything. Some are definitely better than others. Your budget, desire to save time, how valuable your data is etc, will determine how much you can spend. Truth be told, I have my data backed up 3 ways, Raid on my server, Kanguru drive and secondary drive, the last 2 drives manually every other week, without fail. I lost my data 1 year ago and it took me 6 weeks to rebuild it all. Some I lost forever.No one is immune to losing data or making mistakes. Not arguing here for any one manufacture or system, just giving all the benefit of my long years of experience.

I hope you make out on your choice. Thanks.

[c.w. moynihan]

I love the WD passports. So small and thin (250 gig), I keep two in my laptop bag. They power off the usb plug too.... No power adapters needed.

[Jeff Hammond]

I have several of the WD drives and have had no problem with them...even on a three week jaunt to the Falkland Islands at the start of the year. Given the low pricing on this particular drive, do yourself a favor and buy enough of them to create dupe backups.

[David Kennedy]

I take two 120gb WD passport drives with me on every trip--one to back up the other. And they're offered in much larger sizes now, but even when I went to Africa this past September, I did not fill the 120gb capacity.

[Desmond Gunatilaka]

I take two 120gb WD passport drives with me on every trip--one to back up the other. And they're offered in much larger sizes now, but even when I went to Africa this past September, I did not fill the 120gb capacity.
Any thoughts on hard drives (non USB) like Epson P 5000.
Some times carrying a laptop to a remote overseas location is a "weighty" option.

[David Kennedy]

Any thoughts on hard drives (non USB) like Epson P 5000.
Some times carrying a laptop to a remote overseas location is a "weighty" option.

I have a HyperDrive Space unit in which I fit a 120gb hard drive, but I use it in addition to, not in lieu of, the laptop. (It's faster to sort through and delete "loser" images downloaded to the HyperDrive before copying the photos over to the WD passports.) That said, if I were to travel sans laptop, I would not be comfortable without having two identical HyperDrive units (or Epson P5000s). Just one is way too risky. I would copy the same CF card to both of the units so that there were two copies. There's just far too great a risk that the unit will crash, break, or be stolen, so having two identical copies of everything is of great importance. Because the Epson units cost so much, I would be more inclined to get two HyperDrive "shells" and then put your own hard drives in them. It's far more cost effective.
They do offer a color version of the HyperDrive now, so you can browse through your images if you're so inclined. You could use one unit for pruning and leave the other one as a perfectly intact backup in case you inadvertently delete something you wish you hadn't. (One could be the HyperDrive Color and the other the plain-jane Hyperdrive.) Just some food for thought.

Cheers,
David

[Marty J. Bober]

I have the Epson P-5000 and love it. Holds 80 gigs and the best part, you could view and zoom in on an image right in the field. The battery has adequate life but I purchased a spare one. Happy shooting, Marty.........

[Robert Amoruso]

The WD Passports work like gang-busters for me and have been using them for a long, long time. You can get them up to 320gb in size in the 2.5" form factor.

I have dropped them and they still work.

I would not touch a Lacie drive. Two of them failed on me.

[Robert O'Toole]

Western Digital Passport 250GB USB External Hard Drives are $99 at Best buy (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8475857&type=product&id=1185271084347) (Thank James for the tip)
and $119 at costco (http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11236539&whse=BC&Ne=4000000&eCat=BC|84|31022|4298&N=4017767&Mo=9&pos=2&No=6&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&cat=4298&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&ec=BC-EC10626-Cat31022&topnav=)

320G versions are $169 at Costco.

Robert

[Robert O'Toole]

Any thoughts on hard drives (non USB) like Epson P 5000.
Some times carrying a laptop to a remote overseas location is a "weighty" option.


Dont risk your images with a single drive. I back up to 2 Passport drives when I travel.

I dont know what the P5000 costs now but last time I asked they were close to the same price as a laptop.

Also in my experiences the Epson devices dowload very very slowly.

Buy a small Laptop and 2 external drives for security.

Robert

[Rocky Sharwell]

In the past I have had a WD and a Seagate that were really good. When I wanted a larger size disk I got twoSimpletech 250gb drives and have been happy with them.

Now that I have gone Mac--I think my next portable drive upgrade will have me putting my own drives into a case that has Firewire 800. I really like the big MyBook with FW800....