Recommend an external hard drive for photos?

[Felecha]

My wife uses her laptop for doing a private school's publications, so every event lands another bunch of digital photos on the hard drive. Getting full. So a friend said Hey just get and external hard drive, 100GB or so, and dump them out there. Sounds good to me.

But I'm lost in the brand names, most of which are new to me. I did pick up the advice that firewire is the way to go if possible, although it's not crucial for photo work, i bet.

I mostly want a decent price and high reliability. I hate problems.

Thanks for any suggestions

 

[alimoalem]

get any brand name external drive. buffalo's pretty good, i think. just go to newegg and check out the reviews, it won't steer you wrong. if you find a few drives with good reviews, just get the cheapest one. it's not like you're going for maximum performance

 

[Felecha]

reviews at newegg - you mean the user reviews with 1 to 5 golden eggs?

 

[Felecha]

Anyone else got an input?

 

[oog]

no suggestions on brand names, but you should consider what you're doing about backups. it's a bit unrelated to your original question, but the fact that you haven't looked into an external hard drive before and that your wife's hard drive is getting full makes me suspect that she doesn't have a regular and reliable backup mechanism. of course, if it's okay if all her data suddenly disappears one day, then no backups are necessary. we didn't need backups over here for exactly that reason for quite a number of years.

 

[Felecha]

true enough. I'm over my head with keeping track of my life, alas I haven't kept track of hers. Very good point, thanks

 

[Nocturnal]

If you want, you could always pick up an external enclosure and a regular internal hard drive, it's almost always going to be a cheaper route.

 

[Felecha]

This is news - I looked around for clues and it looks like you can buy a case that connects via USB and inside it has an IDE controller or whatever you call that socket on a mother board that a hard drive cable goes into. Did I get that right?

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: Felecha
This is news - I looked around for clues and it looks like you can buy a case that connects via USB and inside it has an IDE controller or whatever you call that socket on a mother board that a hard drive cable goes into. Did I get that right?

Thats correct. I bought a cheap Rosewill enclosure for $28 from newegg and got a 160 GB Seagate for $30 AR. So for $60 I got a USB external drive. The enclosure I got has a powerswitch, seperate power connector and no fan. What this means is that it only needs standard USB to hook to as it has external power (most enclosures do) but that it cannot be left on for long periods of time due to no fan.

In the real world it can be used pretty much as often and as long as you like just make sure the case is not getting too hot to the touch. It's made out of al so it wicks heat away pretty well. I usually only have it on for a few hours at a time while I am backing up data then I leave it off.

You can get pre-built external for good prices form WD, Seagate, and Maxtor almost weekly in the BB, Fry's, CompUSA, and other electronic stores but it is almost always cheaper to DIY. The one nice thing about a pre-built one is the warranty so that is something to consider.

-spike

EDIT, To directly answer your question the inside of the enclosure has a short IDE cable and power cable, just like the inside of a computer. Your plug it in, screw it in place and your good to go.