External hard drive recommendations

Hi - I'm looking at buying an external hard drive for storing photos on in order to free up my laptop's hard drive. Probably a 1TB portable one. Western Digital's My Passport and LiCie Rikiki models look like they would fit the bill, but I'd appreciate any thoughts. Does anyone have any experience of these brands, or have any other recommendations?

I realise there have been similar threads on this forum before but not recently as far as I can see and I obviously need up to date advice as I imagine the products on offer are quite different from a year or two ago.

Any harddisk of a well-known brand will do the job. My preference would be Western Digital or Seagate, based on earlier experience.

Make sure you buy one that can be powered via the USB cable, to avoid the hassle of yet another power supply.

I wouldn't trust my images on one harddisk only, so if you plan to delete images from the laptop's internal drive, I would recommend two external USB harddisks for storage and backup. HDDs are more reliable than DVDs as backup media.

All hard drives these days are pretty good. The problem with external ones is the quality of the housing, which contains the electronics to convert the IDE or SATA interface into a USB port. I have had a number pack up over the years, including 2 Freecoms. In every case the drive inside has been OK.

One Toshiba has packed up (out of 6), and my oldest and worst-treated - a Western Digital - is still going strong.

I think it is probably worth paying a slight premium and getting a WD or LaCie.

G

If you have Lidl/Aldi near you - take a look! I am running a Medion 500MB disk, purchased in Aldi. I also have a 250MB disk (Same make) Both have held up well. The smaller one is USB powered and the larger has a mains adapter and has USB/STA connectivity.

Regards
David

I use a Verbatim 2tb drive.

It is designed as a RAID system - 2 x mirrored 1tb but you can use it as a straight 2tb.

Main advantage is that it has a large built in fan.

Most external hard drives do not have fans and get very hot.

I did have a Seagate 1tb drive but had to send it back because of the dreaded 'click of death'

I have an LG Super-Multi 500gb which I have had for a few years.I use it as a back-up for photos in tandem with dvds and also the hard drive salvaged from Jo`s last laptop when the motherboard failed and connected with a £4 gizmo bought from Ebay.Belt braces and string !

Tony

buy two, set up a mirrored raid.
all hard drives fail eventually.

Using a Western Digital's My Passport for over a year now, the drive is good and had no problems with it, only the cable they provide isn't perfect as in the contact is a but lose on the drive side but if you use another cable that problem is solved.

I've been using a 500gb Clickfree unit for a couple of years without any problems. It automatically backs up all data files when it's plugged into a USB socket and keeps the back-ups for up to 10 PCs separate without user involvement. There's no indication of which brand of HD it uses but it will certainly be one of the big names.

I also have a 250gb Freecom Toughdrive as a secondary back-up. The Clickfree uses a separate power supply and the Freecom is USB only.

As others have said, the major brands are all pretty good but will fail eventually, hence the need for multiple storage locations.

Al

Thanks all for the helpful responses. Will research it some more but good advice about thinking about the 2 hard drive/mirrored RAID option. As Don says, all hard drives must give up the ghost in the end....

From what I've read the major brands are all fine so it's just a case of getting the spec I want at the best price from one of the obvious manufacturers, but if anyone else has any particular words of warning please let me know!

If you look on Amazon, you can also read the user feedback on many models.

Recently, manufacturers have concentrated on appearance

I don't care who designed it (styled it) it is what is inside the casing that matters

It's better to buy an external enclosure and a separate HDD.
I've had mine for 10 years now....... replaced the HDD four times
and the enclosure three times and I reckon I should easily get
another 10 years out of it

This is starting to sound like Trigger and his yard brush

Couldn't agree more - the aesthetics as well as functionality of much of my gear do matter to me, but the apppearance of my external hard drive is fairly low down on my list of priorities!

Algi - I admire your resourcefulness but I suspect your "refurbishment" skills are slightly beyond mine. Would be interested to know how you'd describe it if you ever put it on ebay (which clearly you never intend to... )

Not quite apart from having to change the external USB cable from USB1 to USB2 when I gave it a major upgrade a few years back, the cables completely original (almost)