Are portable hard drives considered taboo?

Code Blue · November 16, 2008

I was talking with a friend who's also heavily into photography, and the discussion moved to the fact that I was organizing my photos because I bought a 320gb hard drive and was putting every single photograph I had from all computers into one location.

he warned me against using portable HD's and said they were unreliable, and all my pictures would be at risk yadda yadda. Is he just under the wrong impression or do people really not use them to store their pictures on?

I primarily use my dell xps 12" laptop.. the hard drive thats on it isn't huge so I find the portable one convenient.

I'd love to hear your thoughts/comments/advice !!

Richard · November 16, 2008

Code Blue wrote:

I was talking with a friend who's also heavily into photography, and the discussion moved to the fact that I was organizing my photos because I bought a 320gb hard drive and was putting every single photograph I had from all computers into one location.

he warned me against using portable HD's and said they were unreliable, and all my pictures would be at risk yadda yadda. Is he just under the wrong impression or do people really not use them to store their pictures on?

I primarily use my dell xps 12" laptop.. the hard drive thats on it isn't huge so I find the portable one convenient.

I'd love to hear your thoughts/comments/advice !!

I don't think portable hard drives are any less reliable as long as you aren't moving them around. Moving them increases the risk of banging or dropping them. Nevertheless, the key to a reliable backup strategy is to always have two copies of everything on separate media. The easiest way to do that is by having two external drives that you keep synchronized. My personal (cheapskate) solution uses a combination of one external drive and DVDs. I do daily system backups to the external drive and also have a separate archive folder on it. I wait till I have one DVD's worth of pics on my laptop, then burn a DVD, copy the pics to the external folder and then delete the files on the laptop.

Code Blue · November 16, 2008

Richard wrote:

I don't think portable hard drives are any less reliable as long as you aren't moving them around. Moving them increases the risk of banging or dropping them. Nevertheless, the key to a reliable backup strategy is to always have two copies of everything on separate media. The easiest way to do that is by having two external drives that you keep synchronized. My personal (cheapskate) solution uses a combination of one external drive and DVDs. I do daily system backups to the external drive and also have a separate archive folder on it. I wait till I have one DVD's worth of pics on my laptop, then burn a DVD, copy the pics to the external folder and then delete the files on the laptop.

yea I do realize the whole back it up solution. I plan to utilize that in the near future, I am wading through tons of unsorted pictures from 3 different computers... (about 2 gigs worth of lol cats doesn't help either !!!)

Art Scott · November 16, 2008

I curently use simply external hdds for my storage and backing up.....the only thng on my "C" drive is loaded software....Ihave my working drive that all photos are loaded on to aand a back up of that....then there are currenntly 2 more drives that hold all post processed files and one is a back up.....it sorta like Scott Kelby's system he describes in his LIghtRoom books......

Tee Why · November 16, 2008

I had an old HD break but a buddy was able to retrieve the data as I think a power plug connection was bad or something like that.

But all electronic equipment will fail. If you really don't want to lose an image or data, many use a HD (ext or in a computer) and a DVD copy.

I think that should be enough for most users IMO.

Art Scott · November 16, 2008

Tee Why wrote:

But all electronic equipment will fail. If you really don't want to lose an image or data, many use a HD (ext or in a computer) and a DVD copy.

I think that should be enough for most users IMO.

Actually all media will fail or become corrupt at some point in time and it is up to each individual to decide which type of media they use for archiving.....I have well over 200 cd/dvd's that are corrupt and the hdd's these were on died a very horrible death (the head of the hdd actually slammed into it and dug a nice gouge thru it) so i am out this set of archives....some of truly one of a kind wildlife photos and also clients weddings and portraits......even tho I would trust archiving to Mam-A(mitsui) Gold media....it wouod now be so cost prohibitive to start over with disk type media that I just keep buying Seagate FreeAgent Pro externals (for under $90+s/h off ebay brand new) that this is not only less expensive but also much easier to archive this way......getiing to a point of 3 copies of everything (including "c" drive and my "C" was the first to be made into 3 archives using Acronos Easy Migrate....as for my photo archiving..... i use the Scott Kelby mtheod od storing my Photos (mentioned in his LR2 book for Digital Photogs) only 2-3 folders per drive and all photos are numbered in sequence and keyworded heavily for finding....each week I archive off my working drive (working drive for me is where I first upload off my CF cards....) and also my actuall finished drive is also archived each week.....to do this I simply note which is the last file uploaded and then copy all files from that point on into the archive.....this has worked perfectly for me so far....I do have subfolders for cleints files those are by date and name of client.........has kept my drives looking much cleaner than before....
I also have a set of drives dedicated to music, software and movies....these get a double archive.......except forthe software and it like my phots drives is a 3 deep system.....Music and movies I can replace pretty easily.........

ziggy53 · November 16, 2008

For "any" important computer data I am not happy until I have 2 copies on "different technologies" and I verify as well.

Really important final images and paying stuff goes onto a remote server like SmugMug as well.

You can never really be too careful. I've seen it all happen.

dangin · November 17, 2008

ziggy53 wrote:

For "any" important computer data I am not happy until I have 2 copies on "different technologies" and I verify as well.

Really important final images and paying stuff goes onto a remote server like SmugMug as well.

You can never really be too careful. I've seen it all happen.

sound advice.

if you're looking for an in the field backup device, i suggest getting a sanho colorspace o and outfitting it with a ssd hd (solid state hard drive). it is quite possibly, the fastest, most reliable portable backup device combo that's currently available. you'll have to install the ssd yourself as sanho does not include them. eliminating moving parts helps to lessen the likelihood of an early hd death caused by physical shock. i have a colorspace o but with a standard sata hd. i try to be careful with it...

rpcrowe · November 18, 2008

It seems to me that

Art Scott wrote:

I curently use simply external hdds for my storage and backing up.....the only thng on my "C" drive is loaded software....Ihave my working drive that all photos are loaded on to aand a back up of that....then there are currenntly 2 more drives that hold all post processed files and one is a back up.....it sorta like Scott Kelby's system he describes in his LIghtRoom books......

Art Scott and I often think alike. I use three external hard drives.

I will download my images to my computer using a card reader and cull the bad ones. I then immediately copy these images to hard drive #1 and then to hard drive #2.

I do all my editing and playing around with the images stored on hard drive #1 and never touch my images on hard drive #2. They are my "digital negatives".

I will finally copy the completed and post processed images to a third hard drive. Hard drives are really inexpensive. I have a 500 GB and two 320 GB drives which gives me plenty of storage space. (Storage space is relative, when I got my first computer with 120 MB of hard drive, I thought that I would never fill it up)

One of the 320 GB drives is small enough (a bit larger than a pack of king size cigarettes) to take traveling along with my notebook computer. When traveling, I will download my CF card to my notebook and then cull and copy the files to the physically small 320 GB drive. I will not post process when traveling and usually leave my images on the notebook until I get home and copy to hard drive #2.

By the way, Scott Kelby's books are great and he gives an in-depth look at different techniques to manage workflow. I especially like his book, The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers.

http://www.amazon.com/Photoshop-Digital-Photographers-Voices-Matter/dp/0321501918/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227040068&sr=8-1

dlibrach · November 18, 2008

I use them all the time. 'Cause I take them with me traveling and what not, I use the LaCie Rugged Drives. I use the firewire version but they are also available in USB. They look like this:

I am also a bit of a klutz so I need any extra protection that I can find. I've dropped these a few times (more than I care to admit:cry ) while they've been on but they have never failed me!

Cheers,
Dave

iamprof40 · November 18, 2008

I just bought a Seagate 500GB external hard drive on which to store to store .jpg's
It plugs into a USB 2 port and cost about $130. It will do an automatic backup of 'my documents' at 10 pm every night, or not, if you don't want it to.
The I/o speeds are just like the regular HD, and it has the advantage of being usable on any computer by loading software that is in the HD itself. The extra storage is fantastic, and having backups of one's most important files is very useful (and important if the main HD goes down.)
One can get up to 1 TB external HDs for around $250.
[1 TB = 1000 MB].
Hope this is useful.

Mr. 2H2O · November 19, 2008

I have an external drive connected to my system. I take pics for events and portraits. I keep two copies locally - one in my computer drive and one backed up on the external drive.

Once I submit the client portfolio (i.e. the job is complete), I backup to the external drive, backup onto my Smuggy account, and make room on my local machine by deleting the porfolio off my working computer drive. This way I always have a local copy on my external drive and a bomb-proof copy on Smuggy.

I do this practice for my personal piccies also.

- Mike

Are portable hard drives considered taboo?

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