External Hard drives!

RockyNH_RIP

RockyNH_RIP

Senior Member
I have reviewed several old posts... most are a year old, so I thought I would freshen it up for 2015/2016.

Part 1: Looking for an external to keep all my old pictures on... Looking at a 2TB, likely WD... Any folks that have these and are you satisfied?? Which model, pros/cons??? I am considering the [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]WD 2TB Black My Passport Ultra Portable External Hard Drive. Is 2 TB adequate or should I really consider a 3 TB???[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Part 2: I use Lightroom... I assume I need to move the files say 80% of my inventory and create/transfer the catalog?? wanting to leave the most recent (say this years in the computer??? Is this difficult and what is the basic way to do it?? (Or should I consider a different flow)? My thought is I do not access photos older than a year often so would move them off and leaving say the last years as I access, revisit, re-print and sometimes re-edit.


Thanks everyone for your thoughts, comments and suggestions!

Pat in GA[/FONT]
 
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Krs_2007

Senior Member
Pat,

I have the WD wireless drive with card reader. It also has its own battery and can be used to transfer pictures without a computer. I use another higher end drive from OTW which the drive can be used for Mac or Windows I believe. The later is for long term storage and gets stored a safe location.

Both have different connection methods, which was very important because you know how fast tech changes. So the WD is USB 3.0 and is backwards compatible to 2.0. I don't really care about the fastest method, just a tried and true connection method. So look for one that gives you options or at least the latest tech.

Another thing to look at is can you replace the drive, which was important to me so I can upgrade to a larger drive or replace in the event of failure. The OTW drive can be replaced but not sure about the particular WD I have, but it should be.

So with that said I have been very impressed with the WD drive, after all they have been making drives for a long time. I bought it back in the spring but it doesn't see heavy use. I wouldn't hesitate to buy any of their products that's for sure.

Buy the latest tech that is compatible and gives you the most growth or options to expand.

Hope this helps


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aroy

Senior Member
I use WD external USB3 drives. One 1TB and another 2TB. These are stable configurations so I did not go for the newer 3TB drives. Here in India, the 3TB is proportionately more expensive than the 1 and 2TB drives, so it makes sense to get the 2TB for which I paid less than US$100 (about 95 or so). I personally prefer to have my data on more drives rather than have all of them on one drive.

As I have not used Lightroom, I cannot comment on Part2, but I think that you should be able to copy the files through Lightroom, which would be rebuilding the catalog at the same time.

How to Copy Files to an External Hard Drive in Lightroom | Adobe Evangelists - Julieanne Kost | Adobe TV
How To Transfer a Lightroom Catalog and Move a Photo Library to a New Computer
 
RockyNH_RIP

RockyNH_RIP

Senior Member
aroy said:
I use WD external USB3 drives. One 1TB and another 2TB. These are stable configurations so I did not go for the newer 3TB drives. Here in India, the 3TB is proportionately more expensive than the 1 and 2TB drives, so it makes sense to get the 2TB for which I paid less than US$100 (about 95 or so). I personally prefer to have my data on more drives rather than have all of them on one drive.

As I have not used Lightroom, I cannot comment on Part2, but I think that you should be able to copy the files through Lightroom, which would be rebuilding the catalog at the same time.

How to Copy Files to an External Hard Drive in Lightroom | Adobe Evangelists - Julieanne Kost | Adobe TV
How To Transfer a Lightroom Catalog and Move a Photo Library to a New Computer
Click to expand...


Thanks! Good tips and the video links should be helpful, will be reviewing them next!

Pat in GA
 
Marilynne

Marilynne

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I have a Seagate Replica 2TB for a few years now. Back up all my files to it at the beginning of each month. Also on my second WD My Book (2TB). The first bit the dust and all my files with it. WD replaced it free of charge but couldn't retrieve my files. Haven't used it in about a year.
 
Horoscope Fish

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
I just upgraded an internal drive on my PC yesterday, going from a 500GB slave that was down to it's last 50MB or so, to a brand new 5TB slave. Over the years I've used three hard drive brands, all with with great success: WD, Segate and Toshiba and right now Amazon has Segate external hard drives for really good prices. Choose your size, but 5TB drives are $139 while 2TB's are a paltry $99 (!!).

Seagate External HDD's at Amazon
 
Whiskeyman

Whiskeyman

Senior Member
Marilynne said:
I have a Seagate Replica 2TB for a few years now. Back up all my files to it at the beginning of each month. Also on my second WD My Book (2TB). The first bit the dust and all my files with it. WD replaced it free of charge but couldn't retrieve my files. Haven't used it in about a year.
Click to expand...

This is a great testimony of why, when you need a new hard drive, you really need at least two of them; identical in size, but purchased at two different vendors to lessen the chance that they both might have the same flaw. One of them is your primary and the second is your back up. When one of them fails, you then get another one the same size to copy all of your files onto. Presto! You've again got a primary working files drive and a backup!

Marilynne, how did you attempt to retrieve your files?

WM
 
nikonpup

nikonpup

Senior Member
go big, 4 tb usb 3.0 seagate. I have 2, one for lr catalog and the other i keep copies of my keepers. I had used a wd before, when it took a dump and i lost my files i switched. I am not saying the seagates are any better, just shit happens.
 
Marilynne

Marilynne

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Whiskeyman said:
...

Marilynne, how did you attempt to retrieve your files?

WM
Click to expand...

I didn't try to retrieve them. WD said they would try but there was no guarantee. They were movies that a friend loaded and a few we recorded, so it was no big deal. He reloaded them for us.
 
Whiskeyman

Whiskeyman

Senior Member
nikonpup said:
go big, 4 tb usb 3.0 seagate. I have 2, one for lr catalog and the other i keep copies of my keepers. I had used a wd before, when it took a dump and i lost my files i switched. I am not saying the seagates are any better, just shit happens.
Click to expand...

There is a series of WD hard drives that the IT team where I work avoids. I believe it it the green label series, but I'm not sure, so I'll try to ask them about it at work this week. It has to do with the factory where they are produced having a record of poor quality drive production for whatever reason, leading to a significantly higher failure rate for their production lots. More to follow after I'm back at work...

WM
 
C

cbay

Senior Member
I got the WD 3 tb this year. So far only for backup, but do plan to cut pics over a year old off my laptop and just rely on the backups when needed. I can already see how extra TB will come in handy as the backups grow (i'm a bird pic hoarder).:eek:
 
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Andrew Cresswell

Senior Member
Will watch this thread with interest,missus has bought me the WD My Cloud Mirror for xmas the 8TB version,fed up of having stuff on smaller hard drives all over the place
 
Whiskeyman

Whiskeyman

Senior Member
Andrew Cresswell said:
the 8TB version
Click to expand...

That should hold a couple of weeks worth of photos! ;)

Are you going to partition the drive? Doing so, if it's possible, should make drive maintenance much easier. You just have to ensure you don't use the partitions on the same device for primary and backup storage. (Don't laugh, it has happened!)

WM
 
RockyNH_RIP

RockyNH_RIP

Senior Member
Whiskeyman said:
There is a series of WD hard drives that the IT team where I work avoids. I believe it it the green label series, but I'm not sure, so I'll try to ask them about it at work this week. It has to do with the factory where they are produced having a record of poor quality drive production for whatever reason, leading to a significantly higher failure rate for their production lots. More to follow after I'm back at work...

WM
Click to expand...


Thanks, that would be good info to know!! :)

Pat
 
K

Krs_2007

Senior Member
The WD drives in my Mac Pro are the black series. They have red, blue, green and black. I don't recall the difference but you should be able to look on their website for the meaning of the colors. I currently run 3 in it and plan to replace the original with an SSD and add a 4th to it.


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aroy

Senior Member
One thing that I have noticed is that hard drives go bad if not used for a long time. It is recommended to spin them up at least once every three months. What I do is to copy the data from one drive to another overnight. That way I know when a failure is due. Long term archiving is best done on CD if volume is small, otherwise it is HDD. DVD deteriorate very fast.
 
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