External Harddrives

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Fortkentdad

Senior Member
Looking to get a new external hard drive the old USB 2.0 / 300mb one I have is too small and too slow.
My PC supports USB 3.0 so that is a no brainer. The old one will be relegated to service on my laptop which does not support USB 3.0 anyway.

I have about 400 GB of images plus another 20 GB of other data that I would cry if I were to lose.

Some of the best is stores on various websites like this one, Flickr, Nikon Image Space, Facebook (lower quality but that's where I have the most) Google+ and a few others scattered here and there. It will be a bit of a treasure hunt if I was ever to try and find every uploaded image I've uploaded.

I do have a good portion (80%?) of my images also copied onto my daughter's hard drive and I have an old 750GB hard drive that I use for backup. And my main internal hard drive is backup onto another internal hard drive.

I like redundancy, and being careful.

So the risk of complete loss is mitigated.

But I'm looking at a new portable external drive. I know Seagate (most of my drives are Seagate) and WD I'm familiar with and have some of those too.

But the one that has caught my eye because of the look of the case is one by LaCie
http://www.ncix.com/detail/lacie-porsche-p9230-3tb-3-5in-df-89065-1374.htm

Like the look and the 3T capacity.

Don't like having to plug it in - anything over 2T seems to be plugged in.

It is either that at $120 - a 3T Seagate ($117) or go for a 2T Seagate Slim Backup that is USB driven $94. http://www.ncix.com/detail/seagate-backup-plus-2tb-2-5in-17-98928-1297.htm

The plug in one's are faster which is bonus but a bit of a bother having to plug them in separately. Its not like I'm wireless - its wired spaghetti under my desk. whats one more?

So 3T pretty LaCie, plain jane 3T Seagte - both plug in versions, or go simple 2T USB - suffer a little on the speed (still 10X faster than my current USB 2.0 anyway.

Can't find too much on LaCie. Apparently they don't make harddrives and use others inside their cases - this model is apparently a good Seagate anyway. But it is so nice looking?

The 2T I can get in red - I like red.

What do you use for external hard drives - what's your experience been like with them?
 
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PapaST

Senior Member
Typically your USB + power cords are the larger 3.5 inch hard drives that are usually 7200rpm. The USB only hard drives are typically the smaller 2.5 inch drives and are usually 5400rpm (opposed to the faster access 7200rpm). So the pictures might not show but the 2.5 drives will be about the size of a cassette tape (hope you know what that is). And the 3.5 externals will be about the size of a VCR tape. One will be slower and more portable. The other will be larger and slightly faster.
 
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STM

Senior Member
I have a 2TB Seagate and I doubt I will ever come close to filling it with a 1TB in my desktop and another 1TB in my laptop
 
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Deleted

Senior Member
You are correct that LaCie don't make their own drives, but the electronics are good & the casings are excellent.

I have a Lacie Rugged backup drive that I bought about 15 years ago & it's still great. I install many backup drives for clients & have noticed recently that the (once excellent) WD Passports, are now often failing. Also inside the Passports, it's not a regular SATA drive connection, so it's difficult to recover data.

In the LaCie range, the D2 Quadra units are very tough & the Porsche Design units are also very good.

A perfect backup is off site, or at least not constantly connected to the computer, so the LaCie Rugged drives are great & their rubber bumpers give them extra drop-protection.
 
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Fortkentdad

Senior Member
Based in part on the endorsement here and some advice from the IT specialist at the office who described the LaCie as "high end stuff" I pulled the trigger and ordered a "LaCie Porsche P9230 3TB". It will be the only Porsche I'll ever be able to afford. It will be an external back-up of all my stuff. https://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10559 Ordered it from NCIX.com today - should be in soon. Bugs me I have to have it delivered to my office as they won't send to a rural post office box. What's up with this discrimination against country folk. It's not like we have a choice in having a post office box or street address. I guess there is just not enough of us country folk to matter to mass retailers. Here ends todays rant.




And it does look pretty porsche hard drive.JPG
 
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Fortkentdad

Senior Member
Unless I'm planning on creating a moving GIF I seldom use the rapid fire capacity of my camera. Or if I'm trying to get the perfect smile.

But at the end of the day, snapping rapid fire means you need to do some rapid fire deleting.
 
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Fortkentdad

Senior Member
I got the LaCie Porche 3TB a few days ago and I'm happy with it so far. Using it to back up my photo collection - only using 497 GB but that's more than the 300 GB capacity of my old external (the blue Seagate next to it) can hold. That unit will become the portable back up for my laptop and tablet.

Shown here installed on top of my A10 rig.

I like the brushed aluminium look and feel - but it is a bugger for showing dust and dirt and finger smudges.


lacie_DSC8929 -1.jpg
 
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zutty

Senior Member
I have 3 of the 4TB LaCie Porsches and 3 of the 3TB WD Elements drives I got for $94 each. My experience with external hard drives is that they ALL will fail over time, so I do redundant back-ups.
 
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Deleted

Senior Member
Fortkentdad said:
I got the LaCie Porche 3TB a few days ago and I'm happy with it so far. Using it to back up my photo collection - only using 497 GB but that's more than the 300 GB capacity of my old external (the blue Seagate next to it) can hold. That unit will become the portable back up for my laptop and tablet.

Shown here installed on top of my A10 rig.
Click to expand...

Just a quick note, if your backup drive is on top of your computer & connected by USB, then it's not a backup. Pretty well whatever befalls your computer will also zap your backup drive. USB devices should be disconnected & kept in another room - preferably in another building.
 
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Fortkentdad

Senior Member
Yes - I need to get a portable 2T small drive to take away from the house as a all-perils fail safe for my photos and other key documents. The 3T LaCie is backing up the internal drives and will be good if I have hard drive failure. Loss due to fire, theft, and big bang of power to the PC that gets past my powerbar and PSU, that may wipe out everything.

Looking at a 2T Seagate for that purpose.

currently 75% of my photo's have been copied onto my daughter's computer too. And some is up there somewhere in cyper-space on a variety of websites and clouds. I have not paid for one space for everything (yet).
 
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