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External Hard drive? (1 Viewer)

Keith Glasgow

Well-known member
I notice on warehouseexpress that a 1TB Ext. Hard drive can be purchased for around £200., but I also notice that there's a variety of models with various specs which are well beyond my understanding. I want something with plenty of space to store my digital photos - something that doesn't need reformatted etc. What's your thoughts?

Someone recently advised getting one with two hard drives which are mirrored - but I can't seem to see one at warehouseexpress. Again, any advice appreciated.

And apologies for raising the subject again.

thanks
Keith.
 
On a previous thread 'djaburg' said;

For all of you keeping your images on an external drive, make sure you listen to the first post on this thread that talked about his external drive failing. If the images are something you really want and they only exist on your external drive, make sure you back them up too. One other way to deal with that is to get one of the devices that many vendors, like maxtor or seagate, have that contains two physical drives. I've got one for example that has two 500 GB drives and I have it set to mirror them. That gives me the equivalent of 500GB of data storage with the benefit of having the same data written on both drives should one drive fail.

Where can I obtain such a device? Or should I simply update each 500gb individually.

thanks,
Keith.
 
Not sure if its the best way but I store all my pictures on an external HD and then burn them on to DVD, I suppose it depends on how long a DVD is supposed to last? Just make sure you burn the folders frequently.
 
It's bizarre, isn't it! When we only had film cameras the negatives were stored in the original sleeves/wallets and if they weren't touched they'd stay good for many years. You put them in a storage box (i.e. a shoebox!) under your bed and that was it! If they were destroyed in some catastrophe then you probably perished with them so didn't bother too much...

Now...you need them on your pc for convenience but you back them up regularly to CD/DVD-Rs and make a duplicate of these - just in case - and when that format becomes obsolete, you'll have to go back and put them all onto the new medium, whatever that may be. In the meantime discs are still fairly vulnerable, so an external HD is desirable and mirroring them is a good idea, but HDs fail after time so you have to duplicate them onto another HD which is just as likely to fail as the other one so perhaps you'd better have another one - just in case... Then you're reminded of all the things that could happen to your property so, to be on the safe side, you need to back up everything again at a remote location just in case your house burns down!

Eventually, they'll come up with a more reliable permanent(ish) storage medium so you'll have to go through the whole lot, either copying everything or, worse still, editing everything by viewing them all individually so as to save only those that you might need. This will take so long that by the time you've done it you'll never want to look at them again ever so you won't need them backing up at all, anyway.
 
It's bizarre, isn't it! When we only had film cameras the negatives were stored in the original sleeves/wallets and if they weren't touched they'd stay good for many years. You put them in a storage box (i.e. a shoebox!) under your bed and that was it!

Mmmmm...better check the humidity under your bed before you do that.
 
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