External Hard Drives

['Chuffer' Dandridge]

Hi all,

I need to buy an external hard drive to complement my laptop's inbuilt memory. All I require it for is to store digital images which i can then work on using photomanipulation software.

Has anyone got any favourites in the region of 50-100Gb capacity? The only stipulation is it must be fairly small, as it needs to be transportable.

[Parapunter]

I use a freecom which has been pretty good - easy to use, just plug it in then copy & paste - I don't bother with the bundled software. One caution though - don't drop them. They don't like it.

[amanoffewwords]

Concur with the Freecom suggestion - been using one at work for the last 3 months - no problems except in very old PCs (Celeron era) where the USB ports are unable to supply enough power to drive it (there is an option for an external power supply though).

amofw

[MyData]

I have my (work supplied) Freecom in hand right now. 80GB, enough for me to copy my (work) laptop data, and also to load all my personal stuff from the home PC (photos, documents, all of 40GB+ iTunes etc.)

Powered from the USB port - this is a MUST so that you don't have yet another cable and plug.

Had it 6 months, just use a .cmd script and robocopy to do the synch every Friday PM, then store the Freecom somewhere safe should the house be on fire / flooded / broken into.

Job done!

[Bushfiva]

Since you say "laptop", and it sounds like you want to keep the images on the external unit while you edit them, consider a 2.5-inch Seagate Momentus.2 unit: 7200 rpm rather than 5400 or 4500 rpm, and you can power it from a USB port with a single-headed or dual-headed cable.

['Chuffer' Dandridge]

Thanks for the suggestions peeps..

Bushfive, you guess correctly. I want to keep all my pics on the external hard drive so i dont clog up my laptop with unneccesary files, but quite happy to move them back and forth to edit/modify.

[Saab Dastard]

Chuffer,

I suggest that you adopt a "Before" and "After" storage strategy for your photos - Always keep the originals intact, work on copies (temporarily on the inbuilt disk) and store the results on the external drive, but don't overwrite the originals.

Bitter experience... dearly bought...

SD