Just wondering:

a) does anyone have any great recs on external hard drives. I was just given a new Seagate 320G as a gift, but I wanted to shop around and make sure that's a reliable one. Of course, the salesman said it was "the best." (?)

b) When downloading to do my post processing, I am neurotic about backing up. But I've quickly filled our computer's drive, and it's a pain to move files. I'd like to just download to an external and back up to another external and burn to disk. BUT, is it true that you're not supposed to edit from the external? I use Lightroom (tweaks in CS3); do I always need to have my current editing job on my Mac harddrive and then just move it off when I'm finished? confused!

Thanks!!

Seagate makes a good hard drive. I wouldn't worry about the quality too much but I also would not keep important data of any kind only on the external. Eggs, baskets, and all.

If I were you I'd use it as a way to mirror your day's work and store rarely-accessed files. You can set up a program to copy your "Work" folder over to the drive every evening.

Good luck!

I don't use Lightroom, but I always work off external drives. I never keep images on my laptop's internal drive.

I have had good success with Maxtor drives (some here don't like them), but Seagate (which owns Maxtor!) should be just fine for you.

One thing is for sure (at least from my perspective and Damon's too), stay far away from LaCie drives.

Thanks Damon and Matt for your replies! I appreciate y'all's expertise!

Damon, I just wanted to clarify to make sure I am understanding your point, b/c I think you're a data guru! (sorry!) Right now, I work from my MAC's hard drive (though I have filled it up--blast!) and back up to an external and disks at each step. In the future, I want to have two externals going [one from which I'll download/edit and the other that will backup all of that--such that I leave my computer's hard drive out of the picture]. Do you think that idea is a bad one? (sorry for being dense!)

Thanks again!

I use Maxtor. I use the 750GB ones, and in fact the prices dropped recently on B&H for most of them , 320GB & up. I also always have a second drive that "mirrors" the first. This is my backup. I try to keep all images off my computer as well.

[Edit]
Great idea Courtney! As you can see, that's what I do

Well, we're obviously brilliant!

Hey Courtney!

Seagate was the maker of the drive I had that CRASHED and BURNED in August. And they were jerks about getting it back to me (took almost TWO WHOLE MONTHS). Soooooooo ... I have negative feelings towards Seagate. I now backup to Pictage and DVDs.

oh shoot! I thought so (even told my husband that when I opened it last night). [sorry they were jerks too!]

do you work from your computer's drive then? or another external....or am i just shooting too many pics and that's why i've filled our 250 G harddrive in under 6 mos?

Courtney, I think you're about right. It took me 9 months to fill up my 750GB, but next year with my first full year of weddings, that might fill up faster. We'll see!!

I've started to try and delete the bad photos now to save room. I have a pretty detailed work flow if you're ever interested in finding out more about it, just email me!

inlove [at] michellemoorewedding.com

-M

That's a really great idea! Having an external that captures data from your other external is a nice foundation for keeping your data redundant. You've got yourself trained to back up to discs (something I'm even a little bad about) and that's an important part of it too.

I'd recommend getting one more external drive and leaving it somewhere offsite (in my case it's the in-laws' house). Bring it back once in a while to offload your finished jobs and financial record and then take it back off site.

Good luck. Feel free to PM me or post again if you have more questions.

I first put images on my internal HD for editing purposes. Immediatelly back them up to my external, then make weekly back-ups of my external that contains my 2007 photo library. I only keep working files on my internal so i can work with them faster in Lightroom. Also, I burn DVD copies immediately after dumping to internal/external. Then of course after they are on Pictage they are backed-up there.

250 GB is nothing now that a lot of us are shooting RAW and filling up 4 GB CF cards like crazy at weddings. We have four 500 GB hard drives inside our Mac Pro and another 5 TB of storage available on our network via eSATA.

There is some good stuff in another OSP thread (Back-Up Hell).

Word!! Thanks, y'all for the helpful information!

Take a look at this on http://kubota.wedshooter.com/

Boy, what's crazy is he quotes a price of $215 for the 500GB drives (from one year ago) and now the drives sell for $132.00!!! Might as well wait another year and they'll probably be just $25.00.

Seagate does have a five year warranty. That is the highest I know about.
Redundancy is important

I have at least one copy of everything on an external drive.
1 copy of that on DVD
1 copy of that on off-site DVD's (tho some are still on site. shame on me!)

500gb seems to be the sweet spot for bang for buck.
buy two and mirror them and you're in good shape!

That warranty only includes the hardware -- not data recovery. And if your drive dies they give you a choice: send in the dead drive and wait 4-6 weeks to receive a replacement (refurbished) OR pay them $20 and get a replacement drive (refurb) sent to you first with a prepaid box for returning the dead one.

So if your drive dies you're basically paying 1/5 of the price to get it replaced -- without any data recovery (I can't stress that enough!)

Garrett is right about the 500 GB being the sweet spot right now. For ~$100-120 you can get a drive. You can always do a per GB calculation on the drive to figure out if it's worth the money to get the bigger one.

I love WD Mybook drives. They look cool and stack neatly.

I have four currently in use. I copy my backups to one, then copy them to the other to make a non raid redundant back up. I moved away from raid drives because if you have errors copying to a raid drive.. its duplicated. If I take the extra time to copy to a 2nd drive then any errors in copying are not duplicated.

Great point about RAID, Paul.

IMO RAID adds a level of complexity and overhead not really necessary for a solo photographer. Simplicity is key.

It's very easy to get a couple of drives and duplicate across, much like Paul's method. Setting up and dealing with the quirks of RAID are things better left to data center managers and large studios pumping terabytes of images across their network.

I have tried several brands. I started with Maxtor and the drives seemed to be very quirky, so I tried LaCie. BIG MISTAKE! The salesman said this is the best we carry...blah blah blah. So I bought 3 of them. 600GB, 500GB, and 1TB at different times. I always backed up my files to two drives and to DVD. Then one day two of the drives went out on me. One went out that morning and then one that evening. What bad luck I had that day. I thought everything was fine since I backed up everything to my DVDs. Nope. The discs had bad cells and all the files were not recoverable. I just knew my world had gone to pieces and I broke down. But then I remembered that Pictage had backed up everything I had edited. The few that I had not sent to pictge I did still have the RAW images, just not the edits. So I sent the drives in for data recovery and $3200 later I got back some data. Luckily I had insurance that paid for it. Though it was a HUGE hassel, I still have my data and am now using Western Digital and they seem to be working fine. That is the drive the Data Recovery team sent me with my recovered images. LaCie replaced the drives and I use them cautiously, and not for anything major. So of the three I have used the Western Digital seems to be the best. Hope this long story helps.

I'm so sorry that happened to you.

There are a lot of people on OSP who swear their LaCie drives are just fine but this doesn't surprise me one bit. LaCies are notorious for their failures...

Yeah-

My 4 year old Lacie is no longer recognized by my computer. I'm pretty sure I have almost everything that is important from that Lacie backed up to CD's/DVD's. Although, I still need to see how I can retrieve the files, just to be sure. You never know if all the cd's are still OK after a few years. Where should I go to for File Retrieval? I'll look around locally first, but either way it will probably cost me a bundle. Anyone know how much?

BTW look at what's happening with my one year old Lacie and 2 month old Iomega! The madness!!!
Lacie/Iomega Woes