Someone educate me about HDDs?

[MisterTommyH]

I'm looking for a HDD so that I can keep a record (for reference) of the work that I have done, i.e. so that I can refer back to it in future (it's currently on a server and mixed up with other peoples stuff - I just want mine)

I reckon there is possibly about 1100 GB of stuff I might want - so to me it makes sense to go for a 2TB portable drive which gives me some capacity to add to it as I go (1100GB is about ten years stuff, but file sizes are increasing as the technology gets better) - so maybe 2TB will give me another 5 years?

Looking around the 'My Passport' series looks to be quite good, and they have a 2TB device out there for about £99 ATM.

Does anyone have any horror stories about My Passports, or advice that might make me look at something better?

[Bibio]

while convenient the usb powered pocket drives are a bit unstable. i personally prefer the powered desktop ones.

[MisterTommyH]

Yeah, I also need to be a little discrete.... don't necessarily want it known that I'm collecting my archive until I'm ready...

[andrewsmith]

while convenient the usb powered pocket drives are a bit unstable. i personally prefer the powered desktop ones.

This

The Westerns are okay but seem to last 2 years and go pop.
With what you planning Tommy, buy a portable western to "download" the info and put it on to a desktop powered one at home. Long winded but safer

[jambo]

For what you want the make isn't going to be too important. If you've got time and want to keep a low profile thumb drives now have high capacities if you could do a few trips.

I'd go for any 2TB usb powered drive for the initial effort and make sure I had another drive at home to sync it to. Never store anything important in only one drive regardless of who wrote their name on the side.

Jambo

[nikon70]

I had a buffalo terra station pro which had 4 drives. Setup as RAID parity which allows 1 drive to die and it auto heals when a new drive is inserted and data recovered.

Now the issue I had was the firmware was striped on the drives which meant when the unit died (not the drives) I could not access the data!!!

So after buying external drives and a RAID utility I recovered the data (well most of it).

So now I mirror and mirror that as a backup.

2TB ain't that much these days but it all depends on what you're storing.

I now have about 16TB ...

4TB are only about £120 and an external caddy are only £10

Shop around and get as much as you need now, prices drop so quickly...

Or go solid state :)

[flymo]

I use an external powered Lacie drive unit, the one with eSata connectivity for speed. Very fast drive and has been extremely reliable.