Storing Photos - External/Portable Hard Drive?

[.Adam.]

So after my laptop went up the creek the other day and I worried I had lost all my photo's etc, I have decided I really need to get off my ass and back them up.

I know I can upload them to Flickr (which takes an age - I literally have thousands) or burn them to discs (again, this will take forever), so I was thinking of an external/portable hard drive?

Is this a good shout? How reliable are these etc? I don't want to transfer photo's over to it, only for it to corrupt etc.

Sorry, bit of a noob when it comes to things like this!

 

[Cookie]

Just as reliable as the ones in your PC, I have at least 5 of them

 

[Nickson]

An external hard drive is probably the best solution, and are perfect for backing things up.

Anything Western Digital would be a good shout.

Been using them for years and years and never had a problem. Mine are currently 2 years old without a hiccup! So as reliable as you are going to get really! The only issue is the price of them at the moment has increased somewhat, as with all mechanical hard drives.

 

[.Adam.]

Cool. Any you could recommend? I have no idea as to what is classed as a decent size storage these days!

 

[Nickson]

Cool. Any you could recommend? I have no idea as to what is classed as a decent size storage these days!

Portable?

Or desktop bound?

The difference being portable ones use a 2.5" or 1.8" drive, and connects via USB. For ease of portability etc.

Non portable being a 3.5" drive and having to use a power adaptor into a plug socket, still connecting via USB.

 

[.Adam.]

Umm...what's the difference?

It doesn't need to be portable, it can sit in my room and I can just plug my laptop in as and when I need it.

 

[Adam.]

Amazon S3