Suggestions For External Firewire Hard Drive to Store My Digital Pics

[Edelweiss]

I am looking for an external hard drive to back up my 7000+ digital pictures. I hope a computer technology guru on ADKForum can give me some advice. How many GB's should I be looking for given my propensity for taking LOTS of digital shots. Is a firewire connection preferable to USB? (My Mac has both.) Someone suggested I look at these brands: Maxtor, Western Digital, Seagate, but are other manufacturers just as good if I can get a better deal? Are there any reputable online stores which you've dealt with in the past that also offer good service and great deals?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Joanne

[Kevin]

Go with the brand with the longest warranty, otherwise, for all intensive purposes (at the reduced transfer rate the drives will be running as a firewire or USB device) the hard drives inside any of these brand external enclosure will spin/access data at the same speeds. Two rules to remember with hard drives: All major drive manufacturers sell an occassional bad drive and all hard drives eventually fail (some in a month, some in 10 years). It's really luck of the draw when it comes to getting a drive that last a long time, with some of that luck determined by how often you use it and the type of environment the drive is in.

It's a good idea to backup your photos, and I do something similar to you with my photos, other personal, and music files being stored on an external 160GB drive. I haven't run out of room, and I store a lot fo data. So 160GB should suffice.

As for whether firewire or USB 2.0 is faster, the firewire connection is faster, but it's also less common (so if you ever want to bring the drive elsewhere to share or load the pictures and they don't have a firewire port you're SOL). The sustained transfer rate is the most valuable number and firewire beats USB 2.0 in read tests. Since you'll be mostly just writing data to the drive, this value doesn't matter as much. In write tests it's a much closer race. The max transfer rate is usually a burst speed (around 480mbps usb 2.0, 400mbps-ish for firewire). As you see, usb 2.0 wins the sprint but firewire is really the faster of the two over the course of the whole race.

Some info on the subject:

http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm

The solution to your firewire vs. usb 2.0 problem is really to get an external dfrive with BOTH. It usually adds a few dollars to the price of the drive, but it's worth it IMO.

Now, for even more on backing up your data, I recommend burning your pictures to DVDs. Relying solely on magnetic backup (hard drives) is not such a good idea if the data is real valuable to you. Every few months I re-burn a CD for each year I have of photos. I have a 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 disc (soon to be starting a 2007 disc). As I take more photos of the current year I burn a new disc and toss the old one in the trash. Same for my most personal files (like letters, email backup, etc). The discs stored in a fire proof container I bought at wallyworld for $30. If it matters, then the $0.25 blank DVD and $30 fireproof box isn't overkill. Heaven forbid your main PC hard drive dies one day, and a day later by chance your backup drive died too (before you had a chance to move the data to a new/replacement PC drive). I've seen this happen. Some would see this as alarmist, but if it's a minimal time/effort thing to ensure you will always have those files regardless of what happens to you or your home, then I say it's worth the $50 extra cost to make DVD backups from time to time.

[Edelweiss]

Thanks, Kevin, for your thorough, very informative answers to my questions. I am already backing up my pics on CD's and discovered today that our computer won't allow me to burn DVD's so it looks like I'll need to invest in an external DVD burner as well When I get a chance next week I'll start exploring prices for external HD's with both firewire and USB connections. I'll feel a lot better when I'm able to make several copies of my pics to keep in a different location just in case........
Thanks again for your help!
Joanne

[dog]

Backup

Yes , sounds as a good warning for me .
Last October there was a terrible crash of http://alldogsforum.com/ . The only dog site without veterinarians howling .
Tonnes of valuable ungooglable info in all formats are lost .
They are still trying to get up .

Thanks , Edelweiss and Kevin .

[Tuchov]

Well, if you go out and just buy one of those external drives, you'll get screwed over pretty badly. You can build your own with a 3rd grade education and screwdriver. Just go out and buy an external drive enclosure, and the largest hard drive you can get for however much you want to spend (I'd recommend NewEgg for the parts, prices can't be beat).

Just open the enclosure, plug in the power and data cable to the hard drive, screw it together and plug it into your PC. I have a terrabyte sitting on top of my case, cost about 60% what you'd pay at a Best Buy or CompUSSR.

Oh, and as for the USB 2.0 vs Firewire debate... IDE drives run at 100Mb/s and SATA drives run at MAX 300Mb/s. So the whole 400 or 480Mb/s thing is kinda a moot point unless you're running 4 hard drives at once over USB (5 over Firewire).

[JJW]

The external hard drive packages:
part of the extra cost is in backup software that is included.

Buying an external case and then installing a hard drive has no extras, so less $. The time and skill level to do it is quick and easy.

I second "Tuchov", look at the newegg online store.

Good Luck

[Hobbitling]

I have the drive from my old laptop in an enclosure. I call it my "brain in a box". You can get software that will copy your entire hard drive onto the backup drive. OS, software, settings, files and all. if you really want to get fancy you can put an OS on it and be able to boot any computer from your external, although that only works with firewire I think. Then you can basically carry your computer around in your pocket.
I have also used both LaCie and Western Digital drives, and they are pretty nice. Most of the research labs I know use those.

[Kevin]

Oh, and as for the USB 2.0 vs Firewire debate... IDE drives run at 100Mb/s and SATA drives run at MAX 300Mb/s. So the whole 400 or 480Mb/s thing is kinda a moot point unless you're running 4 hard drives at once over USB (5 over Firewire).

Watch your "b"'s! lol

MegaBYTES versus Megabits...

http://www.netbook.cs.purdue.edu/othrpags/qanda188.htm

The firewire enclosure is actually running much slower than the internal hard drive's potential maximum speed. So no matter what ata100/100MBps drive you put in there, it's never going to run at its fastest possible speeds. Putting a 7200RPM ATA133 16MB cache hard drive into an external enclosure would be a waste of a more expensive/good hard drive, for example. That's one reason there's still slower and cheaper 5400RPM 2MB cache ATA100 drives on the market (the other reason is for budget computers and replacement parts for existing budget computers).

Mbps is MEGAbits (little "b") and MBps is MEGABYTES (BIG "B"). So the firewire/usb 2.0 connection, in theory, would need to operate at 800Mbps (twice their current ability) to achieve maximum transfer speeds the internal IDE hard drive at 100MBps would be capable of.

SATA drives at 1.5 or 3.0GBps would need 1,200-2,400Mbps external enclosures. There's actually a few brand SATA external drives available, which require a new SATA slot that's being included on a lot of computers nowadays. These external SATA drives and the interface they use are capable of running those external drives at SATA speeds (1200-2400Mbps). Unfortunately I don't know of any cheap upgrade cards for existing systems, otherwise this could be a viable option for a good performance secondary hard drive. **edit - it appears this site offers some external SATA solutions...**

For the additional 10-20% and a solid warranty on the entire device, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest an external enclosure. Of course, my 160GB enclosure was pieced together from newegg ($30 for the enclosure, $60 for the drive on sale). But I'm not really looking for a warranty on either of the devices, just plan on using them until they die. For someone with Joanne's computing aptitude I don't hesitate to simplify things and suggest the slightly more costly option for convenience.

[redhawk]

I agree that for the difference in price today, getting the out of the box external drive makes sense.

i have a 100GB (Big "G" for GIG - Big "B" for Byte(s) ) External USB hard drive that I bought at Best Buy last year. I think it retailed for $99. I got a warranty, software, and I can upgrade the firmware via the internet if available. I have the knowledge and expertise to hang a bare bones drive in a case and hook it up, but by the time I'm done it's not really going to be any cheaper; drive - box - connector - labor.

Another solution that hasn't been mentioned here is storing the pictures on an online server. I have all my data, photo and mp3 files backed up online at my hosting site. I think there are places where you can rent space and ftp your data up without having a hosting service.

[Kevin]

Redhawk, offsite definitely has its advantages. On the other hand, you're giving others unneeded access to your files (possible software security issue) and relying on someone else to do something very important. Typically thetype of hosting companies folks like us use don't make enough on each customer to put a lot of effort into data retention. Up-time is priority, and securing that data is very secondary. A lot of hosting contracts will include language that backups by them are on a 'good faith' basis, but are not guaranteed. You can call and smear them on the internet, but if they lost the files they lost the files and there's nothing that can be done at that point. There are, however, paid backup services that charge a premium price but who contractually hold an obligation to retaining that data for you. Meaning, paid backup services have the hardware to do proper backups, as well as a legal obligation to you if they don't.

I've always tried to remove as many variables and potential obsticles as I could in retaining my data. I have files that date back 13 years that still get included in my backups. I feel I still have them because I've been keeping those files, not relying on someone else.

[redhawk]

Redhawk, offsite definitely has its advantages. On the other hand, you're giving others unneeded access to your files (possible software security issue) and relying on someone else to do something very important. Typically thetype of hosting companies folks like us use don't make enough on each customer to put a lot of effort into data retention. Up-time is priority, and securing that data is very secondary. A lot of hosting contracts will include language that backups by them are on a 'good faith' basis, but are not guaranteed. You can call and smear them on the internet, but if they lost the files they lost the files and there's nothing that can be done at that point. There are, however, paid backup services that charge a premium price but who contractually hold an obligation to retaining that data for you. Meaning, paid backup services have the hardware to do proper backups, as well as a legal obligation to you if they don't.

I've always tried to remove as many variables and potential obsticles as I could in retaining my data. I have files that date back 13 years that still get included in my backups. I feel I still have them because I've been keeping those files, not relying on someone else.

I wasn't suggesting it as the primary method of backup, but as an additional fail-safe. If their was a fire or flood or perhaps some disaster brought on by Global Warming (Sorry, couldn't resist the opportunity ) that destroyed the contents of ones home (A flood washed away the fireproof box) then the files off site would be available.

I don't have anything to hide so I'm not concerned with a third party getting hold of it (I keep all my anarchist files elsewhere! ).

[Edelweiss]

For someone with Joanne's computing aptitude I don't hesitate to simplify things and suggest the slightly more costly option for convenience.

Thanks for getting back to BASICS, Kevin. Yes, I need something that's easy to set up and use, good quality and reliable. The techno jargon is WAY over my head.
A friend of ours suggested that I put my burned DVDs in a bank safe deposit box. Dick has also offered to leave copies in his office, although I'm not sure we could locate them if needed!

[redhawk]

Thanks for getting back to BASICS, Kevin. Yes, I need something that's easy to set up and use, good quality and reliable. The techno jargon is WAY over my head.
A friend of ours suggested that I put my burned DVDs in a bank safe deposit box. Dick has also offered to leave copies in his office, although I'm not sure we could locate them if needed!

Just make sure you put them where they won't get kicked over!!

[Kevin]

I wasn't suggesting it as the primary method of backup, but as an additional fail-safe. If their was a fire or flood or perhaps some disaster brought on by Global Warming (Sorry, couldn't resist the opportunity ) that destroyed the contents of ones home (A flood washed away the fireproof box) then the files off site would be available.

I don't have anything to hide so I'm not concerned with a third party getting hold of it (I keep all my anarchist files elsewhere! ).

Good points. Joanne's idea of giving copies of her DVDs to someone or putting them in a safe deposit box is a good one too.

As far as 'hiding', it's not an issue with the content more so an issue of theft of artistic content. Digital photos are digital and easily duplicated (crtl-c, ctrl-v ), and I never send exact copies of valuable originals to anyone, they are always cropped, resized, and/or reduced image quality. This ensures if someone misuses them I have the only original available (since it's the highest image, uncropped or resized quality). If someone hacks that hosted site, or that hosted site decided to start using the content being hosted, etc, there's little recourse aside from an expensive and legnthy court battle over digital rights. This is a bit suspicious, but it leaves less room for chance when you perform more 'hands-on' backups yourself. Some people figure the advantage of having the data stored offsite outweighs the potential security issue. In some industries there's regulations that are strictly enforced regarding giving outside entities access to your data (health care and banking comes to mind). In most cases companies in these industries find it better to keep ALL data management in-house. It's about accountability, and being in those industries part of what you are paid to maintain is client/customer confidentiality. It's tough to feel you're doing the job of securing that data when it's not you securing it.

This is all FYI info and chat on the subject. ALL the suggestions mentioned in this thread are valid and in certain circumstances recommended solutions. I work professionally in the computer technology field, so I figured I'd spend a few minutes elaborating on all the pros/cons.

[Edelweiss]

I just finished making copies of my pics, organized by year, on 6 DVD's. (Yes, my Mac DOES burn DVD's as well as CD's!) I used 13.5 GB of memory for 7686 photos. (I take pics using HIGH or FINE image quality and 2272 image size in jpeg or tif format.)
I burned them so that they could be viewed in Windows or by a photo processing company, but they will also be recognized by I-Photo. Dick will take the burned DVD's to his office later this week for off-site storage.
I'm leaning towards more memory in an external hardrive - maybe 500 GB. Still comparing prices, warranties etc.
Thanks again for all of your suggestions!

Joanne