hard drive recommendation please

[jackassdave]

please bear with me as i know next to nothing about computers i have been told that i need to back up my stuff on an external hard drive ? as our computer is starting to play up and i dont want to lose all my photos etc .
i have a sony viao can anyone recommend a hard drive or something i can use to transfer my photods onto i have a lot of pictures so any recommendation appreciated ...JD

 

[Blackal]

WD (Western Digital) Passport - get 1Tb minimum.
Cheap as chips and reliable


Al

 

[Grey Beard]

I use a 3TB Seagate Portable Hard Disk Drive. It is USB 3.0, but backward compatible with USB 2.0. Don't know if your Sony Viao has a USB 3.0 port on it but I suggest you buy a USB 3.0 as it is much faster than USB 2.0 and more useful in the future. I don't know how reliable Seagate is compared to others, but I have had no problems so far.

You haven't said if you want to just backup your photos (RAW or JPG) or do a full backup in case everything goes pear shaped.

Grey Beard

 

[bisbee]

Do it quick My 900 quids worth of Vaio just suddenly died one day from hard drive failure

 

[jackassdave]

I use a 3TB Seagate Portable Hard Disk Drive. It is USB 3.0, but backward compatible with USB 2.0. Don't know if your Sony Viao has a USB 3.0 port on it but I suggest you buy a USB 3.0 as it is much faster than USB 2.0 and more useful in the future. I don't know how reliable Seagate is compared to others, but I have had no problems so far.

You haven't said if you want to just backup your photos (RAW or JPG) or do a full backup in case everything goes pear shaped.

Grey Beard

j peg photos

 

[littleredrooster]

I've just bought one of these to do exactly the same thing. Excellent value.

 

[Millmax]

Lacie, always use these for years good drives.

 

[wessie]

I have set my phone to automatically back up photos to my laptop using a dropbox account.

In theory my photos are stored in the cloud, on my laptop and occasionally backed up to an old netbook if I turn it on.

I could also hook up a Seagate drive similar to the ones detailed above.

The point I am making is to maximise safe storage by building in some redundancy. I have 3 places my pictures and other valued files are stored automatically plus another 2 if I remember to switch them on. I would have to be very unlucky to lose my pictures in all locations at the same time.

 

[Paul Wakefield]

If it's playing up, just grab anything big enough to fit the files on asap. You can always get something bigger/faster/better later. All good recommendations above.

 

[Grey Beard]

Easy enough to back up jpg photos. Since your Vaio is playing up, you best waste no more time. You can get 128GB USB3.0 Memory sticks very cheaply now. But a portable USB 3.0 hard disk drive will be better value.

Ideally you want to back up onto two other separate drives/locations in addition to your PC. Even better to keep one of these at another location (office, family member's house, etc.) Cloud storage needs a lot of band width/is slower and of course you have to pay for that with DropBox, but I have 20GB free with MS OneDrive.

Grey Beard

 

[fuffy]

Seagate and Toshiba are good, my friend told me　：Ｄ

 

[stolzy]

I understand there are only a couple of hard disk factories in the world, so badging notwithstanding, they're much of a muchness. Its also my impression that HDs are more reliable than they used to be.


Shouldn't have said that

 

[UturnTony]

As has been suggested, a portable USB drive (powered from the usb port) as big as you want to afford is a great way to go.

 

[Deleted account 200502001]

please bear with me as i know next to nothing about computers i have been told that i need to back up my stuff on an external hard drive ? as our computer is starting to play up and i dont want to lose all my photos etc .
i have a sony viao can anyone recommend a hard drive or something i can use to transfer my photods onto i have a lot of pictures so any recommendation appreciated ...JD

I use Western Digital Pasport portable external hard drives to store all my family photos and camcorder recordings. I have about 4 of them and every few months I drag my photos & video folders onto them. I keep them in different places around the house, and even keep one at my mothers house just in case my house burns down. Our house hasn't burnt down yet. No point just backing them up to just one hard drive because if that fails then you've lost everything. Make multiple back ups.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Passport...652&sr=8-12&keywords=western+digital+passport