First time buyer for External HDD

[ledbetter]

Hello! I am looking for some kind of storage medium for about 5 plus years of family pictures and other personal items to keep in a firesafe box. I've never been in the market for this so I'm not sure were to start. I'm guessing 80Gb or more and an external HDD, but if anyone has any other suggestions, that would be great. Also, we have a budget of about $50 or so, but I'm more concerned with quality so that can change. Thanks in advance!

[Cliff_Forster]

Hello! I am looking for some kind of storage medium for about 5 plus years of family pictures and other personal items to keep in a firesafe box. I've never been in the market for this so I'm not sure were to start. I'm guessing 80Gb or more and an external HDD, but if anyone has any other suggestions, that would be great. Also, we have a budget of about $50 or so, but I'm more concerned with quality so that can change. Thanks in advance!

Have you considered an off site storage provider like Carbonite for data back ups?

http://www.carbonite.com/

[ledbetter]

We might consider an "in addition to" approach to the off site idea, but initially I would like something we can keep locally. I have checked out several items on newegg, the problem is I don't know how reliable the reviews are. Plus they have many companies I've never heard of.

[MAGIC]

Cant go wrong with western digital and seagate.

Us the IC Marketplace (http://icrontic.pgpartner.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=11/st=category). A quick search turned up a few nice options in your price range.

[ledbetter]

I found this 250Gb from Western Digital, but is that a bit of overkill?

http://icrontic.pgpartner.com/rating_getprodrev.php/product_id=60886502/id_type=masterid/st=product_tab

Forget above post. This item will more than work! Thank Cliff and Magic.

[troll]

Just a word of advice... DO NOT RELY on this external to keep your 5 years worth of pictures safe... I'd burn off at least 2 or 3 copies to DVD as well...

We had an external in the other day that had packed in, lucky for him it was the case electronics that failed and not the drive.

[Leonardo]

Ledbetter, just about anything from Seagate or Western Digital will be good quality. No, 250GB is not overkill. 250GB is actually near the bottom range these days with respect to capacity.

What you are looking for is redundancy. I back up all my photographs to an external drive, which is unplugged from power and from the computer when not in use. I also have a second backup on another computer. For optimal security, I really should keep the external drive at another location.

[ledbetter]

250GB is actually near the bottom range these days with respect to capacity.

I realize that now. My HDD in my desktop is only 160GB and I'm nowhere near capacity. I guess I'm a little behind the tech.

[shwaip]

you can also get a 1 tb drive for $76. (price drops after you add it to cart)


http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/System_Drives/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=eep&cs=2244&sku=A2373913

[Leonardo]

I guess I'm a little behind the tech. Understandable. The pace of tech development moves very fast.<!-- / message --> <!-- attachments --> <!-- / attachments --> <!-- sig --> <!-- / sig --> <!-- ic-postbit-content -->