Hi,
I am traveling at the moment (Vancouver Island at this point in time) and as a result I am relying on my Mac Book Pro for all my processing and storage, I also have three Western Digital Drives. Two 300GB (approx) and one 500 GB, but they are all nearly full.
So I’m looking for recommendations for a reliable portable external drive, I’m thinking 2 terabytes would be a reasonable size, but am open to suggestions. I am not impressed with the WD SmartWare software, which takes up valuable space and is unreliable.
Thanks for any and all suggestions.
Peter
Hi Peter,
first off I’d recommend since you’re traveling, to carry two drives with you and mirror them (manually is fine; just copy all the new content at the end of every day or whatever works).
When I was on the road with Seal for six weeks, I carried two G-Tech 1TB G-Drives and mirrored them after every edit. They are a bit big and bulky, but for my needs weight was less important than speed. They worked great; as far as brand goes, I’ve always been a fan of G-Tech.
Drobo is NOT a good option for portability the company recommends that you remove the drives for transportation—meaning your volume just doubled every time you need to pack up for your next trip.
If space and weight are a premium and cost isn’t so important, you could consider buying smaller portable drives and shipping them back “home” at regular intervals, where they could be backed up on receipt. Once they’ve confirmed a solid backup, you could erase your local backup and round-robin drives that way.
Cloud storage is great but for the volume you’re talking about, especially while traveling, it’s just not realistic.
LaCie also is reputable. Like with any drive, you will find good and bad stories if you dig deep enough. I’d go for a durable drive from a good company you can rely on swapping it out if you have a problem.
Good luck!
-Joseph
@PhotoJoseph
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Thank you Joseph, great feed back. I had already looked at G-Tech gear, and liked the look of them and you have helped me narrow it down.
Cheers
Peter
I have a WD drive, but don’t use SmartWare, indeed I was unaware of it until now. If you’re happy with your WD drives, why not just use another back-up app?
Hi Malcolm,
Two of my older WD drives didn’t have the software, and work fine. You plug them in and they just show up, no problem. The newer 500GB drive has the software and it has given me nothing but trouble, including trying to get through to WD support (on hold for 50 minutes) If you could run the newer drives without the software I probably would have got one of the even bigger ones but as it stands no more WD for me :-)
Cheers
Peter