ASK & DISCUSS
INDEXExternal Hard Drives Portable
11 years, 11 months ago - Ben Meadows
Im looking to invest in new external hard drives for backing up on to location and was wondering if anyone had any thoughts balanced on reliability and cost ? Also thanks to everyone who gave me advice for on screen problems with IMAC
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11 years, 11 months ago - Pierre Stefanos
GLYPH is thought to be the best workhorse drive out there. They are reliable and you can even buy a protective case for it for daily transport. It will cost a premium above other drives, however, if you think about it, buying a drive that holds the data for the project for which you're marshalling all of your energy (and possibly money) should not be a cut-rate expense. If you plan to use the drive for editing, make sure it's a RAID, and I'd suggest buying a backup drive for your data as well. Ideally, it would also be a RAID (in case your primary drive ever has an issue) but you can likely get away with a standard Firewire storage drive.
Best of luck.
11 years, 11 months ago - Deva Palmier
I agree Lacie rugged drives will do it and at home I use this beast....You need to have a Thunderbolt port on your mac.
http://store.apple.com/uk/product/H8250ZM/A/g-tech-8tb-g-raid-thunderbolt-hard-drive?afid=p219|GOUK&cid=AOS-UK-KWG-PLA-PLA_UK_BTB
Are you shooting a short film or a feature film?
11 years, 11 months ago - rob curry
if budget's an issue just get two lacie rugged drives and make sure you back up regularly. they're great for location because they don't have a separate power lead and you can drop them and they bounce
11 years, 11 months ago - Perry Mitchell
Just to emphasise that your laptop interface ports will dictate the capabilities. You could have USB2, USB3, Firewire (3 speeds), Thunderbolt and (just maybe) eSATA (powered or not). Some drives will take power from 2 USB ports to increase current. It's a jungle!
11 years, 11 months ago - Stephan Cotton
I've had trouble with Lacies in the past and switched to Glyph a couple years ago and can't speak highly enough about them. And if you need something on location, the PortaGlyph is small, light and holds a huge amount of data.
11 years, 11 months ago - Sandy Chase
I always use G-Technology drives for editing. They're great overall. I got a LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Drive recently. It seems okay. The decision you have to make is A/C or not. If you need to be completely portable (bus powered) then you're stuck with slow drives. There's just not enough juice in the ports to drive 7200rpm or RAID drives. I decided that for the speed, consistency, and increased options, I'll just always need A/C power (at least from a car!) on set. It seems to work out. It's hard to run a set with no A/C at all, so it's not crazy to think it will be available. If I'm doing a really short run-out, then I just copy to the internal SSD in my MacBook Pro and then backup to something like a Lacie rugged. As long as you have at least 2 copies at all times, that's the most important thing.