External PC hard drives

I'm thinking about acquiring an external hard drive for photo storage and am wondering what people here are using.  Capacity is a more important factor than portability and I'd like to spend under $150; what I see in the B&H catalog has me thinking this shouldn't be too difficult.  I can't remember all the specs offhand but it's a Pentium 4 box running Windows XP (32-bit home version).
 
Thanks!
 
Brad

You can buy 1 terrabyte hard drives at Target, Walmart or Best Buy for less than $100. A terrabyte would easily hold over 250,000 hi res photos.

Check costco as well.
 
I have at least half a dozen Western Digital drives backing up various systems and have no complaints. Some are going on 10 years old and still work fine.

Target is going to be selling a 2.5T drive for something like $89 on Black Friday.

2.5T would probably be enough storage space for the rest of my life.  I wonder if it's an item that'll sell out early or if there'll still be some in stock later in the day.
 
Brad

I've had a Western Digital Elements for over a year with no problems. The link below will show you a large number of drives in the $50-100 range.
 
http://www.jr.com/category/computers/drives/hard-drives/n/4294606181-17/ 

I bought a no-name (Ultra) external enclosure from Tiger Direct for under $30 and fitted a 1T drive about a year ago or so and it works great for our photo station. I bought a firewire card to use the firewire port instead of the USB. Maybe all the computers have them now standard.

Actually Firewire, ironically an Apple creation, is on its way out. Apple has eliminated the Firewire port from its latest computers. I would not invest in a Firewire device given its uncertain future.

A correction to my earlier post: someone at work told me about the Target deal, and screaming chicken PM'd me asking for details. I googled it, and it's 1T, not 2.5, and the price is $59.95. The size had grown as it was passed and passed around and finally got to me...
 
("Did you hear? Some surfer dude knocked out Mr Hand!")
 
 

Perhaps so Davy. My understanding is that it was dropped from the new Macbooks due to the current construction of the alumuminum shell and something had to go that wasn't used often. Outside of A/V and instrumentation, it sees very little use even though it's much faster, so for the average consumer it was no loss. In our case, all the camcorders use I-Link which is really FW, and so does the external Sony DVD writer that we originally used for mass storage and card transfers. The extrnal drive had chassis has both, so it's only common sense to use the port with the fastest access available. I think the card only set us back few bucks for a generic one.
 
This move will cost the A/V users dearly if broadly accepted and there's going to have to be some sort of work around to accomodate professional users. Additionally test and measurment users moved from the GPIB to FW as the standard for interconnectivety not long ago. Our HP/Agilent test equipment has it available too.
 
Bottom line, if you do have it available or the new device supports both, use it. Not everybody turns equipment over ever one or two years in domestic use.  

 
Keep watch -- especially deal a day sites and it is a matter of time til u get a good deal.
 
Get one that subsists on usb power ... i have one with external power -- not the end of the world, but a small inconvenience.

Tony Bad


Check costco as well.

I have at least half a dozen Western Digital drives backing up various systems and have no complaints. Some are going on 10 years old and still work fine.

(Full disclosure: I am an IT Professional.) I echo Tony's recommendation of Western Digital. They've given us no problems. We've had a variety of problems with other brands, particularly, recently, Seagate, which in the past has been quite good. My boss even had trouble with one at his church, where he is the IT person on a volunteer basis.

You might want to read this review of Black Friday external hard drives:
http://www.consumersearch.com/blog/deals-or-duds-external-hard-drives-on-black-friday

My information IS right! In 6star's link, the WD 2T drive is $69 at Target on Black Friday!