Revisiting photo saving and storage

Remember my post about backing up your computer with not only cd's, but with an external hard drive? I've learned my lesson with having as much backup as possible with having had 3 computer hard drives fail on me in the last 8 years (one PC, two Macs, see how Mac is not doing so hot in the running for me right now? So disappointing!). And I hope my not-so-pleasant experiences have encouraged you to get an external drive, too.

I have seen recently that you can buy the external drives for as little as $75.00 or you can get one at Dell for $76.00. Target has them online and in their stores, as well as Circuit City (they will ship your entire order for 3.99 or you can pick it up in the store) and Best Buy.

I have found Circuit City has great prices, and Best Buy will have them on sale at good prices. I don't really have high recommendations for one brand over the other because they have all worked great for me. I have 3 right now and they are all 3 different brands. Apple computers recommend LaCie, and so do I (I have one of these), but Fantom and Western Digital are both very reliable and great brands as well (these are my other two).

It may be really overwhelming for someone who has never shopped for the external drives before because there are so many options. If you go to macmall.com and search for external hard drives, you get 30 pages of options. But all you really need to know to start is, the size of drive you want. You can get sizes anywhere from 125GB to 2T (and maybe even larger, I've never looked for them any larger than that . . . I am sure they are out there). The different prices are basically determined by size of memory. 125 being smallest, and 2T being largest. But for the regular picture-taking consumer, I would say 125 is plenty large. And then if you want me to recommend a brand, I would say, start with any of the above mentioned.

So now that you have all the information you ever needed right in front of you to go purchase an external hard drive, you have no excuses. So please please please do it now. I know $75 or $100 is a little expensive, but believe me, it's worth every penny when you lose your computer hard drive and every one of the thousands you had on there. (This is coming from your obsessive-compulsive picture-taking friend, but also from a professional photog who has to do this to make her clients feel safe.)

What got me back on this external hard drive kick? Losing my hard drive just a few weeks ago and my friend, Cait, saying that my blog entry inspired her to go purchase one and organize her computer's pictures. Yay, Cait! I'm so excited! I want more of my readers to do the same. Now go do it :c)