This or That Hard Drive?

Goldenpian

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H2187VC/A/G-Technology-500GB-G-DRIVE-FireWire-USB-Portable-Hard-Drive?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&s=alpha (The 750GB since that's the only one available in the store.apple.com/se )

and

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H7430ZM/A/western-digital-500gb-my-passport-for-mac-portable-hard-drive?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&s=alpha (The 500gb)

The quality matters a lot to me. Which one is better, do you think?
Forgot this one:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H4803VC/A/GTech_500GB_GDRIVE_Slim_Portable_USB_Drive?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&s=alpha

(So three)
Hm.... Chintan why is the Westen Digital crap? (Just curious)

Answer
That's two Hitachi 2.5" hard drives vs. one WD. 2.5" hard drive.
G-Technology 500GB G-DRIVE mobile Portable Hard Drive -- $$129.95
- Firewire and USB 2.0
- 500GB Hitachi laptop hard drive inside
- 5400RPM

Western Digital 500GB My Passport for Mac Portable Hard Drive -- $119.95
- USB 2.0
- 500GB WD laptop hard drive inside
- probably 5400RPM as well

G-Tech 500GB G-DRIVE Slim Portable USB Drive -- $79.95
- USB 2.0
- 500GB Hitachi laptop hard drive inside
- 5400RPM

For speed, choose the first due to the Firewire connectivity. For reliability, choose the WD. For a cheaper price, choose the 3rd. Don't be enticed by the 'formatted for Mac' and 'Time Machine-ready' crap. They all are. So what does that tell you? It's the WD unless you are particular about the Firewire feature.

However, if it were my money, I would future-proof my investment on a USB 3.0 external hard drive like this:
LaCie Rugged 500 GB USB 3.0 Mini Disk Portable Hard Drive 301555 -- $99.00
http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-Rugged-Portable-Drive-301555/dp/B0058VIWXI/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1339594514&sr=8-8&keywords=2.5%26%2334%3B+external+hard+drive

If attached to a USB 3.0 port, you can use the LaCie Mac USB 3.0 Driver to improve data transfer speed on your Mac (up to 30% performance increase compared to FireWire 800).

If you don't foresee yourself having a computer that has USB 3.0 in the near future and want to stick with Firewire then you can just get this:
LaCie Rugged All-Terrain 500 GB FireWire 800/ FireWire 400/USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive 301371 -- $114.95
http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-All-Terrain-FireWire-Portable-301371/dp/B0018B5CA8/ref=pd_cp_e_0

Or go back to the more expensive G-Tech 500GB that has Firewire:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/H2187VC/A/G-Technology-500GB-G-DRIVE-FireWire-USB-Portable-Hard-Drive?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&s=alpha

Devices That write photos to portable hard drive w/ CF cards?

picsnap

I'm looking for one of those devices that lets you stick a CF card in, write all you images in and save them to the device, then deletes and reformats (optional, not automated) all you pictures so you can reuse the cards but still retain all you images. WHAT IS IT? I'm pretty cheap, and assuming these are also cheap, I would rather use this than buying forty CF cards in seven days. Also, preferabely portable, as in I can save them on there in five minutes when I'm hiking in Canada, stick it back in my pocket or rucksack or whatever (also, size is important-preferabely compact) and just keep walking up that mountain. How much can it hold? What's the cost? Quality build? Types? Etc. Etc.?

Please give me more info if there IS such a product
It sould save my life if I didn't have to spend so much on CF cards.

Answer
What you are looking for is "image bank" or "photo bank". They run about $120-200 and use 40-100 gig hard drives.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/105-7028679-2854807?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=photo+bank&x=0&y=0

I still have somewhere my MindStor - one of the oldest such devices, when they just started to appear, that has 10G hard drive and is slow as hell. It really saved my life on some foreign trips, back in the days when flash memory was expensive (I'm talking about times when 256M card ran over $100) and allowed me to shoot away without thinking... but...

Today, when you can buy for about the same money 10G worth of flash cards - I don't see a point in using one. Here are my reasons why:

1. You have multiple cards, if one of them is lost due to accident or stolen, or broken - you only lose portion of your images.
2. Hard drive has moving parts. It's much easier to damage it than solid state memory. I was sweating like hell over bumping it into something on all my trips when I used it. It's best not to take it on to hikes, but to leave it in hotel room, and be very careful with it.
3. If all else failed, and you ran out of space - there are many many shops around that will happily burn the content of your flash cards to CD's or DVD's and erase them for you.

So today, I see absolutely no point in investing in one of these image banks. But if you insist - follow the link above for a few choices....

Good luck with whatever choice you made,
LEM.

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This or That Hard Drive?

Goldenpian

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H2187VC/A/G-Technology-500GB-G-DRIVE-FireWire-USB-Portable-Hard-Drive?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&s=alpha (The 750GB since that's the only one available in the store.apple.com/se )

and

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H7430ZM/A/western-digital-500gb-my-passport-for-mac-portable-hard-drive?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&s=alpha (The 500gb)

The quality matters a lot to me. Which one is better, do you think?
Forgot this one:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H4803VC/A/GTech_500GB_GDRIVE_Slim_Portable_USB_Drive?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&s=alpha

(So three)
Hm.... Chintan why is the Westen Digital crap? (Just curious)

Answer
That's two Hitachi 2.5" hard drives vs. one WD. 2.5" hard drive.
G-Technology 500GB G-DRIVE mobile Portable Hard Drive -- $$129.95
- Firewire and USB 2.0
- 500GB Hitachi laptop hard drive inside
- 5400RPM

Western Digital 500GB My Passport for Mac Portable Hard Drive -- $119.95
- USB 2.0
- 500GB WD laptop hard drive inside
- probably 5400RPM as well

G-Tech 500GB G-DRIVE Slim Portable USB Drive -- $79.95
- USB 2.0
- 500GB Hitachi laptop hard drive inside
- 5400RPM

For speed, choose the first due to the Firewire connectivity. For reliability, choose the WD. For a cheaper price, choose the 3rd. Don't be enticed by the 'formatted for Mac' and 'Time Machine-ready' crap. They all are. So what does that tell you? It's the WD unless you are particular about the Firewire feature.

However, if it were my money, I would future-proof my investment on a USB 3.0 external hard drive like this:
LaCie Rugged 500 GB USB 3.0 Mini Disk Portable Hard Drive 301555 -- $99.00
http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-Rugged-Portable-Drive-301555/dp/B0058VIWXI/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1339594514&sr=8-8&keywords=2.5%26%2334%3B+external+hard+drive

If attached to a USB 3.0 port, you can use the LaCie Mac USB 3.0 Driver to improve data transfer speed on your Mac (up to 30% performance increase compared to FireWire 800).

If you don't foresee yourself having a computer that has USB 3.0 in the near future and want to stick with Firewire then you can just get this:
LaCie Rugged All-Terrain 500 GB FireWire 800/ FireWire 400/USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive 301371 -- $114.95
http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-All-Terrain-FireWire-Portable-301371/dp/B0018B5CA8/ref=pd_cp_e_0

Or go back to the more expensive G-Tech 500GB that has Firewire:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/H2187VC/A/G-Technology-500GB-G-DRIVE-FireWire-USB-Portable-Hard-Drive?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&s=alpha

Devices That write photos to portable hard drive w/ CF cards?

picsnap

I'm looking for one of those devices that lets you stick a CF card in, write all you images in and save them to the device, then deletes and reformats (optional, not automated) all you pictures so you can reuse the cards but still retain all you images. WHAT IS IT? I'm pretty cheap, and assuming these are also cheap, I would rather use this than buying forty CF cards in seven days. Also, preferabely portable, as in I can save them on there in five minutes when I'm hiking in Canada, stick it back in my pocket or rucksack or whatever (also, size is important-preferabely compact) and just keep walking up that mountain. How much can it hold? What's the cost? Quality build? Types? Etc. Etc.?

Please give me more info if there IS such a product
It sould save my life if I didn't have to spend so much on CF cards.

Answer
What you are looking for is "image bank" or "photo bank". They run about $120-200 and use 40-100 gig hard drives.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/105-7028679-2854807?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=photo+bank&x=0&y=0

I still have somewhere my MindStor - one of the oldest such devices, when they just started to appear, that has 10G hard drive and is slow as hell. It really saved my life on some foreign trips, back in the days when flash memory was expensive (I'm talking about times when 256M card ran over $100) and allowed me to shoot away without thinking... but...

Today, when you can buy for about the same money 10G worth of flash cards - I don't see a point in using one. Here are my reasons why:

1. You have multiple cards, if one of them is lost due to accident or stolen, or broken - you only lose portion of your images.
2. Hard drive has moving parts. It's much easier to damage it than solid state memory. I was sweating like hell over bumping it into something on all my trips when I used it. It's best not to take it on to hikes, but to leave it in hotel room, and be very careful with it.
3. If all else failed, and you ran out of space - there are many many shops around that will happily burn the content of your flash cards to CD's or DVD's and erase them for you.

So today, I see absolutely no point in investing in one of these image banks. But if you insist - follow the link above for a few choices....

Good luck with whatever choice you made,
LEM.

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portable external hard drive?

Adam

i am planning on buying this portable hard drive.
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?name=st905004exa101-rk-expansion-portable-usb-500gb-hd&vgnextoid=f54a4d13af3df110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD&locale=en-US

i am wondering if it will survive being jostled around in by back pack or not. (it will be off of course) or should i invest in a LaCie "Rugged" hard drive??? (still portable, but designed to take a beating)

Answer
http://astore.amazon.com/greenspacelan-20/detail/B0041OSAZS
you can buy WD usb 3.0, 500gb and only $71.99. very good quality

Does an External/Portable Hard Disk is faster than a USB Flash Drive?

gethzkie

I have a huge collection of movies at least they are in DVD quality, but my laptop hard disk is getting full so i want to backup or transfer my collections, is it true that an External USB Hard Disk is faster than a USB Flash Drive? in generally...

Answer
yes
If you look at simple stats on buffer to platter transfer rates on hard drives, a typical rate is 780Mbs, and for USB its 480Mbs.

in some testing parameters there might be no diff between both.But yes i think you should go with the external hdd cause even the tranfer rate's are more than usb 2.0
& whether it is usb 2.0 or 3.0 you also get firewire ports in some hard disks and i dnt think usb 3.0 could even compare with it
and ya 1 more thing you need whole new set of pc for usb 3.0
cause the old 2.0 pc do not support usb 3.0

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Where can I get a cheap portable hard drives?

portable hard drive best quality image

J-Rod

I want a portable hard drive to take my files, pics and movies with me when I travel, so where is a place to get good quality external portable hard drives for a decent price?

Answer
www.newegg.com
www.tigerdirect.com
www.amazon.com

would check out there first

good luck

How to rip a standard 50 GB bluray movies onto my laptop hard drive for later use?

Leopold

Hello I have a collection of some bluray disk movies. Now i just want to store onto my computer (win OS) hard disk or the portable hard drive as common to see video formats. I would like the quality to be as close as possible and if it has to be a paid program to do that that is ok. A step by step guide would be much appreciated!

Answer
Why would you want to waste your hard drive space by cluttering it up with movies? And besides most movie disks have anti piracy security programs built into them so you cant copy them

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What is out there that will hold and play a lot of music without compressing it?

portable hard drive best quality image

average jo

I want to be able to have CD quality sound without the CD hassle. I want it to hold a couple thousand songs and be portable from my house to my car systems. I have an extra 80gb portable hard drive if there is someway to use that without a computer. I have a little 8gb MP3 player but it only holds 800 songs and they're compressed so it is fine with headphone while running but not on a better quality sound system.

Answer
Get a 160 Gig iPod classic, if you can find one. Use lossless compression. If you look elsewhere, read reviews on this as the quality of the chip that creates the sound from the digital information matters a LOT.

Is it possible to transfer data from a hard disk camcorder without using a computer?

socrates4h

When on holiday I don't want to have lug a laptop and a portable hard disk drive around with me. Since most hard disk drive recording camcorders have only about 5-6 hours of high quality recording time, how can I get around the problem of needing to take more than 5-6 hours of video before I get back to main base?

Answer
Yes, I recently bought the Thecus Nano N1050 OTG Photo Bank to use with my Sony DCR-SR100 HDD camcorder.
http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=1&pid=7

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Why would a portable hard drive simply fail to power-on when I never treat if roughly?

portable hard drive best quality image

lordzarius

Could it be a USB problem? A internal power problem? I'm at a loss here, and I can't access a lot of important files that weren't located on any other drive . This portable hard drive is only about 3-4 months old.

Answer
I would try using the hard drive on a different USB port and maybe even a different PC. before resorting to the more drastic methods listed below.

It may be a faulty drive. I heard a number a few years back that 40% of all new hardware is bad. So, maybe your drive has already failed. I purchased a brand new dell a few years back and when I received it the printer port was fried.

If you can not retrieve the data and it is extremely important, there are companies that can recover data from damaged drives. But it is expensive. I think something like $500.

I've listed one recovery company that I was able to find below. I would try to get a review about the quality of the company before sending my hard drive off to have the data extracted. Many companies will only charge you if they are able to recover data.

Best way to archive home videos on digital format?

Liam Rules

I have a bunch of home videos on analog VHS-C tapes and now ive moved up to digital camcorder but for long term storage what do people suggest? Im going to store backup dvd's but I also want to store everything on a portable hard drive. Should I save everything in the vob format or mp4, etc,..? Im looking for good quality but also not a huge file size. What does everyone else do?

Answer
You can convert .vob's to say a .divx or .xvid format pretty easily without losing all that much quality(considering your original source is VHS probably won't even notice any quality difference) and it will be about half the size. I'd buy two hard drives, a backup, and then a backup for your backup. It will cost some money up front but it's well worth it when you have a hd go down. You can find usb Tb drives for around 100 - 120 bucks a piece, which is pretty cheap. This is pretty much how I do it. Dvd backups tend to go bad over time, get scratched up, various different ways they just stop working.

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What is out there that will hold and play a lot of music without compressing it?

portable hard drive best quality image

average jo

I want to be able to have CD quality sound without the CD hassle. I want it to hold a couple thousand songs and be portable from my house to my car systems. I have an extra 80gb portable hard drive if there is someway to use that without a computer. I have a little 8gb MP3 player but it only holds 800 songs and they're compressed so it is fine with headphone while running but not on a better quality sound system.

Answer
Get a 160 Gig iPod classic, if you can find one. Use lossless compression. If you look elsewhere, read reviews on this as the quality of the chip that creates the sound from the digital information matters a LOT.

Is it possible to transfer data from a hard disk camcorder without using a computer?

socrates4h

When on holiday I don't want to have lug a laptop and a portable hard disk drive around with me. Since most hard disk drive recording camcorders have only about 5-6 hours of high quality recording time, how can I get around the problem of needing to take more than 5-6 hours of video before I get back to main base?

Answer
Yes, I recently bought the Thecus Nano N1050 OTG Photo Bank to use with my Sony DCR-SR100 HDD camcorder.
http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=1&pid=7

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