With wireless 802.11ac connectivity on the go, this drive ensures fast data transfers and all-day battery life (up to 10 hours). This is a docking station that enables the use of internal drives as external drives. Expect to pay at least two to three times as much as you would for that 2TB hard drive. By contrast, an SSD leverages new technology to store data on microchips, which means they can read and write data faster and they are less prone to the mechanical failure that can occur over time with an HDD. The 8TB version of the Western Digital My Book is a deep well of affordable storage for your photos, music, videos, and more. Each area of the workflow has its own external hard drive requirements. Its PCIe NVMe technology facilitates speeds that are double those of T5 devices, bringing users to 1050 Mbps for reading and writing. This is because the HDD has internal moving parts that are fragile and subject to damage if the drive is dropped. It also comes with a 5-year warranty. PCMag Digital Group. Nude Photography, Overwhelmed? If you have a large media-file collectionperhaps you are a photo or video editor, or maybe a movie buffyou'll likely need several terabytes of space in which to store it. These RAID enclosures feature Thunderbolt 3 connections and a DisplayPort connection for your desktop monitor. Sleeklens is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. Since 2004, I have worked on PCMags hardware team, covering at various times printers, scanners, projectors, storage, and monitors. All that matters is that it is big, reliable, and affordable. This is a critical phase specifically for travel photographers who can easily spend weeks away from civilization. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product or service, we may be paid a fee by that merchant. Endowed with a gamer aesthetic, the WD Black P10 Game Drive can serve as a simple, stylish repository for your massive game library at a reasonable price. A good photograph needs a good hard drive, and one that can help with quick uploads and downloads if they are working on tasks like batch editing in Lightroom. Some require you to sacrifice raw capacity for data redundancy, so you'll want to pay attention to the nuances of each level. LaCie Rugged Mini External Hard Drive is the ultimate storage device designed for those who need to protect their photos and videos, no matter where life takes them. You'll only see the speed benefits of Thunderbolt 3, however, if you have a drive that's SSD-based, or a multi-drive, platter-based desktop DAS that is set up in a RAID array. Because there is no spinning platter or moving magnetic head, if you bump the SSD while you're accessing its data, there is no risk that your files will become corrupted and unreadable. Don't Freak Out: How to Save Data From a PC That Won't Boot. 2022 - PhotoTraces.com 1996-2022 Ziff Davis. A collection of spinning drives configured with a RAID level designed for faster data access can approximate the speeds of a basic SSD, while you should consider a drive with support for RAID levels 1, 5, or 10 if you're storing really important data that you can't afford to lose. It is a low power consumption bus-powered model. Over the years, I have reviewed iPad and iPhone science apps, plus the occasional camera, laptop, keyboard, and mouse. A 2TB SSD, though? And portable hard drives can be a great value if what you need is raw capacity above all else.

), how rugged it is, the interface it uses to connect to your PC, and even what colors it comes in. This is not exactly an external hard drive but it carries the same function as my WD 4TB My Book Desktop drive. For years, I have used various models of the WD My Passport Portable Hard Drives and have always been happy with them. This is the drive I use for my backups, those that I keep at home in my office.

I would love to hear from you! You can find external drives similar to the model I use from various manufacturers like Seagate. With the introduction of fast interface connection technologies (USB 3.0, Fire Wire, Thunderbolt), it became possible to use an external hard drive as a companion to or an extension of internal drives. This guide will help you make sense of these and many more questions that arise while you're shopping for an external hard drive. It is essential to keep digital images safe on the road. It is also crush-resistant, rugged, features a durable casing and a built-in 256-bit AES hardware encryption. Not only is it faster to read and write data stored in flash cells, but it's also safer. Lightroom CC VS Lightroom Classic: Which One to Pick? Another LaCie option is the LaCie 2big RAID, which comes in 8 TB, 16 TB, 28 TB, and 36 TB options. They're ever more capacious for the money, too. I do not care if the external hard drive is not very fast or if the connection is slow (I still use the USB2 version). The storage that comes with a computer is just not a viable solution, even for a daylet alone a lifetime hobby or professional career. These portable hard drives are compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux computers, and they have a superspeed port that is compatible with USB 2 0. The USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C connector can give it 45 watts of power right from your computer and is especially well suited to MacBook Air users since it does not require an Apple power cable. Requirements: The requirements for external hard drives used for backup are large volume and affordability. This is an affordable but powerful storage option with a hard drive of 5400 rpm and a Micro-USB 3.0 connection. If you have any questions or comments, please get in touch with me.

Please verify your software version before proceeding. Guide On How to Install Lightroom Presets For Mac and Windows, How to Install Presets in Lightroom Mobile, How to Use Overlays in Photoshop Elements. The best storage solution is to use an external hard drive or even multiple drives. The only obstacle to completely replacing HDD with SSD is the cost. PhotoTraces.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com, How to Select the Best Travel Tripod In-Depth Guide, How to choose the best tablet for photo editing.

As you can see, solid state drives (SSD) outperform hard drives (HDD) in every category and, without doubt, are the best choice for soring data for photographers. Read on for our labs-tested favorites, followed by the buying basics you should know when buying an external drive. A hard drive as a device is also more durable than something like an SD card, so it offers a more secure and permanent storage solution. This is one of the best performance external hard drives for any photography workflow. We define these as having one or more spinning-platter drives inside and requiring a dedicated power cable plugged into AC power to work. If youre on the road and worried about the durability of your drive, the OWC Envoy Pro Elektron is a portable SSD encased in a solid block of aluminum. You may see this referred to in conversation as the LaCie rugged mini or the LaCie rugged SSD. But if your drive breaks because you dropped it, the warranty likely won't cover that, anyway. If youre looking for a huge amount of storage space on a budget, the OWC ThunderBay 4 and ThunderBay 8 could do the trick for you. Best Tips On How To Get Started, 15 Best Instagram Photographers You Need To Follow In 2021, 4 Key Tips In Time Management For Photographers. Photos and videos can take up a significant amount of space on a laptop or desktop computer. (Of course, in this scenario, your files are going to have to stay at your desk.). Perhaps the only thing you don't need to pay all that much attention to is the warranty. They are relatively affordable with a 5400 rpm drive and Micro-USB 3.0 connection, with read/write capabilities of 185 Mbps. Enter your email address below and we'll send a special reset password link to your inbox. A portable hard drive will often be an SSD drive (solid state drive), but some of them are a more traditional hard disk drive. Western Digital Desktop hard drives come in several iterations of 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 TB. Even if the drive fails because of a manufacturing defect, most warranties simply replace the drive and don't cover the cost of recovery services that attempt to rescue your data from the broken drive. You can also purchase the enclosure empty and insert your own preferred make and model of drive. Another consideration is the quality of photographs that are taken. They are famous for their design, speed, and reliability. The difference between them is that a hard drive has mechanical rotating platters, and an SSD does not. The SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD is the best external hard drive for photographers who travel. External SSDs offer at least twice that speed and now, often much more, with typical results on our benchmark tests in excess of 400MBps. These larger models are more expensive but also much more capaciousthink 16TB or more (in that case, populated by two 8TB drive mechanisms). He Enjoys Lifestyle Photography and Traveling while doing all things creative! Practically speaking, this means you can move gigabytes of data (say, a 4GB feature-length film, or a year's worth of family photos) to an external SSD in seconds rather than the minutes it would take with an external spinning drive. Solid-state drives (SSDs) have fewer moving parts than traditional hard drives, and they offer the speediest access to your data. And of course, if you're carrying your drive around with you, you want it to look nice. To get you started in the right direction, below are the best external hard drives (platter-based models) we've tested of late, at a variety of prices and capacities. (See our separate roundup of the best NAS drives.). Choosing an external drive isn't as simple as buying the most expensive one you can afford, however. And on a 16 GB hard drive, such a photographer could only keep around 200 photographs. The WD My Passport SSD is designed to be shock and vibration-resistant. Just how much faster is it to access data stored in flash cells? The Thunderbolt technology is superior to the USB 3.0, but it is only available on Mac computers. The protective rubber case around the device gives it an additional layer of protection against drops of 3 meters (roughly 8 or 9 feet), and IP65 dust and water protection. Our deep-dive reviews help you track down the right external hard drive. At this point, the solid-state drives are still more expensive compared to traditional models, but this is definitely the future. RAID devices are actually for managing hard drives or a network of hard drives. As you can see, every external hard drive from each category carries different functions. Which one is right for you? The hardware does not comprise RAID controllers but uses software controllers from the SoftRaid brand, which can be licensed with your unit when you purchase it. The best way to gauge relative value among similar portable drives is to calculate the cost per gigabyte, dividing the cost of the drive in dollars by the capacity in gigabytes to see the relative per-gig price. SanDisk Extreme is a true travel warrior external hard drive. Its combination of solid performance, hardware encryption, and useful utilities makes the 5TB WD My Passport a strong contender for everyday backup of sensitive data or storing a massive collection of videos, photos, and documents. Some models include plastic bumpers, and some even meet military standards for shock and dust protection. So if youve got a studio where multiple photographers are going to be editing on different computers, this is probably the best option for you.

Bear in mind that most of them come in a range of capacity options, so know that even if the specific model we tested is too big or small for your needs, the drive maker may well offer it in a more fitting size. I use a combination of two 4TB hard drives, which makes it a pretty solid 8TB backup solution. Hit the link above for an explanation of the traits and strengths of each RAID level. The next size up for consumer desktop drives is about the same height but twice as wide, to accommodate more than one platter-based hard drive mechanism in the chassis. LaCie Rugged external drives are the synonym of durability and great design. If you buy a larger desktop drive with two or more discrete spinning-platter drive mechanisms inside, you'll almost certainly have the option to configure the drive as a RAID array using included software. Priceless. And if you want to explore the best external SSDs, as well, click on the preceding link. I recently started to use an entirely different model from Western Digital. Since LaCie is a subsidiary of Seagate, it comes with a Seagate IronWolf Pro 7200 hard drive.