hi, I am thinking to buy an external hard drive to save my digital pictures.any advices on brand/ model/ size an where to buy it? thank you

You might need a NAS and these can be bought off Ebay or in most electronics outlets.

Migros electronics was advertising a 1 TB external HD w/ USB2 connection for CHF 150 or so. Sounds like a good deal to me.

http://www.melectronics.ch/display.c...2077&isAdmin=1

External HDD with one drive = One error and your files are (most likely)
gone.

External HDD with more than one drive = In a Raid 1 or 5 (three or
more drives) configuration means much higher chance of file recovery.

If you have money to burn, take a look at SSD. Solid state drive, no
moving parts. Last I checked 250 GB runs over CHF 1000.-

What is a NAS in practice?

well, i looked in digitec, there are 2 interesting one for 2TB a bit more than 300 SFR. we have so many pics that I thought it would be worse to spend a bit more and get such amont of space. But i am wondering whether those are ok to save digital photos and also mp3 music. any advice again? thanks!
Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition II, 2TB Quad Interface and


===Western Digital MyBook Mirror Edition, 2TB, USB 2.0===

I would buy *two* of these (from http://www.digitec.ch/ ):

http://www.digitec.ch/ProdukteDetail...Artikel=140734 (1TB Western Digital extern HDD - CHF 139)

(Digitec have lower capacity versions if you don't want to spend so much.)

Copy your photos/videos/etc to both drives so in the event of failure, you've still got a backup. Never keep only one copy of anything digital and precious. We also copy our photos to DVDs and store them in the cellar. DVDs aren't typically a good long-term storage medium, but in this case they're a reasonable 4th backup.

cheers,
(Mr)Wibble.

Firewire 400, Firewire 800, SATA & USB interfaces to your lappy
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/pro...sp?DriveID=410
No RAID protection though.
=== With RAID protection
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=466

You have to work out your requirements a little more.

If you are just after something to backup your files as only a backup go buy any standard external drive out there. As it is only your backup.

If you want something to hold all your files and act as a backup go for a NAS with Raid and one that is expandable.

I bought a 500GB drive last year. To act as a backup drive. Hmm now I need another 1TB drive to act as the 500gb backup and to give me extra space for future expansion. I don't know where it all goes. Though I'm trying to work out what is eating all the space.

to be honest I dont get the difference between 'backing up your file and holding your file and backing them up'.
what a NAS would offer me more than an external drive? sorry my naive question, but i am very new with all this

NAS = Network Attached Storage. As jsrpet posted above. Take a
minute or ten to read the details, you will be smarter and ask more
detailed questions

You appear to be asking for an external HDD that is connected, usually
per USB, to your computer. This will add an additional drive letter.
Store your files there.

From the info you have given thus far, you do not want to back-up,
but file storage... forget about back-ups mentioned!

See all posts, read them carefully. We will not go shopping for you

I think for you an external usb hard drive would be sufficient(and least expensive)
Or copy pictures to dvd
I have pictures copied to cd/dvd from 4/5 years ago and still in same condition

This is a true. I have a number of CDs and DVD that are over six years
in a controlled environment (safe).

Now that those are nearing end of lifetime, I did some research and
ended up buying a internal replaceable HDD mount.

Meaning, the drive mount is hard mounted and hard wired internal in
the computer. I use purchased HDDs (1 TB) and place them in the
drive bay. The HDD is then recognized and is allotted a drive letter.

Item is called Icy Box. Here is the link to the manufacturer. Price is
extremely inexpensive, like around CHF 65.-.

Back to the CD/DVDs... I am in the process of (slowly) copying the
all CDs and DVDs to one of the HDDs mounted in the Icy Box.

Talk about making things complicated!

The OP just wants an external HD to back up pictures etc. The key here is back up, she wants to hold them on a hard drive seperate from her computer and have access to them if her computer goes belly up!

OP if you are looking for a simple solution then pretty much any USB 2.0 HDD that you get in interdiscount or media markt should do the trick.

I got a Western Digital Mybook and so far it seems to be doing the job.

All the talk of RAID and NAS etc is of use if you want to set up a home network which will store your files and have a real time back up. For most peoples purposes this is overkill.

Unless you are going to copy data from an old hard drive to a new hard drive every couple of years, your chances of losing data on a hard drive are far higher than on good quality optical media. The chances of getting a 5 year old drive to spin up are far lower than reading optical media of the same age. If you get good quality archival media (see http://www.mam-a.com), it should be readable in several decades time as long as you can still find a drive to read it...

good idea
i just thought to keep it as simple/least expense
adding a removable drive can be a bit techy for some
or if it is a laptop they have!!

well there are 500gb drives going for less than 100 francs in Media markt and some other electronics retailers right now.

Don't place all your faith in SSD either, look at RAM, how many pieces of RAM have I replaced for people in 2007? 22 pieces.
Dead RAM modules from different manufacturers, SSD is essentially a stick of RAM or USB stick.
Rub it on a piece of rubber or carpet and see for yourself.

Point being, RAID is a good insurance, DVD's are cheaper, 2x disk drives should last and do the job, depends on budget and how much you value your data.
check out this guy.. no more fire safe required:::

http://iosafe.com/products

Call me old fashioned but I still print photos and have photo albums.

I don't print all the photos, just the best ones. When I studied photography (photojournalism) while my age may be showing here it was long before digital cameras existed. You had to print everything in some form to see what was most useful.

Before I got a digital camera, I would print everything. Now I can be more selective. But I still print the best pics and put them in an album.

I have photos of my great grandparents that are still intact today. I hope someday future generations will enjoy our photos and I think it is nicer to share them passing around an album rather than sitting in front of a computer screen.

An external hard drive that you plug into your local network rather than directly into your computer. This allows it to be shared by other computers.

Typically a NAS can support more than one drive, some of them accepting multiple hard drives, and in some cases even using the extra drives for fault-tolerance. This is what "RAID" means, look it up if you want all the gory acronym details.

If you don't have a home network, then you probably don't want a NAS device.

cheers,
(Mr)Wibble

I would assume a strict backup disk is one that is only plugged in and switched on and mounted when you are actually making a backup or retrieveing information from a previous backup. By being kept switched off the rest of the time you are reducing the risk of some incidental virus infection or damage through malfunction. Preferably you are physically keeping the disk in a separate place when not in use which further reduces the risk of it being lost in a fire or stolen etc.

If for some reason that is not possibly or practicable, you would need a backup disk that conforms to much higher standards.