Portable external hard drives act as life savers when you’re on a clicking spree. Be it a vacation or a professional assignment, you end up with a lot of amazing pictures that deserve proper backing up and saving. Though many people prefer backing up photos to the Cloud, even to access it you need a trusty Internet connection. Sadly, most open Wi-Fi networks available at hotels and Internet cafes aren’t as secure as your home networks. So how do you backup to keep the awesome shots safe and make more room for new photos? Transfer everything to a portable external hard drive of course!
How do I know which portable external hard disk drive to buy?
With the plethora of options available in the market, choosing a best portable external hard disks for photographers that suits you best can be a difficult task. So we’ve boiled it down for you by listing precisely what you should look for when buying one:
Size – Look for one that’s relatively small and light. You don’t want to carry around extra weight unnecessarily.
Cable connected – Though most of the external hard drives today fall under this category you might find some exceptions. Don’t be tempted, stick to the good old cable. It’s more reliable and also makes sure you don’t need to carry around extra power-on equipment for the hard drives.
Robust – SSD drives are generally more reliable when it comes to physical handling. Bumps and knocks usually don’t affect them as much as the platter based drives.
Reasonable – Don’t go too over board since ultimately it’s just extra external media. Stick to reasonable prices. If required, buy two reasonable one instead of one costly one to at least have the benefit of double backups at different locations.
Portable external hard drives – what are my options?
Here’s a list of the best portable external hard drives for photographers.
- Seagate Seven portable hard drive
Easy-to-carry and robust, this is probably going to be your best bet. Seagate claims that this hard drive is the “thinnest 500GB portable drive” and it indeed is. With dimensions to the tune of 3.2 inch x 4.8 inch x 7mm (that’s its actual width, wow!) and weight slightly higher than 6 ounces, the Seagate Seven drive will win your heart hands down. It has 500GB of storage, USB 3.0 interface, stainless steel enclosure, a braided robust USB cable and comes with Seagate’s Dashboard software pre-installed.
- WD My Passport Wireless
The best part of this hard drive that appeals most to photographers is its built-in SD card reader. Though this hard drive is a tad larger than others in the category, its integrated card reader and Wi-Fi capability makes backing up photos easier without a computer, thus making it a good choice.
- Lacie Rugged hard drive
‘Rugged’ because these hard drives are wrapped in a distinctive orange padding. The robustness is the main reason that these hard drives are a popular choice among photographers. It has both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt interfaces and it is compatible with Windows and Mac. It can store data up-to 4TB which is made possible through 2TB drive stacked on top of each other within the orange casing and using RAID to duplicate data internally.
- Drobo Mini
Portable version of Drobo boxes, this external hard drive’s storage can be expanded. The Drobo Mini drive works on the Drobo box principle wherein Drobos are boxes with slots where you can add multiple 2.5 inch bare hard drives to control the amount of storage. It has both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt interfaces and is an SSD drive. This drive however, needs an AC adapter to power on.
- Transcend USB 3.0 M3
Claimed to have “Military-Grade Shock Resistance”, these drives come with an in-built shock absorption system. They are relatively cost-effective since they’re the usual magnetic platter drives (not SSDs). They come with a maximum storage capacity of 2TB and have USB 3.0 interfaces.
- MyDigital SSD OTG
These drives are winners too. They’re small sized so easy-to-carry and SSD so naturally shock resistant. OTG here stands for “On the Go” and they’re available in 256GB and 512 GB flavors. They’re however, a bit on the pricier side.
- Apricorn Aegis Padlock hard drive
On first look this hard drive may seem a bit odd owing to the keypad interface that’s built on top. This interface adds an extra layer of security to the data. To access the contents of the drive you’ll need to punch in a numerical passcode after which the data encrypted with AES XTS 256-bit encryption will be decrypted and shown to you. It has a USB 3.0 interface and a built-in cable. Mac users might need to enable NTFS writing before using this drive since it is formatted with NTFS by default.
To sum it up
There are a number of ways to better protect your data – redundant backups, different backup media and portable external hard drives bring the most prominent ones. At least when it comes to the best portable external hard drives, our list above will surely help you out.
