Off Topic Board

[#1]

I would like to back up all of my treasured memories of pictures and videos.  

Today they all sit on my desktop and I wanted to get a back up drive and have it automatically back up these files with the software that comes with the drives.

I was in Costco last night and saw various drives from Seagate and Western Digital.    I'm looking at a 1 TB drive.

Costco has small portable drives and larger external drives.

Anyone have any idea on what to recommend?  Not sure what difference the smaller portable drives have over the larger external drives and vice versa.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, Jim

[#2]

Not totally sure which would be best, but I've had fewer failures from my Seagate drives than I have from WD. But since I have a Mac desktop with 4 bays, I don't use my external drive that much any more. Three of the four bays are full and I have plenty of space for backups.

[#3]

AFAIK the main difference between the "external" vs. the "portable" is size and weight.  Both are really externals.  I haven't had any issues with my WD external for my desktop and I am using a 1TB WD MyBook DVR expander on my DVR STB (I was part of the sneak peek / beta testing and still have 1.9).

[#4]

And the smaller portables are usually a lot more expensive from what I've seen. It's been a little while since I looked closely. You'll get more space on a normal external, but the smaller ones can come in handy if you need to carry around your backup for whatever reason (like for access from your laptop or something).

[#5 · Accepted solution]

As Becky pointed out - smaller, lighter usually equals more expensive (at least in tech stuff).  I believe they may also be lower power (again good for laptop use) and may not require an external power supply (both of my WD drives do).

[#6]

Thanks!!!