Camera Labs

Hey guys, can anyone suggest a cheap but good portable hard drive?

My laptop is nearly full now and I need to transfer and back up my files but also I am really scared of losing my files because of a virus or malfunction. It happened to me a lot of time to me and I haven't back upped any of the file on my old computer... I know very tragic.

Anyway, I'm not really bothered about portability. All I want is a cheap and very reliable hard drive that will survive a long time.

One more question, I've heard stories from people about their hard drive crashing and losing all of the data... How can that happen and how could I prevent that in the future?

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Canon EOS 500D

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I use the Lacie Rugged model a lot.

I've had 2 hard drive crashes in the past, one just this past december, so it does happen. How not to loose data? Back it up to a second and maybe even a third location. Using a RAID system is another backup option. I use a RAID 5 setup and along with that I have another backup hard drive in a seperate location at my brother's house. I also have a 1TB Lacie Rugged portable hard drive which is in my camera case and goes with me everywhere. It contains a backup of all my processed "keeper" images.

The hard drive in my camera case also doubles as a backup for pictures taken on extended outings so I have daily backups while on photography outings or trips of any kind where I am taking pictures just in case something happens to a camera or a memory card. At least this way I still have all the images taken on prior days and hopefully only loose the pictures taken that day. You may not think this happens often but in my last 3 outings involving 23 people and a total of 34 days there have been 5 cameras lost or malfunction as well as 4 memory cards malfunction.

Some may think I am over cautious but I've seen too many things go wrong while out on extended outings, and also with home backups, to not play it safe.

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Canon 7D + 50D + EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM + EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM + EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
Pelican // Black Rapid // Think Tank // Manfrotto // Garmin

Reflections On Canadian Wildlife
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