# Portable HD



## MixMax (Dec 29, 2007)

Anyone have any recommendations of a portable HDD to store back ups of photos?
I'd like to start storing my library on a separate disk.


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## Joker Eh (Jan 22, 2008)

I have a couple of these. Western Digital My Passport 1TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive : Portable External Hard Drives - Best Buy Canada

They do come in 2 TB now also.


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## MixMax (Dec 29, 2007)

Thanks, so can you put your whole photo library on it and use iphoto/aperture/photoshop from there, rather than keeping your library on your hard drive? I get a little foggy on how to set that type of thing up. Although I am pretty good at following instructions


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## Joker Eh (Jan 22, 2008)

The problem is I don't know how to give instructions sorry. But what I can tell you is that I do use Aperture. The Library is located on my MBP but the source files are located on the external. I import my images as referenced images into Aperture. This way Aperture only has the information of my changes and I can store all my masters on the external. I also have other externals which have copies of those master for safe keeping.

That is why I am very interested to see what comes from Apple next week in terms of MBP and iMac's. I moved my source images of my MBP due to space. I only have a 250GB drive so space is limited. So I will see what the systems are in terms of specs and price then I will determine to either buy a new system or make a few mods to my MBP by adding a 450GB SSD drive and adding a 1-2TB drive in the optical drive bay.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

MixMax said:


> Anyone have any recommendations of a portable HDD to store back ups of photos?
> I'd like to start storing my library on a separate disk.


Max, I did this with my movies and music to get them off my resident HD in the MBP HD to an external HD to free up space with iTunes.

It should work the very same way with iPhoto.

You might find some of what you seek in this thread:

http://www.ehmac.ca/all-ios-iphone-...8812-managing-movies-create-space-itunes.html

Full disclosure: While it works well, I still forget to plug in the external to access my stuff and I had to make a clone of the external, requiring yet another external HD to provide back up.


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## MixMax (Dec 29, 2007)

Thanks SINC 

I'm going to look for a detailed turorial and get myself a portable HDD (maybe more than 1)


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

For built in redundancy OWC offers dual drive bus powered mirrored drives to 1 TB ( 2 x 1 TB )
and up to 3 TB ( 2 x 3TB mirrored ) in desktop version.


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## MixMax (Dec 29, 2007)

Thanks everyone!

I just got the Western Digital My Book Live 1TB

Seemed ideal as I have the iMac, Macbook, iPad and of course my phone.

Lets see how it goes


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## kps (May 4, 2003)

MixMax said:


> Thanks everyone!
> 
> I just got the Western Digital My Book Live 1TB
> 
> ...


I'm posting because I've had some issues with 2 WD "MyBook" drives in the past. Perhaps the issues had been fixed. The drives themselves were good, but the enclosures were junk. 

Get yourself some redundancy. Backup the backup, don't risk losing all your digital memories.

I use this setup with Lightroom:

3.5" 1TB Hitachi in a Mosscool USB enclosure
2.5" 500GB Apple (Hitachi) in a NexStar enclosure USB only
Newertech VoyagerQ dock for bare drives, USB,eSATA,FireWire --2.5" and 3.5"

The Newertech firewire dock is $70 at OWC and well worth the money, IMHO.


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## Digital_Gary (Sep 18, 2003)

kps said:


> I'm posting because I've had some issues with 2 WD "MyBook" drives in the past. Perhaps the issues had been fixed. The drives themselves were good, but the enclosures were junk.
> 
> Get yourself some redundancy. Backup the backup, don't risk losing all your digital memories.


+1

This is the crappy thing about WD....



> WD Security utility allows you to set password protection and *hardware encryption* for your drive to help protect your files from unauthorized use or access.


If the case or the SATA bridge die, you can't just put the drive into the any old case and get your data. The drive is encrypted. I have had success getting another Mybook case and using that to recover data but I have read about others online that that have tried and that has failed as well.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Yup - anything with proprietary bridges should be steered clear of that includes Drobo.


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