Need an external (USB) storage device to archive photos to

pythonmegapixel · July 5, 2020

Background, skip this paragraph if you're not interested: I have a Windows laptop. I don't have a desktop PC (at home the laptop is connected to various things to make it functionally the same as a desktop). It has a Samsung SSD in it which is fast enough that nothing I own is capable of saturating it, and the capacity of 256GB which was absolutely fine for my needs when I bought it, however, times have changed. You might have heard of this little thing called Covid-19. Working from home means I need to store way more things on my personal laptop. Also I have a new camera which is quickly filling up the SSD.

My plan is to have an USB storage device which I will upload all of my photos to but if I actually want to use them for anything e.g. editing or any project I'm working on then I'll copy the relevant ones back to the SSD on my laptop. This means that I want something which can handle browsing the light loads that photo management software reading the metadata and thumbnails will put on it, but also reading/writing several gigabytes in one go. I don't want to spend loads on this and would prefer to keep it as cheap as possible. I don't particularly care about redundancy either (anything copied to this drive will also be sent to a backup elsewhere immediately so if the drive fails it's not a massive deal) and portability is not a concern as it will most likely never leave the room.

I was looking at HDDs in USB SATA enclosures but I'm willing to go with something pre-built if it works out cheaper or better suited (or indeed a completely different solution!)

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

AbydosOne · July 5, 2020

11 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

I was looking at HDDs in USB SATA enclosures but I'm willing to go with something pre-built if it works out cheaper or better suited (or indeed a completely different solution!)

Just grab whatever size external suits your needs from WD or Seagate. I'd recommend a WD Elements or EasyStore 8TB/10TB/12TB (from experience; I can dive into detail if you care why). You won't need to worry about performance or such.

pythonmegapixel · July 5, 2020

16 minutes ago, AbydosOne said:

Just grab whatever size external suits your needs from WD or Seagate. I'd recommend a WD Elements or EasyStore 8TB/10TB/12TB (from experience; I can dive into detail if you care why). You won't need to worry about performance or such.

Thanks... can you explain to me what the difference is between an Elements device and the versions of MyPassport drives that WD sell?

Also, what is special about the "WD_BLACK Game Drive" units?

AbydosOne · July 5, 2020

31 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Thanks... can you explain to me what the difference is between an Elements device and the versions of MyPassport drives that WD sell?

Also, what is special about the "WD_BLACK Game Drive" units?

Elements (and EasyStore sold by BestBuy, and MyBook) are 3.5" drives. As long as you're at or above 8TB, these will be PMR/CMR drives. Thumbs up from me (I have seven of these in various places).

Elements Portable (and Elements SE, and MyPassport) are 2.5" drives. These run without a power brick, but are SMR drives internally (in laymans terms, they slow down if you right too much in a random fashion).

WD_BLACK "gaming" drives are 7200RPM drives giving higher maximum read speeds (but only ~30% higher at most). More expensive per unit TB. Will run hotter, and drives don't like high heat. Also has a USB hub built in (which is neat, but gimmicky).

pythonmegapixel · July 5, 2020

30 minutes ago, AbydosOne said:

Elements (and EasyStore sold by BestBuy, and MyBook) are 3.5" drives. As long as you're at or above 8TB, these will be PMR/CMR drives. Thumbs up from me (I have seven of these in various places).

Elements Portable (and Elements SE, and MyPassport) are 2.5" drives. These run without a power brick, but are SMR drives internally (in laymans terms, they slow down if you right too much in a random fashion).

WD_BLACK "gaming" drives are 7200RPM drives giving higher maximum read speeds (but only ~30% higher at most). More expensive per unit TB. Will run hotter, and drives don't like high heat. Also has a USB hub built in (which is neat, but gimmicky).

OK just a couple more questions (you have been very helpful, thankyou)

Am I correct in assuming that because the Elements and Easystore devices come with a power brick they only use the USB for data and not for power (therefore won't cause problems if used through an unpowered USB hub)?

Also if I go for an Elements drive with a capacity of less than 8TB, is that going to be SMR (and therefore experience issues with random writes?)

Finally, if I run out of capacity on an Elements drive in the future, is it trivial to take the HDD out of the enclosure and replace it with a standard 3.5" SATA drive?

AbydosOne · July 5, 2020

29 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Am I correct in assuming that because the Elements and Easystore devices come with a power brick they only use the USB for data and not for power (therefore won't cause problems if used through an unpowered USB hub)?

Yep, that's correct. I've run four off an unpowered hub once (I was starting to run into bandwidth limitations because I was hammering all of them to test, but power was fine).

30 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Also if I go for an Elements drive with a capacity of less than 8TB, is that going to be SMR (and therefore experience issues with random writes?)

That's my understanding. The larger drive use what are essentially the (old) Reds, while the smaller drives use Blues.

I should probably add that for you usage, it probably will only have a minor effect on performance (I'm just picky and have used both).

32 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Finally, if I run out of capacity on an Elements drive in the future, is it trivial to take the HDD out of the enclosure and replace it with a standard 3.5" SATA drive?

It's possible, but I wouldn't recommend it.

At absolute minimum, external drives are usually substantially cheaper than bare drives (for some unknown marketing reason; I just buy externals and take the drives out), so by the time you fill it up (which might be a while, seeing as I've been taking photos for a decade and only have about 750GB of total), your money is probably better spent on another new external (unless things change).

From a technical level, I think WD's enclosures work alright with other drives, but some other ones have specific controllers that prevent other drives from functioning properly.

pythonmegapixel · July 5, 2020

13 minutes ago, AbydosOne said:

Yep, that's correct. I've run four off an unpowered hub once (I was starting to run into bandwidth limitations because I was hammering all of them to test, but power was fine).

That's my understanding. The larger drive use what are essentially the (old) Reds, while the smaller drives use Blues.

I should probably add that for you usage, it probably will only have a minor effect on performance (I'm just picky and have used both).

It's possible, but I wouldn't recommend it.

At absolute minimum, external drives are usually substantially cheaper than bare drives (for some unknown marketing reason; I just buy externals and take the drives out), so by the time you fill it up (which might be a while, seeing as I've been taking photos for a decade and only have about 750GB of total), your money is probably better spent on another new external (unless things change).

From a technical level, I think WD's enclosures work alright with other drives, but some other ones have specific controllers that prevent other drives from functioning properly.