External Hard Drives! //-\\ Information, Help, Advice, Opinions Needed

[happy max]

I've found myself with hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes worth of videos and photos. Like everyone in the digital age these are of immense sentimental value and if were to disappear it would feel like I'd erased my whole life, which I say with a slight nervous laugh.

At the moment I have a 2 terrabyte drive with all of these files on, this is the one and only place they are. I am running out of place for general files (word documents, spreadsheets, photoshop, illustrator, final cut etc.) I use in my everyday life so I am certainly in the market for External Hard Drives. But seek guidance and advice before doing so.

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I'm on the dole and don't have an awful lot of money, but will buying a cheaper hard drive affect how safe the photos and videos are? Are cheaper drives more likely to break?

What is the ideal environment for a hard drive? What environments can be harmful? Would break my heart for information to go corrupt.

Any advice, discussion, opinions would be much appreciated. I kind of feel like this is a problem that a lot of people will face in the future :!

[Old_Geezer]

I'm unsure what advice one can give. Go for a well known name and chances are you have a decent drive. Being in a domestic area, presumably, the environment will be fine. Just get a drive large enough to hold your data and with a connection your PC has (USB probably) and go for it. If it is that important to you back up to more than one place. These days you can probably do that which I will never be keen on, and back up "to the cloud" i.e. on someone else's server on the Internet.

[Grandpappy]

I've got all of my photos/videos,etc on a 1TB WD Passport drive ,the size of a fag packet ,with a USB3 connection, bought in PC World for about £50, but I know that 2TB and probably even bigger are available,relatively cheaply.But,as OG says,"Go for a well know name....." I'm sure Western Digital are reliable and have a good name!
Anyway,do lots of backups and then backup the backups!.Good luck.