Thinkpads Forum

Hello, Are the newer portable hard drives, like the Western Digital My Passport Elite Portable 250GB, a safe and reliable way to back up and store data? Are they as good or better than flash drives? It would be nice if they were, as the have greater capacity. I would like to keep my pictures, videos, and audio files off my laptop and am looking for a good place to store them.

Thanks,,,,John

Yes, portable (or any external) HDD is a good way of keeping all your non-essential files away from your thinkpad.

You can get 1 Tb HDDs now for a small amount of cash compared with 1 Gb a few years ago.

I keep all photos and music files on an external HDD. Partition 1 is for R&R backup.

Flash memory is alright but size is limited and it is hard to boot from flash memory.

I hope that helps.

I'd say an external HD to keep your files in the office and/or at home, and possibly a large USB stick to backup or store your new files (photos) while traveling. The USB stick is still more expensive per GB, but in the absolute sense you can now go up to 32 GB for a modest sum of money, which is enough for a few thousand photos in high resolution plus a good handful of other files (calendar and e-mail in portable or 'voyager' versions for instance). A hard drive is always more vulnerable to shock. Also, I would hesitate to use a portable hard drive as my overall data storage and then carry it with me. I'd rather keep it in the relative safety of my home office, load the files I think I might need onto my Thinkpad when I go on a trip, and carry one or two largish USB sticks for backup storage en route.