PORTABLE HARD DRIVES
Your portable hard drive is your “working drive.” This means it’s the drive that you bring to class, bring to the Lab, that you edit on, and that travels with you.
In general, we recommend that you shop for portable drives with the following features:
- Have multiple ports or interfaces (USB or USB-C; most newer Macs support both USB-C and USB, however, you can get adapters for other cable types if your drive also has those ports)
- Are at least 500 GB – 1TB in size
- Are compatible with Macs (if you use a Windows machine at home, than one that is Mac/Windows compatible)
We recommend G-Raid, Western Digital, Seagate, and LaCie brand drives and that you purchase a case for your portable drive.
Some recommended portable drives:
- G-Technology 1TB G-DRIVE mini Portable Drive; $145.50
- LaCie 1TB USC 3.0 Rugged Portable Hard Drive: $79.99
- Lacie 1TB USB-C Rugged Portable Hard Drive: $82.50
- WD Elements 1TB Drive: $64.79
- Seagate Portable 1TB External Hard Drive ; $70.21,
You can also look for portable drives locally. Some suggested retailers include The Duck Store, Costco, Best Buy, Staples, Office Max, while online retailers include B&H, Amazon, and Newegg.
Cases:
Some drives come with a case. When shopping for a case look for one with a hard exterior shell and a way to strap down the drive inside and hold your cable. Make sure that the interior dimensions of the case will hold the exterior dimensions of the drive.
Here are some case options on B&H.
DESKTOP DRIVES
While the portable drive is used for working and editing, we also recommend that students doing significant media work have a larger desktop drive for backing up files and projects. Remember two is one and one is none. All drives will fail eventually and if your media is only in one place you are at risk of losing it. Your backup or archive device is primarily for storing and backing up data and can be used to back up all your files (i.e. music, photos, documents, etc.); however, you can use this drive to work from at home if you choose. Most of these drives have fans and require external power through a plug.
- Have multiple ports or interfaces (USB or USB-C; most newer Macs support both USB and USB-C, however, you can get adapters for other cables if your drive also has those ports)
- Are at least 2TB in size
- Are compatible with Macs (if you use a Windows machine at home, than one that is Mac/Windows compatible)
- If you’re a Mac user, find a drive that will work with Time Machine (Mac’s OS backup system).
Some recommended desktop drives:
- Seagate 4TB Expansion Desktop USB 3.0 External Hard Drive $119.99, Mac/Windows compatible
- WD 6TB Elements External Desktop Hard Disk Drive; $139.99, Mac/Windows compatible
- LaCie 4TB d2 Thunderbolt 2 External Hard Drive; $184.99, Mac/Windows compatible
This page was written by André Sirois and Kevin May for the University of Oregon Cinema Studies Program and is published under Creative Commons license (CC BY NC SA 3.0)