FatWallet

I want to buy an USB external hard drive to store photos & videos from the digital camera. Also, to free up space on the computer where a lot of those photos are currently stored & to make backups in case the computer crashes.

I'm trying to decide between these to drives:

$79.99 - 640gb - Western Digital WDE1U6400N 640GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - Retail

$99.99 - 500gb - Western Digital Elements WDE1U5000N 500GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - Retail

Why does the drive with Less space cost more money? Is there something better about the smaller drive to warrant the extra $20?

TIA!

IOU said:btw dont store them on a HDD burn to several dvd's

Just curious, why is storing the photos & videos across several dvds better then just transferring them to one HDD?

I haven't actually bought the HDD yet....maybe I won't buy it after all. Thanks.

As far as hdd vs dvd, it really depends why you are backing them up.

DVD's are good if you don't need to access them regularly. There is less chance of them failing than of a hard drive crashing, but dvd's do eventually go bad - the chemicals break down - so you might want to reburn them every couple years if you want to archive them.

If you are going to be accessing the pics/video regularly, you might want to go hard drive. If you really want to make sure you don't lose anything, spend the extra bucks and get something like this - I have the network version. You can set it up as a RAID so it stores everything on two drives, so if one fails it's mirrored on another. Pricey, but I've had so many hard drives fail on me and lost a bunch of documents and several years worth of mp3 collecting. Never again. The stuff I can afford to lose (porn, tv shows) goes on regular drives, but the stuff I care about goes on the 2big RAID.

MadAnthony said:As far as hdd vs dvd, it really depends why you are backing them up.
I'm backing them up because I'm running out of space on my computers built in hard drive. Plus, I want a back up copy in case something happens to that computer. I probably won't access them too often, so maybe DVD is the way to go.

Thanks everyone for the replies, I appreciate it!

Maybe for now, I'll buy:
$79.99 - 640gb Western Digital USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

Since I currently don't have a dvd burner, I'll also search for a deal on a new laptop that has a dvd burner.

I can't see spending the $$ now to purchase an external dvd burner when most new laptops come with one already installed. Plus, it's almost time for a new laptop anyway. Thanks again!