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When it comes to portable hard drives there are a lot of factors that go into purchasing a drive. So what is the Best Budget Portable Hard Drive? Keep reading to see our recommendation. When I first starting doing photography, even before I was focusing on video production, I needed a way to store my files when i was traveling. Originally I used a Western Digital My Book external hard drive to store my photos and other files off of my main computer hard drive. This was a good choice for bulk storage, but not good for taking files on the go. I also didn’t have a lot of money, so I wanted to spend less than $100. I needed to find something inexpensive that was easy to carry. If you are looking for a more permanent non-moving drive, check out the model linked above.
Size Matters
For those of you that do plan to take your drive with you, size will make a big difference. I wanted something that would slip into a pocket or backpack very easily. When I first purchased a drive years ago I wanted someway to have redundant data as a protection of sorts. Since I could not afford a RAID drive that is designed for redundancies, I opted to buy two of the same drives and make them duplicates of each other. I opted to purchase two 1TB Western Digital My Passport Ultras. These drives have since been updated to the Elements Portable. As technology improves the cost of drives reduces drastically. When I first bought these drives they were $100 each for 1TB. Now you can get 4TB drives for the same price that I paid for 1TB drives. If you are interested in seeing the updated 4TB version of the portable drive, here is an amazon link. I believe that these drives are definitely worth the price and easy to transport.
Speed Matters
When looking at the speed of a drive that can make or break the user experience. I have had good experiences with these HDD drives. Now they won’t be as fast as an SSD drive, but I have been using them for photo editing and video editing for years now. I use them daily with my MacBook Pro and the Adobe Suite. I edit all of my videos from these drives currently, which includes 4K footage from GoPros and Drones. So although they may not be as fast as an SSD, I have been able to make them work without having to spend an arm and a leg. If you plan to work with only 4K and a lot of effects, then these drives might be too slow for you. All things considered I have been very happy with these drives.
HDD vs SSD
Since we are looking at the Best Budget Portable Hard Drives, we are focussing on a HDD style drive. This style of drive is a mechanical drive with a spinning disk inside. Since the HDD contains moving parts, there is risk of damaging the drives if dropped or submerged in liquid. As I mentioned above I bought two of the same drive to make a manual duplicate of all my data. I did this by connecting both drives to my computer as well as my memory card that I was taking data off. I would copy data from the original card to each drive. Having two copies and the original gave me peace of mind while working on content. The newer SSD drives do not contain moving parts and are therefore are less prone to data corruption and issues. In the future I will be providing more information about SSD options for people with a larger budget.
Drop a comment below if you have questions about either of these drive. Do you have a favorite portable hard drive? Let us know below. Be sure to subscribe to our emails to keep up to date on new posts and content. Until next time, be sure to keep Seeking Discovery and store your data safely!