Storage forum: Need advice on external storage device for videos

Thanks I'll check those out!

Maybe I misunderstood you or maybe you misunderstood me but I'm looking for an external drive to put stuff on, not take stuff off.

Not sure I understand your 2nd point. I WANT to make backups of my videos/photos.

All of them let you put stuff on them. But folk often mistake them as "storage" and forget that if there is no backup copy, there is no backup copy.
Bob

Ok I think I see what you're saying. So in addition to backing them up on an external drive, you recommend backing them up on another device as well? If so, what do you recommend? Another hard drive? DVDs? Sorry if I'm not getting it. I'm not too tech savvy

I have 3 external HDDs. They all get synced every few months when I get around to it. However stuff I can't lose is done more often.

Then I have a select group that is on DropBox and if you understand how that works, the content syncs to the office machines, my personal laptop and what's there is "Hard To Kill."

Finally a couple of memory sticks/cards have the digital photo collect which is stuff I must never lose.

YOU have to make the decision how many copies to keep but in the old IT school the number was 3. If you had one of the backups fail, you had 2 to fall back on and would arrange to get a new device or tape back into the rotation.
Bob

Thank you that was very helpful.

Oh ok so an external hard drive is not efficient for this? I don't know much about backup/file storage which is why I'm here in the first place. What is considered "stable media" besides putting everything on stacks of dvds?

long term it's just not reliable as evidenced by the multitude of posts about external drives or drive access failures here, there and everywhere. It's "A" way to store data but should NEVER EVER be the only media for DATA SORAGE or BACKUP unless of course you don't really need/want the data. Externals are by nature less reliable by incorporating cables . . .USB or eSATA, enclosures with logic boards, power adapters and additional handling that makes them more susceptible to inadvertent damage.

So the idea is to have the data and multiple copies of the data including copies on other media and potentially multiple locations. Frankly speaking I always have an internal HDD as my first backup because the transfer/backup is way more reliable than external drives. From there it's 2nd or 3rd external HDDs and some offsite storage. The more precious the data...the better backup you need.

VAPCMD