Best external hard drive for photographers – Seagate GoFlex Desk 4TB

Price £230 Web www.seagate.com
The huge 4TB storage capacity makes this Seagate the best-value drive on test in terms of price-per-gigabyte.

Setup couldn’t be simpler, with full drive capacity accessible straight after plugging in.

Included is a basic backup software package that is easy to use but lacking in features.

An upgrade is available, but only at extra expense. Read and write performance was about average when connected to our USB 2.0 PC, achieving 29.4 MB/s to read from and 19.5 MB/s to write to the drive.

The smart casing and quiet operation further serve to make this hard drive a great choice.

Pros: Class-leading capacity; solid performance; easy on the eye
Cons: Limited backup software; too pricey for some budgets

Final Score: 92%

PAGE 1: Best external hard drive for photographers – Seagate GoFlex Desk 4TB
PAGE 2: Best external hard drive for photographers – Seagate GoFlex Satellite
PAGE 3: Best external hard drive for photographers – Western Digital My Passport 1TB
PAGE 4: Best external hard drive for photographers – G-Drive Professional External Hard Drive 1TB
PAGE 5: Best external hard drive for photographers – G-Drive mobile 1TB
PAGE 6: Best external hard drive for photographers – Western Digital My Book Essential 1TB
PAGE 7: Five things to look for in an external hard drive

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Seagate GoFlex Desk 4TB, £230

Transporting your photo collection and creating all-important back-ups couldn’t be easier than with an external hard drive.

Below we round up five key considerations photographers should keep in mind when looking for an external hard drive for photos.

1 If storage capacity is your main priority, a desktop drive usually offers more for your money than a portable drive.

2 Portable hard drives are, by their nature, more vulnerable to damage.

Choosing a drive with a solid, well-made case has more than just aesthetic benefits; it should also better-protect your valuable data.

3 If you intend to use your hard drive as a backup device, consider the quality of the included backup software.

Some hard drive manufacturers only offer trial packages, while others include far more functional and useful alternatives at no extra cost.

4 Drives with faster USB 3.0, FireWire 800, or eSATA interfaces are only worth investing in if your computer comes equipped with a similarly speedy connection.

Western Digital My Passport 1TB, £140

5 High-capacity drives may initially seem expensive, but work out cheaper in terms of gigabytes-per-pound.

Your digital darkroom, aka your PC or Mac, is where the magic happens – where you transform the images captured by your camera into the dynamic masterpieces you originally envisioned when you were behind the lens. Whether you’re just tweaking a raw image to get the perfect result, or going that little bit further to rescue a bad exposure, here’s all you need to get started.

Printing at home

These days, even the most humble home photo printers are capable of producing results that rival the output of any high-street printer. Pay a little more for a model that uses multiple shades of the four base ink colours, and you’ll achieve unrivalled quality. Of course, you pay a premium for this quality and convenience, but there are ways of keeping the costs down…

Printer

For the best quality prints, choose a dedicated photo printer rather than an ordinary colour printer. Many photo printers are now ‘all-in-one’ models, offering printing, scanning and copying in a single desktop unit. Prices start at £50 for an A4 printer. Some models have eight individual inks, which may mean higher costs.

Paper

For genuine photo quality, invest in high-quality photo paper. The main decision you have to make is which finish to go for. Canon, Epson and Fujifilm all make their own glossy and matt papers – you’ll usually get the best results with the same brand as your printer. For fine-art printing, there are plenty of third-party providers.

Ink

The biggest cost of running your photo printer is replacing used ink cartridges. One option is to shop around for compatible third-party inks. You could save as much as 50%, though you may not get the same guarantee of colour fidelity or light-fading resistance offered by the manufacturer’s own brand.

Image-editing and storage options

Laptop or desktop?

Laptops are more fragile and often less powerful than desktops. However, if you like the idea of editing your images on location, or just lounging on the sofa, a laptop’s the way to go. Prices are falling all the time, and you can now get a decent Windows 7-enabled laptop for around £300-400.

Card reader

Many PCs come with slots for SD and CompactFlash cards, but using a USB 2.0 card reader is still the preferred option for image transfer. They do tend to sap power from a laptop when downloading images, so it’s best to have your notebook on charge so you don’t suddenly lose power, or worse, your pictures.

Screen

Glossy screens look great, but they are highly reflective, which can result in unwanted glare. Matt screens produce much less glare, but care with positioning is needed to prevent images from looking flat. Whatever you opt for, calibrate it to ensure accurate colour reproduction.

Software

Most new SLRs come with raw-processing and photo-editing software, but it can be hard to use or rather basic. The most popular raw editor is Adobe Camera Raw, which is bundled with Photoshop Elements 10, Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3.

Storage

If you regularly shoot large volumes of raw files, storage can be a major concern. As an example, 300 16-bit 12Mb raw files require 8Gb of storage. Even if you only edit a third of these files and back them up once, you’re still looking at around 24Gb of storage. An external hard drive with a capacity of 500Gb – because drives can corrupt and laptops can get stolen – plus a DVD burner for backups is the best solution. This set-up would be enough for 30 8Gb memory cards, which would probably keep you going for a year.

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