External hard drives- what kind and where to pack?
 

Hi all,

What kind of external hard drives have you had good luck with on the road, and where on the bike do you store them?

I'll be carrying a couple on an upcoming Africa trip and want to avoid broken discs.

I've done a month-long trip with one, a WD Passport, and it survived in an Ortlieb type bag on the tailrack. But it later died after a minor drop...

Any more data points would be appreciated!


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I used one of theses > Wireless Plus: Mobile Storage To Stream Your Media| Seagate

The way I packed it was quite crude but worked for me. In 2 zip bags to protect from wet. Buried in in my clothes (trousers are good to roll it in) inside an Orlieb roll bag.

It pissed with rain, roads were beyond rough at times and survived a fall on a mountain track. It suffered cold and wet and 40C !

Worked fine.

Thanks for the suggestion. Will check out that HD. Sounds like quite a trip!

What about good old fashioned USB Pen drives.

You can get HUGE capacities now and they are very reliable, lightweight and take up no space.

USB 3.0 makes them even more viable.

I'd go with Ted on this one - solid state memory sticks. You can get 128Gb ones for around £6 on Amazon and they'll survive 50 miles of corrugated African piste a lot better than a hard disc.

I'm with Ted as well.
USB sticks are more compact, more reliable and faster than an external HDD.

Also, if you have multiple smaller ones you can easily mail them home when they get full and pick up others on the road.

We are using SSD External HDs. Although they are smaller capacity and more expensive than platter-based HDs, they are quite small and don't lose data when they are dropped or shaken (as on a motorcycle).

We use a Samsung 256GB SSD HD, about $150 for 256GB.

Totally agree with the usb sticks............ if you are taking a PC/similar.

I travelled without a PC of any kind so went for a wireless HD which was self powered. I took SD cards out of Camera stuck it in mobile phone transferred the contents to HD using the WIFI, stored the SD card in a safe place. Slotted in a new SD card for the camera. That way I had 2 copies, with out having to take a PC, just the BU HD which I would have taken if I took a PC anyway.......

1 more item on the "take less stuff list":thumbup1: I love less stuff.

You can go phone or tablet to USB using Total Commander , OTG or similar apps. Just don't have any sharp or heavy objects to hand while installing or looking for the combination that works for your devices.

Andy

Cool, I hadn't considered USB sticks because I want to take like 4TB of storage for video. But having a few of those on hand could be useful.

SSD drives would be ideal, but the price is getting up there. WD Passport 2TB is ~$100, and 2TB of SSD is like 10x more expensive.

I carried normal 2.5" external HDDs on my trip (3 years).
3 or 4 discs broke due to vibration.
Always carry a back-up of your discs and immediately replace broken one.

SSD would be ideal, but way too expensive for my wallet...

SSD Hard drives are getting cheap these days so i would prefere them also because they are much faster!

The Samsung T1 is probably the best external SSD drive on the market at the moment. You can get that all the way up to 1TB. It's super fast, but also super pricey.

I tend to just keep a 1TB WD 5400 USB drive in my tank bag. SSDs are great but it gets very expensive when you need to store a lot a video. Standard external drives aren't that delicate, mine survived many days off roading in Morocco. It's when they are actually powered on you need to be careful.

I wouldn't bother with wireless drives, transfer speeds are painfully slow compared to wired devices.

I have a 1tb Samsung ssd. Very small and compact but not cheap


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SSD is definitely the way to go for reliability. I upgraded the 256GB SSD in my Macbook Air with a 480GB SSD and the upgrade kit included an aluminium cover for the old SSD so it could be used as an external USB 3.0 drive. So I now have plenty of space for films and all sorts of junk.

Seems like SSDs are indeed the way to go if you can afford them. I have one in my laptop, and will also be traveling with two 2TB regular drives I already have. My strategy will be to make redundant copies to each standard drive, and more importantly upload as frequently as possible.

I'll also be practicing shutter discipline, as I tend to take a billion photos and videos otherwise, which are then a huge pain to go through.

The idea occurs to me that NOT splashing out for an expensive SSD could be a false economy for many, when considering the overall cost of an extended trip and the value you place on your photos and videos.


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So it's over a year since the last post on this thread - have any of you guys any further experience with external SSDs? Have they come down in price yet?

I agree that using a HDD rather than investing in an external SSD may be inviting issues. SSDs seem almost a tailored/custom solution specifically for traveling on a motorbike, and IMO probably worth the cost.

Price hasn't come down, but they are the way forward.

I now leave my 2TB 2.5" drive at home and carry a Samsung SSD. It's an internal one but I have an adapter.

I really want a 1GB Samsung T3 but £300 is too much for me. Once they come down to less than £200 I'll bite the bullet.

I also carry a 128gb flash drive, but even the fast versions of these are expensive now as they use the same tech as SSDs, and the slower ones aren't worth having.

EDIT:

I noticed that my last reply was in Aug 2015. Since then I've done near 10,000 miles around south america. I took a 2TB WB external drive. It survived off road, head, cold, and even a few crashes.

Hi guys, new to these forums but I have been downsizing and planning to live off my motorbike. I enjoy my movies, my TV shows and my music and since my PC is going into storage I've been making plans.

For the last few years i've been working on ships with a lot of time to watch movies so the be 2TB hard drives are the go but since i've knocked 2 of them off the desk, i've been looking at better options for the bike.

I have a Lenovo Yoga 3 plus tablet with 32 GB storage. Beyond that I bought 2 x Lexar 128 GB flash drives https://www.jbhifi.com.au/computers-...-black/991614/

they are tiny, I keep them in waterproof ziplock bags with a tiny bit of masking tape on them so I can identify each one. No chance of damaging them. No chance of dropping them. Give it one or two years and we should have 1 TB at this size for this price.

I would recommend USB 3.0 flash drives too. They are rather cheap and you can find them in large capacities now. External HDDs are somewhat clunky for a long trip.

Hi Guys,

We use a Samsung SSD to and its been great. Couple of other storage items to consider. My understanding is that old style external hard drives work by having and air gap between the disk and the needle (so to speak) and that as you go up in altitude this air gap is affected and can stop the effective use of the HD...... just what I'd read.

The other storage item that has affected us in SA is that I bought a cheap Samsung phone which had limited storage for items such as Maps Me ect. Anyway I had bought additional SD cards in Aust before leaving to use in the phone, but as Ive now discovered the SD cards I bought from Aldi......... while a bargin............... have very very very slow Read speeds and if large stored items are on the SD card it takes forever to load up on the phone. If buying SD cards get the best/ fastest you can afford.............. try buying an original, 64G Extreme Pro SD card in La Paz :)

You can get 2TB memory sticks now, albeit for a rather salty £1,400. But the smaller 1TB or 512GB ones are more reasonable if you don't really need that much storage. And of course it means if one gets FUBAR'd or nicked you don't lose everything.