I always have at least 2 backups (often more) for every single image or video I take. The drives are set up in such a way I can find any image from literally thousands. At the end of the year, I retire these drives and start new ones, and with that comes shopping around and finding a new portable drive that has a balance between:

1. Portability (It needs to be as small as possible and be powered by USB).
2. Disk Space – I need as much as possible.
3. Reliability – It’s no good if it crashes. Ive had a lot of luck with WD & Seagate, but some models have problems
4. Cost effective – I don’t want to spend too much on them.

This year I am going with the Western Digital 2TB external HD. They run about $135 at Costco, and it is even smaller than the 500GB drives Ive used for so many years. They come out of the box formatted for PC, but if you know how to format them for Macs, they pack a lot of punch.

Im also looking into some Thunderbolt drives for video editing and will let you know what I settle on.