Photography News issue 17

Kit guide

33

FreecomQuattro 3.0, 4TB £150 Ever been in a situation where you need to plug your external hard drive into someone else’s computer, but you don’t have the right leads? Or you do, but they don’t have the right sockets? ‘USB type A to USB type B?’ ‘No.’ ‘USB A to micro USB?’ ‘No.’ ‘Oh, just shoot me in the face…’ It’s a crushing experience, but the Freecom Quattro 3.0 is striking a heavy blow against those bad times with no less than – count them – four different interfaces. There’s USB 3.0, FireWire800, FireWire400 and eSATA, making it truly versatile for PC or Mac users. Not content with the smiles it’s providing from that, the Quattro is also super-quiet, thanks to its aluminium enclosure, which absorbs heat from the mechanism and removes the need for a fan. The metal outer also gives it an extra level of durability and, combined with a minimalist high-gloss black inner, it’s pretty easy on the eye, too. It’s small and squarish in shape, and thanks to the included rubber footstands you can position the drive upright, so that it occupies even less desk space. File management software is preloaded on the drive. Your external hard drive’smain function is the safe storage of your photos, right? So does it matter what it looks like? Well, yes it does. After all, you wouldn’t compromise on other stuff, so why should your drive look like it was designed by a warring committee of robots with no eyes? With that in mind, LaCie is driving forward the aesthetics of such devices, combining great form and function. This Porsche Design model is the winner of several design awards and its beautifully crisp shape comes from the 5mm thick aluminium shell surrounding the disk, an outer, which is also good at absorbing heat from the innards and protecting them from knocks. Available in PC and Mac versions (which each offer pre-formatting of the drive), it comes in sizes up to 8TB, but a 4TB version should really see even the most rampaging shutter well catered for. Connection is via USB 3.0, and the LaCie Porsche also has an auto-backup function, password protection for increased security and an ecomode, which cuts in automatically to lower the power consumption by almost 80% when not in use. Rugged hardware is on the advance and this is a very sensible thing. After all, people are constantly breaking stuff, and stuff has a right to protect itself. It’s not unusual to buy cameras, lenses and portable drives that are shock or waterproof. But fireproof? Well, that’s unheard of. A warm welcome then to the ioSafe Solo G3, which has some double-hard credentials, withstanding temperatures of up to 843ºC for half an hour (plenty of time for you to call the fire brigade when your computer catches fire midway through a mammoth editing session) and being waterproof to depths of up to 3m for 72 hours. As a final fail-safe, it also comes with free data recovery no matter what the reason for the loss. To secure it physically, its case has a Kensington lock and tabs so it can be bolted down to your desk or floorboards. Available incapacities up to4TB, it’sUSB3.0compatible and if you’re wondering why it looks like someone’s shot it with an airgun: a) that’s actually an airflow cooling system, so the drive can run cool without a noisy fan; and b) it looks cool, so get over yourself. LaCie PorscheDesignDesktop Drive, 4TB £130 ioSafe Solo SK3TB-EUG3, 3TB £350

WDMy Cloud, 4TB £150

As the name suggests, WD’s My Cloud range offers something a bit different from most external hard drives: access to your files from all over the world. This is obviously a good thing for photographers, because if you have one of these plugged into your home router via its Ethernet port, you can back up shots from anywhere with an Internet connection (that said, if you’re sending Raws by dial-up from the middle of nowhere, you might want to invest in a good book). Naturally you can also download shots to illustrate the tall tales you’re telling in hotel bars, and it all comes via the free My Cloud desktop or mobile app, with no fees to pay like other online storage services. With a capacity of up to 6TB, your whole catalogue could fit while still leaving an echo, but we picked the 4TB version, which, at £150, offers a great compromise between price and storage. Space can be expanded by linking other drives off the USB 3.0 port, and as you’d expect from a cloud storage device, My Cloud drives also include password protection for your data and software to automatically back up your files. With a Thunderbolt connection (as well as the slower USB 3.0 standard), this drive from G-Technology will give you the fastest transfer speeds if you need them, which is particularly important if you’re editing directly from high-res photos or large video files on the disk. As well as the Thunderbolt compatibility, the G-Drive’s pleasing brushed metal finish is sympathetically styled to sit alongside stylish iMac desktops, making it well suited to Apple users. What’s more, unlike many external drives, it comes pre-formatted as a plug-and-play unit for Mac OS, so you don’t need to spend time setting it up (it can, of course, also be easily reformatted to a Windows system). The all-aluminium enclosure isn’t just an affectation either, it functions as a very efficient heat-sink, keeping the unit running cool, which prevents disk failures and also meaning it runs more quietly than units where a fan is constantly burbling away. This G-Drive comes in sizes up to 6TB and is compatible with Apple’s TimeMachine auto-backup app, so you can mirror your desktop files without even thinking about it. G-TechnologyG-Drivewith Thunderbolt, 4TB £230 Sure, ‘DRDS4A31 5N five-bay desktop Network Attached Storage (NAS) device’ doesn’t sound like a cool name to you – but to your PC, and anyone with a computer science degree, it might as well be called Clint Eastwood. Yes, this is a truly fantastic piece of hardware, and thanks to its upgradable design, it’s able to swallow vast amounts of data. Into each of its five bays plugs a drive, so you could achieve 20TB using 4TB disks, while the ‘open’ design means any 3.5in SATA II/III drives can be used. But it’s not just about capacity – as a network drive, you can access data cloud-style from almost anywhere or stream music and video via the Ethernet connection. Spreading, or mirroring your information across the separate drives, the data is also protected, even in the event of multiple drive failures. You can buy the disk- less enclosure on its own for just over £400, or with an assortment of disks – with two 3TB WD Red HDD drives, for instance, the cost rises to around £600. The enclosure is also available with direct storage (called the 5D), using Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 Drobo 5NNAS device, 6TB £600

SPECS

SPECS

DIMENSIONS 170x139x49mm WEIGHT 1.2kg

CAPACITY 2-6TB INTERFACE USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet CONTACT www.wdc.com

DIMENSIONS 190x120x38mm WEIGHT 1kg

CAPACITY 3-8TB INTERFACE USB 3.0 CONTACT www.lacie.com

SPECS

SPECS

DIMENSIONS 155x148x43mm WEIGHT 1.4kg

CAPACITY 1-5TB INTERFACE USB 3.0, FireWire800, FireWire400 and eSATA

DIMENSIONS 235x130x48mm WEIGHT 1.35kg

CAPACITY 3-6TB INTERFACE Thunderbolt and USB 3.0

CONTACT www.freecom.com

CONTACT www.g-technology.com

SPECS

SPECS

CAPACITY 5-bay design INTERFACE Gigabit Ethernet

DIMENSIONS 150x185x262mm WEIGHT 3.9kg (enclosure only)

CAPACITY 2-4TB INTERFACE USB 3.0

DIMENSIONS 440x275x210mm WEIGHT 8kg

CONTACT www.iosafe.com

CONTACT www.drobo.com

www.absolutephoto.com

Issue 17 | Photography News

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