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Does anyone here use a laptop but work from an EHD?

scrappyjedi said:
Actually, the internal guts of an EHD and the hard drive in your computer are the same. If you rip the case off, it's just a standard hard drive inside (even the little ones are just 3.5" laptop hard drives in a case). They all use spinning platters and a reader (except for external SSDs, which have zero moving parts), and all of them are prone to failure. My Mac Pro only has a 256GB SSD internal, and there is NO space anywhere in the case for another drive of any kind. I use EHDs exclusivesly for data, photos, digi supplies, and backups (multiple redundant) and have for years. They all have the same failure rate as far as the hard drive itself goes. EHDs are slightly more susceptible to failure in the USB port/power supply area if they are moved around a lot, but those parts are easy to fix and most of the time the drive itself is still fine.
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Ok! Cool. Good to know! It was something I had read somewhere but what you say makes sense!
 
I use an older Macbook Pro with a portable EHD. I keep all of my photos and regular files on the laptop and all my scrap stuff on the EHD. When I started running out of space on the laptop a few years ago, I upgraded the hard drive from 500GB to 1TB, which actually wasn't too hard to do. The worst part was waiting for everything to be restored from the backup. Both my laptop and my portable EHD get backed up to a larger EHD every few weeks (or when I feel like it). My backup schedule depends on how many photos I take and how much scrap stuff I buy. I have accidentally unplugged the portable EHD at times (I've also dropped it once or twice) but I've been lucky and haven't lost anything. I've been buying and using EHD's for years and I have only ever had one fail on me. I've also had a few desktop hard drives die. I don't really worry about that though because I know I have my backup, which is no more than a few weeks out of date, so I might lose a little (would be my own fault for not backing up more often), but I won't lose everything!
 
I just recently got a new MacBook Pro and splurged on a 1T hard drive because I want all my stuff to live in one place. I do have an EHD, but only for Time Machine backups. I have had extra EHD's before, but they have always failed or died or fell of the table, so I'm leery about really relying on one for everything. My husband ended up buying me an extra one because he thinks I needed one. It's sitting in a box.
 
I have a macbook pro with a SSD. I don't have room for anything on my laptop. :( And unfortunately, like someone else's, it can't be upgraded to a larger SSD. My photos are in the cloud with a thumbnail on my EHD and my scrap supplies are on an EHD too. I have it backed up, but it does make me nervous! I take it everywhere I take my laptop. It has disconnected accidentally a few times but so far so good - no corruption. I will definitely have to check out the network idea!!! But for now, this works. I definitely want a larger hard drive on my laptop next time!
 
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