I took over 1 GB of photographs recently. That’s a lot of hard drive space! I still need to delete some of them, but most of them will be kept. So, how do I handle issues of space? I’m using a 500 GB hard drive. That’s 500 GB in human terms, which translates into 465 GB in computer terms. Oh my, 400 days of taking over 1 GB of photos, and I’ll nearly reach capacity! Hopefully 500 TB hard drives will be under $150 by then.

While I wait for low-priced 500 TB hard drives, a 500 GB (really, 459 GB) hard drive will have to do. So, which one do I use, and why do I like it?

I use the SeaGate FreeAgent Go hard drive.

A solid state hard drive would probably be better for storage purposes, as it would have no moving parts, and it wouldn’t get as hot (the FreeAgent Go hardly gets hot at all), and so on, but they’re still priced a bit high for low amounts of storage space at this time.

Seagate’s FreeAgent Go

The FreeAgent Go is designed as an external hard drive. Now, when I think of external hard drives, I think of a large, clunky casing with a normal SATA hard drive inside. Something you can take out of its external case and put into a computer. The FreeAgent Go is different from this image. It’s designed to be an external drive only. Not only that, but it’s designed to be easy to take with you, and I have done just that, so I would have some place to store files when I needed to “rescue” them from someone’s computer before reinstalling Windows XP on that computer.

I don’t have the dock that the FreeAgent Go can use, so I can’t comment on that. What I do like about the FreeAgent Go is that I can unplug it from my PC and plug it into my laptop. This was important for me because my PC is where I like to work on photos, but my laptop has the card reader. (This point became not a point when I realized that the Nikon D40’s battery isn’t going to drained by plugging into a computer and uploading photos, and that the Nikon D40’s battery is rechargable.)

The FreeAgent Go seems to be a good choice for someone with a computer in need of hard drive space to store photos, yet the user is uncomfortable with opening a computer and putting a new hard drive in. It also seems to be a good choice for someone who uses a laptop rather than a desktop computer. It also seems to be a good choice if you’re going to run out of space on it within a year, and will need multiple storage options (just buy another one). Of course, that last one won’t be an issue when we all have 500 TB hard drives–unless the latest digital cameras produce 100MB RAW images.

The Mac version and the PC version differ only by the software they come with. Since I use Linux, I can’t use this software (nor would I need it for my purpose of photo storage). If you use a Mac, and you don’t need the backup software the FreeAgent Go comes with, you can get the PC version of the hard drive, then reformat the hard drive to use Mac’s filesystem (I believe that would be HFS+).

Comparing Different FreeAgent Go Drives

Here are stats for the FreeAgent Go on Amazon.com. Prices differ based on color, so a range is provided. Prices are for the PC version. I’m assuming 190 RAW+JPG pairs will be about 1GB total on a hard drive (simply judging by a similar number of files stored on my hard drive, using the EXT4 file system).

The 500 GB FreeAgent holds 465 GB of data. The price range is $110 to $150. This is a rate of 3.1GB/$1 through 4.2GB/$1. This is $0.24/GB through $0.32/GB. Roughly 88,350 RAW+JPG pairs can be stored.

The 320 GB FreeAgent holds 298 GB of data. The price range is $90 to $130. This is a rate of 2.3GB/$1 through 3.3GB/$1. This is $0.30/GB through $0.44/GB. Roughly 56,620 RAW+JPG pairs can be stored.

The 250 GB FreeAgent holds 232 GB of data. The price range is $75 to $100. This is a rate of 2.3GB/$1 through 3.1GB/$1. This is $0.32/GB through $0.43/GB. Roughly 44,080 RAW+JPG pairs can be stored.

How Much Space Should I Buy?

Let’s next consider a photoshoot is always 200 photos, or 1GB. These hard drives will fill up after anywhere from 230 to 300 to 450 photoshoots (rounded). If you do a photoshoot like this daily, you can get about a year’s use of the FreeAgent Go (depending on hard drive size). If your shoots are more like 100 photos, or you don’t shoot daily, it may take two or three years before filling up completely. Further, if you delete any “bad” photographs (such as taking 10 photos of the same thing, then keeping only three of them), it will take longer to fill up.

By the time one of these hard drives fills up, the price of hard drives with more space will be lower than these cost today. Look around and you can get some 1TB external hard drives for $100 to $200 on Amazon.com. The FreeAgent Go is nice for mobility, but if that isn’t needed, you can go for a more bulky 1TB external hard drive and spend the next three years filling it up. By the time you finish, you might just been looking at 500TB external hard drives for a similar price.

My recommendation is to spend roughly $100 to $150 now (be it a 500GB Seagate FreeAgent Go or something 1TB), then when it fills up completely, look into what’s available for $100 to $150.