Best External Harddrives?
 

A little overdue but I want to download shit off of my 2 web servers and have a local backup just incase.. Thinking 2TB external hd would be fine for now.. looking at this one

Amazon.com: Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB Portable External Hard Drive with 200GB of Cloud Storage & Mobile Device Backup USB 3.0 (STDR2000100) - Black: Computers & Accessories

Any other suggestions?

I had a fan in a drive enclosure fail and every seagate drive I had in there died. The other 5 were fine (a mix of wd and hitachi). Purely anecdotal I know, but all I buy are wd reds now for media storage. I do remember seeing tests on Seagate drives and them having abnormally high failure rates but I think it was only one model tested so who knows if it means anything.

Amazon.com: Seagate Expansion 1TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STEA1000400): Computers & Accessories seems to be the newer version

I have used the Western Digital brand small external drives for years. Price is near the same, but with WD you can pay more to have a 3TB unit.

Amazon.com: WD 3TB Black My Passport Ultra Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBBKD0030BBK-NESN: Computers & Accessories

Seagates have a high annual failure rate at about 12%. In 2014 Seagate 3TB HDs had a 40% annual failure rate. Western Digital has a less than 5% annual failure rate. If your data is not critical, get the Seagate.

My three work computers that work day and night for 12 years now all have 6 hard drives each in them and never had a single problem with them, In fact I think they are the only original parts left except the cases LOL.
Motherboards all burnt up. Upgraded the processors and memory a few times.
Pretty much all brand new computers except the same old slow ass hard drives but it is all I need them for.
The next guy will say his all went bad after 3 weeks so it doesn't matter does it.

I just got 2 of the Seagate 4TB external USB3 drives, on the same Amazon you guys are showing the 1T and 2Ts. Around $140 each, with Amazon Prime. Free shipping, etc.

One for VIDEO_TS folders of my 500 DVDs, and one for off-line storage of raw video, Youtube and XTube video clips, and some experimenting. Both are compilations of older, small drives that I still carry.

Just a few seconds with Disk Utility, and they're good to go with OSX. Also came with data recovery insurance.

I'm from Minneapolis, so I root for the hometown team Seagate, where at least one early masturbation fantasy works.

i always go with western digital single platter drivers. i'm not sure if they make single platter drivers bigger than 1tb these days or not but i hear the more platters the more chance for failure and western digital has always been good for me.

I had 3 western digital HDs die on me (the "click of death") and ever since then have gone with Toshibas and Seagates.

I have about 12 external HDs (everything backed up 3 times, I am paranoid lol), all 2TB drives passport size. They work great. :)

Stay with western digital. All my seagate drives are dead or were doa. A 4tb mybook is cheap. I've been doing this since 2002 Mike, backed up petabytes, but please take my opinion with a grain of salt.
Ds

:1orglaugh :thumbsup



& OP, to confirm, we've always had Seagate & never had a problem with our externals :thumbsup

Another fan of WD here. Just keep them plugged in.

So more votes for WD alrighty

Stay away from Seagate... WD Red are good...

If they are on servers why not think about using 'The Cloud' only?..

I love the WD Passport drives. Have served me well for years.

I have had good luck with Seagate drives formatted as EXT3 or EXT4 with GNU/LINUX. I haven't had a mechanical failure with SATA 3 or 6 hardrives ever so far in 5 years.

The old ATA 100/133 is another story ...

I am using vfat format on my external hard drives no problems.

250 GB Samsung 2.0 USB 4 years old
1TB Hitachi Touro 3.0 USB 2 years old

Maybe, it is the format or the LINUX?

Funny really, I have the current years work on my computers 4tb HDD (Toshiba) and also backed up on my external 4tb (Seagate) When I am done with this year I take that Toshiba $tb out of my computer, and store it and the Seagate in separate buildings. Then I fire up another internal and external and start all over again. I have only had one HD failure, a Seagate that was from 2010, and I also have 3 4tb WD drives form the last 3 years with no issues. I guess in the end what I'm saying is I've never had a drive fail except the Seagate.

go for WD

The only hard drive I have ever had fail was a WD ATA100 years ago. I have 2 WD SATA 3 working now, one is a bit iffy maybe and the other is a bit noisy but works fine. They are older internals however.

All my computers are multiple drives -- with room for backups.

You can always unplug the extra internals and reformat one as the master with the os and then reattach the additional drives, then read and write to them. Redundancy is your friend on workstations -- all production servers should be in RAID.

In the end, it is probably your luck of the draw. Buy 100 harddrives and a few will fail regardless of brand.

I would recommend the Samsung -- I have had the best experience with them SSD ... (so far) ... Again, luck of the draw maybe :2 cents:

For cold storage with infrequent access for backups, failure is less likely. The reliability of the brand doesn't matter as much as if you had the drive constantly spinning for frequent access. I'd save some money and go with a Seagate.