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General discussion

external hard drive buying question......

by soxfantony Jan 27, 2014 4:43AM PST

I recently bought the 2013 macbook air with 4g of ram and the 128gb SSD, which means I'm in the market for an external hard drive and optical drive. I also recently read an article on external drive failure rates on Gizmodo, which made me think........When buying a drive would it be better to get something like a usb 3.0 Hitachi HDD or a random brand's SDD?Dont SSD's fail less than traditional hard drives or is that a myth? and also whats the deal with refurbished drives? I've seen a lot, and didn't know if i should stay away or not.

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IMHO, it all depends

by Willy Jan 29, 2014 10:20PM PST

Refurbishment = Are anything rebuild and inspected to operate at the specs they were designed for. They are rebuild because they failed or maintain up to specs or any design fault known to cause a short lifespan and now corrected. The main reason they're cheaper is because they are also used.

As for usage of a PC in nowadays application having an ext. storage/media is almost a must to safeguard data offline(multiple copies) as yet another source of storage. As for SDD, these are intended for typical use but any intense or repetitive use is going to test the TRIM or similar command structure to reduce re-using the same data area over and over again. Failure is always an omnipresent condition but that can be managed. If you use your PC as any typical user would and provide decent handling and care, expect to get what you pay for. In other words, if you treat it right it will you.

my opinion -----Willy