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General discussion

most RELIABLE external hard drive? awash in options

by BerniniCaCO3 Mar 20, 2014 5:24AM PDT

I've been very lax in backing up my data,
and when I had a very worrisome hard drive blip the other day, it's time to back up everything to be safe!

I pulled out my years' old 500gb preparing to back up at least my ssd with the OS on it.. and found it broken Sad

So it's time to buy an external. I've got 2.5tb of movies, tv shows, pictures and games I'd like to back up too, so I'm looking for a 3 or 4 tb drive probably.

I'm not too worried about the loss of the old 500gb... but a backup drive is your safety net when your main hardware has failed. Above all I want it to be reliable, to last for years.

It'll be lightly used-- mostly just data written once and left there.
I don't care about speed; if it takes 10 hours or 30 to backup, I can just leave it running that one time.
I don't care about efficiency; I doubt it'll change my electric bill much and it'll stay unplugged
I don't care about looks
I don't care about footprint either, and it doesn't have to be portable.

But browsing the internet, there are so many options, western digital, seagate has 3 different models, hitachi, 'g-tech,' etc etc. I really don't know what to make of it. Every single model rates at around 4 stars: 80% give 5 'cause it worked, the other 20% had tragic failures and data loss and gave it 1 star. All anecdotal evidence and I can't assess reliability on that basis!

So I need some guidance! Happy
Hech, if you tell me that the best thing to do is get an enclosure and 6 500gb drives instead of 1 3tb, I'll do so (as long as it isn't over $200... Sad )

Also, am I crazy, or is everyone on ebay paying more for used drives than the new ones of the same models can be found for? lol

Discussion is locked

4 Posts
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None really.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Mar 20, 2014 5:29AM PDT
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afraid you're right
by BerniniCaCO3 Mar 20, 2014 8:09AM PDT

I was afraid you'd give an answer like this: the fact that every single drive I looked at had similar reviews (works works works failed works), no matter brand or size, suggests they're all a gamble.

Went with a G-tech drive that seemed to be a decent price used on ebay. Fingers crossed. Why is gtech such an expensive drive at retail though? Like every other brand, they, too, have their equal share of negative reviews for failed drives.

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Nice choice but does not get us there.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Mar 20, 2014 8:21AM PDT

Even if the drive was 100% reliable we have an OS, backup and other issues that can cause an wipe out.

At least you can save a few GBs in the cloud of what you can't lose.
Bob

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One way or another
by Willy Mar 24, 2014 12:20AM PDT

Since, you already getting into 2.5Tb of data storage you can see this is a serious amount to back-up. If you tend to remain with -1- drive to do this then you're putting all eggs in one basket. As always advised, back-up are really abpout 3-sets of such, thus you need at least 2 drives and if possible safe storage of it(physical safekeeping). There are 3Tb and even 4Tb drives out there to consider, unfortunately they all can be less than capable after some time. Since it matters over time, its best to get quality and generally speaking that means "server capable" and/or business type drives. You need to step away from typical consumer(home PC) level and think what server HDs are out there. here, I suggest NAS type storage which can have typical HDs but can also at your expense use better HDs. Once you review pricing for server type drives, there's a reason why they're more expensive. You needn't got this route and just settle for ext. HDs again or the use of "HD dock" for ease of use, just drop-in and use your old HD or any newe HDs as well. It seems your flexible in what to get, google "All in One HDD Docking" as i found it helpful in recovering customer data and/or re-use of customer drives just to show them it works and return it.

tada ------Willy Happy

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