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Author Topic: Best desktop hard drive for Mac?  (Read 1941 times)

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Offline OldNeumanntapr

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Best desktop hard drive for Mac?
« on: October 29, 2020, 10:34:28 PM »
Hey all,

I need to add another pony to my stable (for my iMac) and I thought I'd ask everyone's opinion here. I have three Lacie Quadra external hard drives and I love them, but Lacie no longer makes the Quadra and the new Lacie drives I've looked at on Amazon have Seagate innards and do not have the best reviews as far as longevity.

I also have an 8TB GDrive hard drive that I like that is a little over a year old but looking at GDrive reviews on Amazon there are some that are a bit disconcerting. GDrive no longer makes an 8TB drive but instead makes a 10tb. Some of the reviews on the 10tb GDrive claim that because of the larger size the drive has a slow writing speed, and there are some reviews that tell of an untimely death when the units are still fairly new.

Whenever I get a new hard drive I alocate my previous drive for backup of the newly acquired one, so I will use the 8tb GDrive as a backup.

Question: Is GDrive still a good company (better than Lacie?) AND... would two smaller drives be better than one larger one? IE; would two 4TB drives be a better choice than one 8tb (or 10tb)? I like the higher capacity but worry about having all my eggs in one basket should the main drive fail (even though I always have duplicate files on backup drives.) Plus, the 4tb drives might be a bit faster for file transfers???

Others have suggested RAID drives for redundacy, but with a RAID both drives are always running, whereas my backup drives are not operating unless I am adding to them. I tend to think that every hour that a drive runs is an hour off of its life, so I treat backup drives as storage only. Is this a good way to go about this?

Thanks to everyone in advance for the input.

ONT

Offline jerryfreak

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Re: Best desktop hard drive for Mac?
« Reply #1 on: October 29, 2020, 11:47:40 PM »
i have yet to see any statistical determination that one brand is more reliable than another

my MO is to buy the cheapest drive i can find of similar spec, and keep multiple physical backups
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Offline noahbickart

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Re: Best desktop hard drive for Mac?
« Reply #2 on: October 30, 2020, 10:44:52 AM »
my MO is to buy the cheapest drive i can find of similar spec, and keep multiple physical backups

This.

All drives will fail. Buy cheap ones and keep everything backed up in multiple locations.
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Offline Gordon

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Re: Best desktop hard drive for Mac?
« Reply #4 on: October 31, 2020, 12:26:12 PM »
I do computer repair and small business IT for a living.  Hands down I see more Seagate failures than I do Western Digital.  YMMV.......
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Offline jerryfreak

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Re: Best desktop hard drive for Mac?
« Reply #5 on: October 31, 2020, 01:03:24 PM »
good to know!
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Offline mnm207

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Re: Best desktop hard drive for Mac?
« Reply #6 on: October 31, 2020, 07:55:47 PM »
I use OWC Mercury Elite Duo enclosures in their RAID 1 mode as my working drives (various models as my computers' port options evolved). I like the form factor of these and have had luck with their reliability. (No loss of data to date, knock wood.) I have three on my desk right now: one for my commercial photography, one for my art photography, and one for sound projects. As I need higher capacity drives I swap in new drives into the enclosure--and also swap drives if ever I hear a sound I don't like (once burned and all that--with a Lacie drive). These are available in a 4 bay form factor as well.

I regularly back up each working drive to a pair of bare HDs--the cheapest I can find, cross-referenced to the Backblaze reliability stats linked above so I'm not buying a model with a high-failure rate.
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Offline OldNeumanntapr

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Re: Best desktop hard drive for Mac?
« Reply #7 on: November 01, 2020, 10:36:27 AM »
Thanks all for your input

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Re: Best desktop hard drive for Mac?
« Reply #8 on: November 01, 2020, 08:34:38 PM »
GDrive is made by WD.
I buy the WD full size desktop external drives, according to the deal of the day. This week 8TB costs about $140.
WD just came out with new larger drives in 16 and 18TB sizes. They are not a bargain though.
Best deal I've seen for WD bulk storage was last winter, when the 14TB drives were down to $200.
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