Topic: Best External Hard Drive?

[OldNeumanntapr]

Hey all,

What's the best external hard drive (for a decent price)? I'm looking for a good quality 2 TB external drive.

Thanks for the advice.

[twatts (pants are so over-rated...)]

I've had good luck with Western Digital and Seagate, but there are people that don't like either for whatever reason...  A friend recently recommended Hitachi, but they seem a little more expensive...  Maybe its worth it??? 

http://tinyurl.com/bov5anr

Terry

[Brian Skalinder]

My experience has been that the all-in-one external HDDs typically have cheapo HDDs internally and if the HDD bombs, you have to replace the whole thing -- enclosure and HDD.  (Also, some of them use consumer-level and / or proprietary RAID0, which can make it difficult or impossible to recover from a crash.)

I think the best option is to buy an external enclosure and bare HDD separately.  I use this enclosure for my off-site backups:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173042

I wanted a solid case since I transport it regularly, and a good fan to keep things cool during long, sustained writes on a periodic basis.  If you don't need both eSata and USB 2.0, there's also a pure USB 3.0 option, I think.

I've always liked Western Digital HDDs.  I typically pay a little more for a model with a 3-5 year warranty instead of 1 year, on the theory they're better made and more durable.  And even if they're not, at least I have the longer warranty.  I also really like WD's return / exhange policy in case the HDD fails within warranty.

What's the purpose of the external HDD?  Daily use and working space?  Primary storage?  Backup / redundancy?

[DigiGal]

I'm currently using a "G Technology G-Drive" for primary and an old LaCie "Porsche" drive for misc shared files via Airport USB.  Also picked up an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro for Time Machine backups on my husbands computer.  All of these have been great so far.

For lots more coin, Glyph Drives have a good reputation but I haven't tried them.

I had a couple of "LaCie Big Disk D2's", both of these were prone to failure and I got tired of taking them apart to replace blown zener diodes on a fairly regular basis.  Briefly tried a used Fantom Drive for my hubby but it failed within a couple of weeks.

All said and done HDD's do not last forever.

[OldNeumanntapr]

I am needing a good external hard drive for my Mac. It will be used primarily for storage. I'm going to try and convert my CDRs (about 2,600) to FLAC. A good portion, but not all, of my discs are HHb CDR 800 master discs of my DAT recordings.

Thanks again.

[DigiGal]

I'm on Mac platform too.  All the HDD's I mentioned are FW except the Porsche which is a USB Only Drive, it's connected to Airport Extreme, effectively serving as a file share storage drop box.

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

Brian is correct. Buy an OEM or Retail bare drive and put it in an external enclosure yourself. If you can put legos together you can install a bare drive into an enclosure.

The Rosewill enclosures have been good to me. Good $ to quality ratio.

Personally I use these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182155

The bare drives come with a longer warranty so that is a big plus...and if something goes wrong it's much easier to figure out if the problem is with the electronics in the enclosure or with the drive itself.

With the pre-made external drives you're out of luck if you're unable to get the data of the drive. You COULD  open the enclosure and see if you can get data off the drive by hooking it up directly to a computer (or in a new case)...but you will void any warranty that way.

As far as warranty is concerned I've been very happy with Western Digital. They only offer a 2 year warranty now, but you can request a new drive be sent to you first (and then send the dead drive back later). This is handy if the drive still works, but is failing, so you can get your data off (although you should be backing everything up so this shouldn't really be an issue).

If a longer warranty interests you the Seagate drives have a 3 year warranty, and I understand they are more reliable than they used to be.

[dnsacks]

One effective (but more costly) way to do this is to build yourself a raid/NAS.  I just put together the following setup for an uncle and it screams:

1) http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-Diskless-Network-Attached/dp/B005YW7OLM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355860454&sr=8-1&keywords=synology -- the ds212j is a mini computer -- it will serve as a standalone device (doesn't need to have computer running) and has some nice features (I've recently discovered how mine can be a file server -- I can send folks links to files/directories that they can download at will and/or give folks access to a web interface that will let them browse and upload/download contents) -- it can also independently download/upload bittorrents. 

The key advantage to this device is that it uses two drives that are configured to be mirrors of oneanother.  Hard drives can and will fail -- you reduce your chance of catastrophic data loss by having two drives contain the identical information.

2) a pair of hard drives -- I'm currently a fan of the WD red series for raid situations -- Their 3tb drives provide a lot of space   -- http://www.amazon.com/WD-Red-NAS-Hard-Drive/dp/B008JJLW4M/ref=pd_sim_e_2

This setup is not cheap, but the synology is VERY fast (I see xfer speeds over my gigabit wired lan match those I see between sata drives on my pc -- 5-6x faster than my netgear readynas) and my 5 disk synology setup has been insanely reliable in the 2 years that I've owned it (knock on wood)

[Gutbucket]

For portable storage I buy the largest capacity USB powered drives I can find and duplicate the data across several of them as well as on a muti-bay 3.5" enclosure at work.  Once I fill them up I by another, and by then the capacity probably has increased.  The USB powered requirement dictates 2.5" sized drives but means no hassle with external powering.  Latest couple have been 2TB WDs which are USB3 but I just use them into standard USB2 ports on my computers.  The WDs were the first avaialble 2.5" 2TB externals that I found last summer and have been working fine.  I tend to use one for other more demanding use too and they've worked fine.

Key words for me: Small, portable, easy, redundancy.

[Brian Skalinder]

They [WD] only offer a 2 year warranty now

Thanks for the update, I didn't realize they'd changed the warranty policy.

I am needing a good external hard drive for my Mac. It will be used primarily for storage. I'm going to try and convert my CDRs (about 2,600) to FLAC. A good portion, but not all, of my discs are HHb CDR 800 master discs of my DAT recordings.

As dnsacks suggests, now is the time to start thinking about redundancy and backup.  I always operate on the assumption that HDDs will fail without warning.  Sometimes they fail with warning and the opportunity to save your data, sometimes with warning and no opportunity to save your data, and sometimes with no warning at all.  Since one never knows which might occur, or when, it's best to assume the worst, i.e. the latter.  So it's prudent to have redundancies / backups.  While you'll still have your CDRs as backups (or even your DATs), both will start to fail at some point.  I can say that after transferring all my DATs and ripping all my CDs, I really didn't want to do it all over again in the event of HDD failure.

A good general rule to follow:  you want at least 3 different copies of your data, preferably one of them off-site.

Alternatively to dnsacks' option, I swore off RAID long ago and use a different solution to ensure I have redundant copies of all my data.  If your budget allows, it requires 2 external enclosures and HDDs -- one for primary use, one for redundancy (and really, you should have an off-site backup, too, but that's yet another extension of the discussion).  And if your budget doesn't allow...think of all the time and effort spent ripping CDRs and assign some monetary value to your time...the 2nd enclosure and HDD won't seem like such a big deal, then.

[Fried Chicken Boy]

I'm in full agreement with Brian and Mike: purchase a good-quality bare hard drive, a separate enclosure and then put it together yourself.  It's about as hard as using a screwdriver and formatting the drive.  As noted, Western Digital has a solid warranty program (I'm a fan of their drives myself) and if the enclosure should crap out then you can easily replace it and, hopefully, not lose the data on the actual HDD.  Having taken a lot of WD and Seagate pre-made external enclosures apart to salvage the data/drive (another as recently as yesterday ), I can tell you that they don't make those things terribly easy to dismantle.

Parting thought: heat is one of the greatest culprits contributing to hard drive failures so I would suggest an enclosure that has plenty of venting and possibly a fan to circulate air.  More expensive but worth the extra bit of insurance against a crash, IMHO.

[stevetoney]

I'm in agreement with the last few posts above...

Since you should assume that all drives will fail, the quality of a drive is less important than having drive redundancy, IMHO. 

As a matter of priority, I'd spend extra money on redundancy to give you back-up before investing that same amount into a theoretrically better single drive expecting it to last longer. 

Obvioiusly, the best solution would be that if you have the funds, buy both redundant and high quality drives.

[jbou]

Brian, thanks for your always informative replies on this topic. Does anyone have experience with this Rosewill enclosure?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182144&Tpk=rosewill%20dual%20enclosure

I like that is has both drives in one enclosure but I would want to do the mirroring with software like Brian suggests, not the hardware. I think you would be able to do that because it looks like you can have the drives operate as separate drives. Then use a program to mirror one to the other. Am I thinking on the right track or am I completely off?

[dnsacks]

After having a 4 drive rosewill enclosure crap out on me, I'm a bit scared of this company (and clearly prejudiced).  That said, I see a few other potential issues with this enclosure -- first, you're limited to 2tb drives, with 3tb drives continuing to come down in price, I'd want an enclosure that would support this larger size.  Second, you're limited to usb2 connectivity.  This will cause a significant bottleneck.  I'd want to see usb 3 capability (even if your current computer doesn't support) and, ideally, esata capability.

nice to see it does have a fan tho.

[Gutbucket]

At the risk of redundancy, this bears repeating.. 3 times!!

Since you should assume that all drives will fail, the quality of a drive is less important than having drive redundancy, IMHO. 

As a matter of priority, I'd spend extra money on redundancy to give you back-up before investing that same amount into a theoretrically better single drive expecting it to last longer. 

Since you should assume that all drives will fail, the quality of a drive is less important than having drive redundancy, IMHO. 

As a matter of priority, I'd spend extra money on redundancy to give you back-up before investing that same amount into a theoretrically better single drive expecting it to last longer. 

Since you should assume that all drives will fail, the quality of a drive is less important than having drive redundancy, IMHO. 

As a matter of priority, I'd spend extra money on redundancy to give you back-up before investing that same amount into a theoretrically better single drive expecting it to last longer. 

I've been meaning for years to implement some sort of file sync like Brian outlined so well in the thread he linked above.  But I'm still just manually syncing the three (or more) copies across drives via copy/paste and comparing file sizes to confirm.  It is a bit of a hassle to find differneces if/when they occur, but not enough to push me to make the effort to sync-ware yet.

As good redundancy practice, its a good idea not to delete the original files off the recorder memory cards until verified copies of the cataloged FLACs have been written to at least two hdds.