Good brand for external hard drive
 

I am looking to purchase an external hard drive and was wondering what are some good brands. I bought a Buffalo 500gb a year ago and it crapped out on me within a year. Maybe it was just mine, so I am not sure.

Any recommendations.

HDD are exspensive still now..
slowly dropping again...

i would say WD are best... then seagate/hatachi/samsung

im running 3xWD 3TB SATA drives, 1 WD velociraptor, 1 seagate (1 died after 1 year)... i have 1 3TB external WD...

WD? im running on a 64mb cache black caviar 1tb, it died on me in less then a year.. i recommend seagate then WD.

samsung f4 ecogreen are well-reviewed storage drives...throw that into an enclosure and you are good to go.

unfortunately they cost almost $100 more than what I paid for 7-8 months ago

bought an Antec MX-1 enclosure (built in fan) works great with a seagate 3.5" 1.5TB hd

left it on 24/7 for 2 yrs now, runs cool, isnt clogged with dust, stable

ended up being the same price as buying a WD/etc external

http://www.antec.com/images/400/package/mx1.jpg
http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/prod...d=NzA0MjIxJjg0

i have a wd passport which i like because it is powered by usb. but i heard that they can have connectivity issues to electronic devices other than PC's. i'm actually in the market another external HD for my google TV box as well.

buy an enclosure and put an SSD in it.

Not cost effective. Only reason to use SSD is if he needs shock protection.

Western Digital or Seagate

To answer the real question asked by OP, there isn't an easy way to know which brands are good for external hard drives, because the actual hard drive inside is still likely made by the same four manufacturers - Seagate, WD, Hitachi, Samsung.

You could research the external hard drive model and find out what drive it uses inside, but even then it's not that straightforward because the same model might use drives from different manufacturers inside.

I've a WD Passport that's working pretty damn well, has USB 3.0 which lets it transfer several times faster than usual. I have read online that a few people have had it disconnect randomly...

If you want absolute reliability in an external drive. You need to get an enterprise or enthusiast level hard drive and put it into a good enclosure hopefully USB3.0 with a fan.

I have a WD 2TB Green that kicked the bucket hard in 9 months. It's my first and last budget storage drive. I'll be getting WD Black drives from now on. Or enterprise level seagate drives.

even the entreprise HD could be a faulty unit sometimes, I had a WD 1.5TB claimed to be entreprise level crapped out within a week.

go Raid 1 or backup regularly.

I just RMA'd 3 seagate drives, so I'm trying WD now.

aren't the failure rates rather similar for all the brands? i think safest route is frequent/auto backup on another drive, and get instant replacement warranty of some sort so you have little downtime. betting on a brand is just like buying the lottery.

WD the best

Search brought me here. So bump.. even though this thread actually isn't old at all.

Anyways.. I'm in the market for a new external hard drive.. and according to this thread, there doesn't seem to be a "stable" choice.

I had a WD die on me.. I had a lot of important stuff on there too, so I won't be going back to WD.

Might go with Seagate next..

according to some reviews, certain WD enclosures have poor ventilation. you can pick your own enclosure and hd based on reviews. that will give you a longer warranty as well.

buying an external hard drive is costly. There is a cheaper method of achieving it and faster transfer rate.

You can buy an internal hard drive, and get an hard drive enclosure. Vantec, Thermaltake are all good choices

Personally I have the http://ncix.com/products/?sku=29859&...re=Thermaltake
I can put a 2.5" (laptop size hard drive) or 3.5" in, theres two bays as well. Its passive cooling, pretty nice. E-sata connection as well!

i got me a dock that fits in a DVD drive bay.

my concern on external HD is would it cause any wear out if I turn it on 24/7.

it seems like HDD prices are slowly coming back down again?
probably not going to be until the fall for us to see 2TB hit the $60-70 again though

there are better drives like my HP Simpledrive that go to sleep when not accessing. PC shut down? drive shuts off.

Lol, it doesn't matter which one you will get. Everything is a "good chinese quality" nowadays