Good external HD

[whoopsy_daisy]

Hi guys. I'm using a WD 1TB external drive for my mac and it already crashed twice. I'm looking for a replacement and my choices are Seagate, Samsung, and Buffalo. Can you give me the pros and cons of each one? Thanks!

By the way, I need these specs:
- 500GB-1TB
- for Mac (or can operate to Windows and Mac without losing anything)
- portable (light)
- fast transferring of files

Thanks!

[hethler]

I've been using WD for quite sometime now. Actually, 3 ang WD ko and until now, working pa lahat sila and in good condition.

Btw, I noticed this:

- for Mac (or can operate to Windows and Mac without losing anything)

It is not advisable to use your external on both Windows and Mac. Okay siya sa una, but eventually, the file system structure of your external will be messed up.

USB 3.0 is good but it depends pa rin sa pagkakabitan mo.



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[mustardcreek]

I need this too. Hope someone could help us.

[nomuno]

I Use Buffalo (USB 3.0), it's 1 year old now. I use it for Windows and Mac XD

Partitioned it to 3 (GUID, yeah I know, stupid me LOL), 1st partition served as my Mac OS X Installer (reserved 10 GB), the 2nd Partition (200 GB) formatted with exFat filesystem, the last one formatted NTFS serves my Windows' (800 GB).

Pardon me, I cannot post benchmarks, for benchmarking freaks me out especially when I see hardware degrades LOL For me, when it goes, it goes hahaha.

[Sun Tzu]

You may narrow your choice between seagate and Buffalo.
Samsung facility was already bought by seagate last year.

[nomerdzki]

Anong pinaka-okay in regards naman sa pagbalance ng price at quality nya? Matagal tagal na akong naghahanap pala ng external din, pero di ko kasi alam kung ano pinaka-okay. At kung san maganda bumili.

[Nietono_no_Shana]

IMHO seagate is a good brand, currently have two (2) external HD. A 320GB (2 years) and a 500GB (1.5 years), I'm planning to get a 1-2TB to replace the 500GB. From what I remember my 320GB is shock/drop proof, not sure of the height.

[mustardcreek]

just bought a freeagent goflex drive. 1tb. is it better to choose the "exclusive for mac" setting?

[iamlester]

Wala naman talaga OK na Hardisk.
Swertihan lang.
Meron ako dati 80gb na seagate IDE 2010 lang nasira. Pumutok lang ang Enclosure kaya nasira.
Recently i purchased 1TB USB 3.0 Seagate. 3 months di na madetect i have to bring it back sa shop na pinagbilan ko. I have samsung, toshiba, seagate and western digital.
Pero pinakabest ang Seagate because of the Disto warranty.

[hethler]

^ Agree. At the end of the day, it's really kung paano mo inaalagan yung HD mo. Nakaka 5 years na yung 2 kong external then yung bagong bili ko nakaka 1yr na.

[ajedrez]

I'm just wondering that you guys give the number of years you've used the external HD, does that mean it does not last that long? I have a 500GB WD (2 years) external hard drive and I use that as a storage of my PC files, a backup storage.

Do you think I need to buy an additional backup HD for my existing backup? Scary thought.

[hethler]

^ Reason why I bought x numbers of external is not because it died but I needed extra (you call 2TB as "extra space" hahaha ) external for rendering artworks (Photoshop); videos (Premiere) and for my collection of series, movies, music

[Les]

I'm just wondering that you guys give the number of years you've used the external HD, does that mean it does not last that long? I have a 500GB WD (2 years) external hard drive and I use that as a storage of my PC files, a backup storage.

Do you think I need to buy an additional backup HD for my existing backup? Scary thought.

As mechanical devices, hard disks are prone to wear and tear. The more you use them, the more they are likely to fail. Of course using a hard disk less doesn't always mean your drive will last longer. For example you might come across a "lemon" or HD that is slightly defective from the start but passed the initial QC. Furthermore some models of HD's are intrinsically worse than others, and some to great degree, like the fiasco with the old IBM GXP Deskstars (derisively called "Deathstars") because of extremely high failure rates.

Second, people often confuse the word "backup." Copying stuff to an external HD, then deleting the copy on your computer is not "backup" it's simply moving data to another place. Backup means you keep copies in at least two different places and/or media. Putting that aside, I think that keeping a backup copy even on an old external drive is fine, assuming that it's not failing (e.g. SMART errors, increasing bad sectors, no more spare sectors, etc.). The chance of your computer HD and external HD failing at the same time is pretty low. Nonetheless, very important data should not only be mirrored between two HD's but should also be placed in another backup media, e.g. optical disks.

Lastly, about Seagate's vaunted "distro warranty" that has come to an end. Seagate's consumer line (Barracuda, Momentus) now only has 1-year warranty, slashed from 3 years, which was slashed from 5 years sometime ago. Western Digital is only a bit better with their consumer-grade HD's (e.g. Caviar Green) having a 2-year distro warranty. The higher-end models (e.g. Seagate Constellation/Cheetah) have longer warranties, and this holds true for the performance line of WD (Scorpio Black, Velociraptor) which retain a 5-year warranty.

[Les]

^ Reason why I bought x numbers of external is not because it died but I needed extra (you call 2TB as "extra space" hahaha ) external for rendering artworks (Photoshop); videos (Premiere) and for my collection of series, movies, music

You can never have enough space. Here are my external HDs:



The one on left is a quad-bay enclosure with 3 x 2 Tb plus one 1 Tb HD. The middle one is dual-bay enclosure which currently has only 1 x 640 Gb, and the rightmost is currently unused. In retrospect I should have gotten another 2 Tb to make the box perfectly symmetrical, but the Thailand floods drove HD prices up before I could buy another. Hopefully HD prices (like the floods!) will subside later because they're still priced pretty far from the pre-flood prices.

[hethler]

You can never have enough space. Here are my external HDs:

http://i52.tinypic.com/9jn59y.jpg

The one on left is a quad-bay enclosure with 3 x 2 Tb plus one 1 Tb HD. The middle one is dual-bay enclosure which currently has only 1 x 640 Gb, and the rightmost is currently unused. In retrospect I should have gotten another 2 Tb to make the box perfectly symmetrical, but the Thailand floods drove HD prices up before I could buy another. Hopefully HD prices (like the floods!) will subside later because they're still priced pretty far from the pre-flood prices.

Hahaha, funny, was talking to fellow geek friends last week. Topic namin are external drives and yes, how THAILAND FLOODS affected our lives

[Gooner]

Your leftmost external drive looks cool. What brand is that and how much did you get it for?

[Les]

Yup, it's a really good enclosure. It's a Mediasonic Probox HF2-SU3S2, with USB 3.0 and eSATA dual interfaces, 3-speed fan control (manual or automatic, the latter via a thermal sensor), and automatic sync so that it shuts down after you turn off your computer. Maximum HD size supported is 3 Tb/drive x 4 = 12 Tb. Unfortunately, it's not available locally. It only costs 135$ in the US (Newegg). I got mine from Australia (had relatives coming back from there) but it's quite more expensive there; I think I got it for 6k but only because part of the cost was defrayed by my brother as an Xmas gift.

There are a few 4-bay enclosures available locally but they're pretty expensive, I think partly because all the models I've seen have RAID support. PC Options sells such a model (I think the brand is Stardom) but if I recall correctly the price is in the region of 12-15k.

[einhander]

how about solid state drives? saw a product on cdr-king MOA saying "solid state drive" wasnt able to inquire about it more though since im not really interested.

[-gelay-]

You can never have enough space. Here are my external HDs:

true! our 1TB external drive free space was exhausted within a year.

[Les]

Solid state drives aren't meant to be used as backup devices because of the very high price-per-Gb ratio. The purpose of SSDs is for rapid data access so that for example boot-up times are chopped by half or even less compared to systems using hard disks. However if you have a lot of money then you can use SSDs for backup. AFAIK they are reliable though they degrade as read-write cycles accumulate. This shouldn't be an issue if they're used for backup because of the low workload as a backup device only.