What brand of external HD do you trust?

[mjs1973]

I have filled my Seagate 400GB drive, and I need a new one. I have been reading the reiviews for hard drives in the 500GB + sizes, and all the reviews seem to be mixed. Some people love the drives, others are saying they died anywhere from the first time they used them to within the first year...

The only brands I'm familiar with are Western Digital, Seagate and Maxtor. (I think Seagate owns Maxtor now.)

Anyway, the only one of these brands I have experience with is the Seagate that I currently have, and I haven't had any problems with it. Reading the mixed reviews makes me a little unsure of what to go for...

I have to send my laptop in for service, so I want to make sure I have everything backed up before I send it off, and I can't do that now because my drive is full.

Any recomendations?

[mwfanelli2]

I have filled my Seagate 400GB drive, and I need a new one. I have been reading the reiviews for hard drives in the 500GB + sizes, and all the reviews seem to be mixed. Some people love the drives, others are saying they died anywhere from the first time they used them to within the first year...

The only brands I'm familiar with are Western Digital, Seagate and Maxtor. (I think Seagate owns Maxtor now.)

Anyway, the only one of these brands I have experience with is the Seagate that I currently have, and I haven't had any problems with it. Reading the mixed reviews makes me a little unsure of what to go for...

I have to send my laptop in for service, so I want to make sure I have everything backed up before I send it off, and I can't do that now because my drive is full.

Any recomendations?

This probably won't be much help but... I have three USB external hard drives, one of each brand! All have, and still do, perform flawlessly. Even the Maxtor :-) I wonder if this is another case of one or two plants in Asia making stuff that is rebranded.

[SmartWombat]

I have two Seagates I bought, and four boxes that I picked up as empty and fitted with Maxtor drives.
No problem with any of them.
Western Digital used to be good for door-stops, but even they seem to last the warranty period.

Now one month out of warranty, that's a different matter - both my desktop Maxtor SATA drives failed after 3 years and a month .... yes they had a 3 year warranty.

[JETA]

I'm online right now shopping for a new external hd. I have just used the 100 gb wd portables they have at Costco. Now I need something at least 500 gbs.

Have you looked at the LaCie externals? http://www.lacie.com/products/range.htm?id=10033

It all seems like such a crap shoot. I have no clue as to where to lay my money.

[SmartWombat]

Our Mac phreaks use laCie, I find them overpriced and under performing.
But since they were originally about the only Mac drives they could get, they still swear by them. Brand loyalty is a wonderful thing

[JETA]

Our Mac phreaks use laCie, I find them overpriced and under performing.
But since they were originally about the only Mac drives they could get, they still swear by them. Brand loyalty is a wonderful thing

Well, shoot. The ones they have now are high speed usb, firewire and can be used on mac, xp, vista and me. Since mac computers seem to be so hardy and long lasting, I was hoping these drives would be as well.

[SmartWombat]

They certainly last, we've got some old laCie "high capacity" 200G drives that still work after 5 years.

[mjs1973]

I'm online right now shopping for a new external hd. I have just used the 100 gb wd portables they have at Costco. Now I need something at least 500 gbs.

Have you looked at the LaCie externals? http://www.lacie.com/products/range.htm?id=10033

It all seems like such a crap shoot. I have no clue as to where to lay my money.

I did look at the LaCie external. www.newegg.com has a 500GB LaCie for $115.99.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822154150

The reviews for it look pretty good, but being a name I had never heard of, I was a little skeptical.

I had pretty much made up my mind to buy the Seagate FreeAgent Pro because I'm happy with the seagate I have now. And it looks cool and has fun lights on it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148239

I was going to order it when I got home, but I must have left my wallet in my wife's car yesterday. I guess that leaves me more time to research.

[Dave Wilson]

I researched heavily before buying a hard drive a couple of years ago, and the top two are Western Digital and Seagate (yes Seagate now own Maxtor). Both are pretty much the same performance wise, but I purchased the Seagate as it came with a 5 year warranty as apposed to the WD's 1 year. Note though no HD can be insured for loss of contents!

[jorgemonkey]

As an FYI, Lacie drives are just packed Western Digital drives. I had one crap out on me a few months out of warranty, and Lacie wouldn't even let me send it in for them to look at.

I picked up 2 500gig Western Digital Mybooks and love them. I got them from Newegg at a really good deal.

[JETA]

I picked up 2 500gig Western Digital Mybooks and love them. I got them from Newegg at a really good deal.

Scott,

How long have you had them? That is actually the first one I was going to get, but the started reading a bunch of bad reviews. I've got to make the plunge in the next day or two.

I'm going to check out Newegg again.....

[Medley]

I've had a 500gig WD Mybook for a little over a year now JETA, and haven't had a problem. Like you, I read the reviews and was skeptical at first. Maybe I've just been lucky, but whatever the reason, I'm now looking at the 1 Tb Mybook at my local Costco.

- Joe U.

[Sebastian]

The only brand that has had EVERY drive die on me within the first year of ownership has been Seagate. 5 year warranty or not, I got way too burned with them.

Any external drive that isn't by Seagate, Maxtor or WD can contain any manufacturer's drive. I have many WDs that are still kicking (WD has been the best performer for me as far as failures) as well as four Samsungs, two in laptops and two that came in a Buffalo DriveStation 1TB package. The last two are too young to really call yet.

Maxtor and Seagate are the only ones I avoid. I should mention though that the Seagates were internal units, a friend uses their externals without issue.

[Franglais]

I have a load of LaCIE drives (designed by Posche). They have nice long leads and serious-looking power supplies - two factors which sort of inspire confidence. The drive on the 320GB unit is made by Seagate and the 500GB one is made by Samsung.

I also have some noname external units with OEM Western Digital drives inside. As far as I can tell the LaCIE drives are slightly faster.

[another view]

After reading this thread, I'm now even more confused...

Sebastian told me about the WD Passport for portable laptop use - guess I'll go with one of those. FWIW, I lost an almost two year old Seagate internal HD a few years ago. At that point warranty really doesn't matter to me - it's all the work involved in getting back up and running.

I've had a Maxtor one-touch 250gb external drive for about three years - still fine (I hope) although it doesn't get a lot of hours of use.

[mjs1973]

I went with another Seagate, and although it's too early to know for sure, it has been working fine so far. I'm still making 2 more back ups on DVD before cleaning off my computers HD, so hopefully I will be covered if the drive does fail. My other Seagate is over a year old, and I haven't had any problems with that one, but again, I have two more copies of everything on that drive, just in case.

[deckcadet]

I have something like 8 or 9 externals right now of all sorts of ages, sizes, and interfaces... and I'll be adding more soon. I find that unless a particular model has a reputation for dying (like the old "death stars" I decide based on the specs: interface, perpendicular recording, cache size, RPMs, and capacity.

1/3 of them are pre-packaged externals. the rest are mounted in external enclosures but are off the shelf HDDs.

None have failed me so far. I have a pretty god mix, 2 WD internal desktop drives in my eSATA enclosure, 2 more Seagates for that enclosure, 2 maxtor externals (1 is over 6 years old and still going), 1 WD MyBook w/FW800, a WD notebook drive I keep in a bus powered enclosure. My main HDD (laptop internal) is a seagate.

I don't have much in the way of brand loyalty other than to the company that makes my enclosures

One thing to consider buying prepackaged externals though is warranty and user service. My MyBook and my oldest maxtor cannot be easily opened (nondestructively) to swap out the drive in the event of either disk or chipset failure. My 300GB maxtor, however, has two screws on the back.

This is the primary reason why I switched mostly to enclosures with upgradeable drives. If a disk fails, it is easier and cheaper to replace it. Same goes for the chipset- if something fries the USB or firewire bus but the drive is okay, I can put it into a new enclosure.

On a side note, you're sending your laptop in for service, but your 400GB external is full. I assume this means you have files on the 400GB that are not replicated on your internal HD, seeing as notebook drives only just hit 320GB. I don't like to take any chances, and with DVDs being easily scratched and degrading over time, I tend to prefer to have a spare copy on another hard drive as well. Your preferences may vary

[GirchyGirchy]

What brand of internal drives do you trust? You can easily save money and buy internal drives, then put 'em in an external enclosure. I attached a link to the enclosure I've bought...I have two and both work great. Mine's for IDE drives and is USB2.0, but you can get SATA/ESATA+USB2.0 or SATA/E-SATA versions, too. The LEDs are a little gaudy, but it could be worse. I've had other Kingwin stuff that's worked well, too, even though it is kind fo an off-brand.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817146307

edit: As for drive brands, I've been partial to Western Digital lately, but haven't really had problems with other brands. I think I'm also using Seagate and Maxtor.

[JETA]

I ended up with the MyBook premium edition. We'll see........

[berrywise]

I've had a 500gig WD Mybook for a little over a year now JETA, and haven't had a problem.

+1

I only use it as a backup though and don't save anything on it as the single copy of a file.

[Sebastian]

+1

I only use it as a backup though and don't save anything on it as the single copy of a file.

The importance of this statement can't be understated.

No matter what brand of HD you use, no matter how few failures you've had, you can not under any circumstances have only one copy of your files.

Unless they are recorded on two different hard drives/CDs/DVDs they are NOT backed up, and sooner or later you WILL lose data.

[Ray Dockrey]

The importance of this statement can't be understated.

No matter what brand of HD you use, no matter how few failures you've had, you can not under any circumstances have only one copy of your files.

Unless they are recorded on two different hard drives/CDs/DVDs they are NOT backed up, and sooner or later you WILL lose data.

I could not agree more with this. I have a spare internal drive in my machine that my pictures get copied to first and then they are copied to my external drive. This way I don't have to worry about if something goes. I have been a desktop technician for many years and I can't tell you how many times I have seen somebody lose important data due to not backing it up. People just don't get it until they have learned the hard way.