most reliable external hard drives?

[snail]

hey guys im looking into getting a new/bigger external drive to help back up my files and store images and video. im just looking to drag-and-drag files to and from, and not deal with backup software. im leaning towards some of the 500g ones and looking to spend about $100. i looked into the Iomega ones (1 tB for around $100) but they seemed to have bad reviews. the LaCie seemed decent and im not too familiar with other brands. any suggestions? what are you guys running?

btw id be using the drive with a Dell w/ windows XP and lenovo (school computer) w/ vista

 

[camarors8992]

My Western Digital is 3 years old and has gone unnoticed because it's been 100% as it should.

 

[Dest]

I can vouch for Western Digital, have...6? of them running right now, several for 4+ years with no problems. While they're internal, I haven't heard of any problems with their externals. Good warranty too.

 

[joe_peters]

WD.

 

[snail]

sounds good guys, i just looked and my old one thats all full is also a WD

 

[Texas Twitch]

I'm jaded on external hard drives because i bought a 160 gb 2 years ago for $130 (buffalo brand) and it crapped out on me about 6 months ago and i lost a LOT of files i needed. Now i just use a SATA internal drive in a HDD enclosure....they are a hell of a lot cheaper than a typical external drive if you look for deals at Fry's or Frys.com. However, i have heard good things about WD.

 

[theNAST1EST]

Seagate for me. One WD crash was enough to scare me away.


Amazon has good reviews on all your options.

 

[plymatt65]

x2 on Seagate. About a month ago I bought a 1TB for $89. It came loaded with file transfer software however, you don't have to run it or use it. I have been really happy with it, most of the time it just sits on my desk until I want to back up one of the four machines my family has.

Matt

 

[MiniAmazon]

I'd lean towards Western Digital. Everyone I know who runs WD hasn't had any problems. You could also just buy an internal bare drive and buy a separate external case. Just my 2 cents. :dunno:

1TB Western Digital under $100:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136490

cases:
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=92&name=External-Enclosures

 

[NW-ZJ-SCOTT]

Seagate for me aswell.. use to have 3 120gb WD's in a system i built back in 02' All three are in a drawer.. 1 still works

 

[5-90]

WD used to be crappola (not fit for paperweights,) but their quality and QC have both come up significantly in the last few years.

I still wouldn't use Maxtor to build a wall with.

I've had very good luck with Hitachi drives (bought their plans and tooling from IBM - here on Cottle Road, in fact,) and Seagate (love their Barracuda and Cheetah SCSI drives, and their EIDE/PATA drives have been rock solid.)

Even with the stuff backed up on an external HDD (near-line storage,) and offline backup is also a good idea - the only reason I want to get Blu-Ray is due to the data density involved. If I can find BR media as solid as Taiyo Yuden for conventional DVD, I'd get it.

Keep "burned" media in a dark place, out of direct fluorescent light or sunlight, to help preven "media bronzing" and making the burned discs unreadable. I've still got old CD-RWs I've burned a dozen years ago that are perfectly readable - I've known people to leave them out in the open, and they "go fuzzy" in about six months or so...

 

[kujito]

Run from the SimpleTech (Fujitsu) drives! They tend to go black when you need your data the most.

WD and Seagate seem the most solid from what I've seen.

I'd recommend making copies of any data that you put on any external drive. Burn it to a pile of discs if you have to.

 

[AIbandit]

I've had WD's and seagates crash on me. They're both good drives but I still backup my backups. It's a luck of the draw thing.

 

[RichP]

Put up and external raid setup, one of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817388023 and a couple of big drives.

 

[5-90]

Put up and external raid setup, one of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817388023 and a couple of big drives.

That's what I plan to do when I finally get far enough head - about 700GB-1TB of RAID1 NAS. Preferably using four drives vice two (two mirrored pairs, but I do prefer having extra units. A failure would involve a lower percentage of the total storage.)

I doubt I could find SATA RAID1 NAS boxen that have more than four drive slots (and having all of them truly hot-swap would probably be too much to hope for...) and if I did it would probably be horribly expensive, but a four-slot toaster would still be an "ideal minimum."

 

[DrMoab]

Interesting study from Google.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6376021.stm

 

[CherBear]

If you want reliable, nothing beats SS drives. Just the price is a wee bit high to justify.

 

[Mesh]

Seagate drives seem to be reliable I use them exclusively at work and they rarely fail. Second would be Hatachi.

A few years ago we completely stopped using Maxtor and WD because the failure rate was so high. Things may be different today but I personally would never buy a product built by either company.

Build your own external drive buy the carriage and the hard drive separately. If you transport your drive a lot use loctite on the screws.

 

[RichP]

Seagate drives seem to be reliable I use them exclusively at work and they rarely fail. Second would be Hatachi.

A few years ago we completely stopped using Maxtor and WD because the failure rate was so high. Things may be different today but I personally would never buy a product built by either company.

Build your own external drive buy the carriage and the hard drive separately. If you transport your drive a lot use loctite on the screws.

Seagate owns maxtor as I remember. Seagate also has a 5 year warranty.

 

[snail]

thanks for the input everyone