most reliable external hard drives?

[ChiXJeff]

Realistically, if you want reliable drives, you aren't buying anybody's cheap drives. Buy RAID qualified drives and stuff them in your own enclosures.

 

[97XJ2]

I had heard some negative reviews on WD's "Green Power" line. Otherwise WD is the brand I had been looking at, just not that line. I haven't done much research but I'm starting to get tons of pictures that I would really hate to lose and have been looking for something.

 

[theNAST1EST]

I had heard some negative reviews on WD's "Green Power" line. Otherwise WD is the brand I had been looking at, just not that line. I haven't done much research but I'm starting to get tons of pictures that I would really hate to lose and have been looking for something.

If it's pictures you're worried about, why not have them "stored" somewhere online?

I've gone through 3 computers/hard drives and lost a number of important documents. With my Webshots account, I've never lost a picture.

 

[kastein]

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


Amazon has good reviews on all your options.

X2, except make it 3 crashes. Recovered everything from the first, most important stuff from the second, everything from the third. The third I used the "stick my head in the sand for 3 months, pretend it never happened, live life" method on, one day I actually needed one of the files on the drive and gave it a try for the hell of it, it worked so I copied everything. That was the last time the drive ever worked.

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.)

X2. I'm a Seagate fan, I was a Fujitsu fan back in the day (I have 3 of their drives from the mid 90s, still work perfectly, one of them has a 1/8" dent in the top cover from being thrown across a room into a dumpster and yes, it works.) Discounting their SD15 version firmware fiasco a year or two ago, the Seagates are very solid. I have an ST-225 sitting around still that boots DOS 5 on an XT clone. It's 6 months older than I am and works great... when I bother messing with it.

I would never, EVER use a Maxtor, the only one I ever used I thankfully retired before it died, but after eight years of running off scrounged desktop hardware (haven't for a few years) I saw a pattern. Old Fujitsu drives always worked if the controller PCBs were not visibly damaged - including laptop drives, I dropped laptops with ten year old Fujis in them dozens of times and never had a failure. Maxtor drives just didn't work. Western Digitals either didn't work or worked just long enough for me to put enough data on them for it to suck when they broke. Hitachis worked. Seagates, even ten and fifteen year old ones, worked and never stopped. IBMs worked unless they were deathstars.

Throw my vote in for get your own enclosure and a Seagate or (apparently) modern Western Digital.

 

[Mesh]

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

About 5 or 6 years ago I had an office where the desktops all had Maxtor drives every drive failed and had to be replaced. The Maxtor name still gives me nightmares even if it’s owned by Seagate.

 

[MiniAmazon]

Interesting study from Google.

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

That is rather interesting. I believe it.

 

[JWFokker]

All hard drives wear out over time. If you're not using SMART reporting software to monitor drive health, you will likely experience data loss at some point because people do not replace their hard drives when they should. Unless you bought an Enterprise class drive, going past 3 years is pushing your luck without using HDD monitoring software.

That said, historically Seagate was the most reliable manufacturer with Western Digital being a close second. This has changed in recent years as Seagate acquired Maxtor and Samsung brought a new line of HDDs to the market. Today, Samsung has the most reliable drives on the market and Seagate and Western Digital are fighting for second place. They're all well built drives and far better than the likes of Hitachi and Fujitsu.

My recommendation is to buy an external drive from a manufacturer that produces their own hard disk drives. Companies like Iomega, LaCie, etc. simply repackage drives from the manufacturers listed above and you usually don't know what you're getting. Stick with the HDD OEMs if you want to be sure that you're buying quality. Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital.

 

[97XJ2]

What kind of hard drive health software would you recommend?

I don't have them online, I thought photobucket resized them. Maybe not after they changed things on their site. Also i had read in a number of locations, including this site, that JPG's lose quality when dicked with because software compresses them. Though I have seen stuff since then saying otherwise. My current camera is nice but it won't shoot RAW to my knowledge, I'd have to check. I'm a pack rat, there's a lot of things that I'd rather not lose.

But I'm subscribed, I'd like to hear opinions.

 

[johndoby]

I own a WD and Seagate myself, and have never had problems. However, even these big companies sell buggy products at times. If you really want the skinny, go to newegg.com. I've been buying all of my computer parts there for nearly ten years, and you absolutely won't find better customer service. Also, the products have tons and tons of customer ratings and reviews so you'll know if the product is quality before you purchase it. Most of the products come with free shipping as well.

As far as hard drive health software, I have no ideas...They're like condoms, I never used 'em. :roflmao:

 

[ChiXJeff]

Look for SMART (yes, that's an acronym) monitoring daemons. Windoze (at least through Vista) didn't ship with a monitor, Win7 might. Ubuntu monitors immediately on install (that's how I prevented a crash on my Dell laptop.)

 

[Johnnie Walker]

I havent read EVERY POST so pardon if someone already said this. Typically LaCie used WD drives (at least they used to). I know lots of people that have issues with the WD Mybooks, except for the more expensive triple interface ones. I have had most success with Hitachi, Seagate and Samsung.
Seagate is what I use mostly now. Yes, Seagate aquired maxtor, but there are not many MAXTOR labeled items out now. I have NEVER had any issues with MAXTOR drives, except for one that was clearly MY FAULT, and one of the power pins bent.

 

[GrimmJeeper]

I got a LaCie portable in the 230g flavor when i started school, and in an average week i move about 130g worth of data. files go onto it when i leave my house, off of when i get to school, back on when i leave school, and back off when i get home. this has been going on 3-5 days a week for the past year and its doing just fine.

the only hard drive i've ever had fail on me was a hitachi drive about 5 years ago, everything else has been seagate.

 

[RichP]

I picked up a lacie for the photographer at work and his mac, 500gb, first one died out of the box, never set it self up and came on line so it went back, second one worked and has for the past 6 months. I just picked up a Seagate 500gb for a HP machine at work, the user wanted to downgrade from vista business to XPpro and I did not want to wipe out the vista and it's restore partition so I picked up a new drive at staples yesterday. Seagate 500gb sata internal, has smart on it.

 

[JWFokker]

What kind of hard drive health software would you recommend?

I don't have them online, I thought photobucket resized them. Maybe not after they changed things on their site. Also i had read in a number of locations, including this site, that JPG's lose quality when dicked with because software compresses them. Though I have seen stuff since then saying otherwise. My current camera is nice but it won't shoot RAW to my knowledge, I'd have to check. I'm a pack rat, there's a lot of things that I'd rather not lose.

But I'm subscribed, I'd like to hear opinions.

I use Hard Disk Sentinel because it is the most comprehensive.

 

[96NYXJ]

I bought my Seagate, just because it comes with a 5 year warranty.