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External hard drives

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By (user no longer on site) OP   
over a year ago

Ok, need a tech nerd to help me.

Looking to buy a new hdd but I'm getting conflicting reports about Seagate and WD.

Which is better?

Looking for about 3-4tb

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By *irtyGirlWoman
over a year ago

Edinburgh

Look on ebuyer.com

No idea of makes but both of mine are from there, really good customer service and reasonably priced.

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

They all have failure rates and read/write speeds will be so similar it's not really worth thinking about.

I like Samsung.

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

Lol most things in the tecky world, everyone wants to have their own opinion about brands.

personally I've not had problems with either brand.

are you just looking to backup??

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By (user no longer on site) OP   
over a year ago


"Lol most things in the tecky world, everyone wants to have their own opinion about brands.

personally I've not had problems with either brand.

are you just looking to backup??"

Well I want to transfer all my existing stuff on my 1tb and then use it as my main hub for watching films.

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

I use Wb drives, had one for 4 years and the other 3 and they are fine

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago


"Ok, need a tech nerd to help me.

Looking to buy a new hdd but I'm getting conflicting reports about Seagate and WD.

Which is better?

Looking for about 3-4tb"

Seagate and WD are the same company now. Because more are sold it may appear they have a higher failure rate but they are very reliable.

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago


"Ok, need a tech nerd to help me.

Looking to buy a new hdd but I'm getting conflicting reports about Seagate and WD.

Which is better?

Looking for about 3-4tb

Seagate and WD are the same company now. Because more are sold it may appear they have a higher failure rate but they are very reliable. "

not true, wd bought Hitachi which is I guess what you might be thinking of.

The only properly large study a couple of years ago showed Seagate had a higher failure rate in server farms than Hitachi or wd, but that is a much more sustained usage than yours so it probably doesn't matter. if your really paranoid though then I'd suggest wd.

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By *inaTitzTV/TS
over a year ago

Titz Towers, North Notts

I want one to store a few thousand pictures. Self-destruct mechanism would be a bonus.

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

im suprissed no one has mentioned the unreliability of 3 and 4tb drives i work in IT and have had 3 clients with WD 3tb drives that have failed and i've had to recover data from l, one was only months old - usually i recommend wd for drives but at the moment seagate seem to be performing better. hitatch have a lower failure rate than either which is strange considering they are owned by WD

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

The best way to combat desktop drive failures is to not stand them up but lie them down flat- and also to make sure your 5yo son can't get in the room while you backup your 2tb drive full of music, pictures and videos that are irepplacable on to a new drive (as the old one is failing)- leaving the USB cables hanging loose, like my mate did (I think there may have been swearing)

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By *alandNitaCouple
over a year ago

Scunthorpe

As an IT pro, my advice would be to look for a NAS box... They will use multiple drives in an "Array" of multiple disks. This allows for a failed disk to be replaced and the data re-built.

Look for mention of RAID, or more specifically RAID 5 which is an industry standard for protecting your data.

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

I have two WD elements for 2-3 years , with no issues.

(They will no doubt die on me later!)

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

I bought a Seagate back in 2009 when I started college and used it for tasks ranging from scratch and source storage drives for producing video, to backup and archive use, and back to video. Still running like a champ after being dropped, going on road trips to film things, snow and dropped some more. Have it running right beside me. Got a WD a few years back for the exact same reason during my time doing video for a company. Same exact deal, runs like a champ, love it. From my own personal experience with externals, pick one of the giant brands and run with it- it might be DOA, it might not, and if it isn't, it's totally comparable to anything else in that category.

I've only ever had one drive croak on me, and that's a 40GB Maxtor from my first computer ever, that lived a very though life, with its broken ide pins, drops, more snow, and being used in the same fashion as a usb drive to pirate them musics from friends back in 2003. My quantum bigfoot is still good today, even. The whole "x brand is shit" is just brand loyalty by angry fanboys- drives fail comparably and perform comparably among the top brands.

My advice to you would be to get yourself a usb dock and a pair of low speed internals. It will be far cheaper than an a comparable external solution, and a hell of a lot more practical since you'll be able to keep buying internals in the future and swapping them out on the fly, not having to worry about cable clutter, external power supplies and where to stack the fuckers. It will look like ass though, but it's a small price to pay.

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By *wiftieeMan
over a year ago

near Glasgow

Been looking at 1TB external drives for a while and it's a bit of a minefield. All brands seem to have dodgy ones, but last week did a wee exercise.

Compared Seagate, WD, Samsung and Toshiba items on Amazon via their reviews. For each drive I added the 1 and 2 star reviews and then took that as a %age of the 5 star reviews. Maybe not the most scientific of methods, but the WD Elements came out easily best with 3%, Samsung worst at I think 19%.

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By *wiftieeMan
over a year ago

near Glasgow

Another thing to watch for is the ones powered via the usb connection, rather than a separate power lead.

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By *plankyMan
over a year ago

Beeston

I use WD as external data drives to hold videos, pictures and music.

I use Seagate for Time Machine backups.

Both work equally reliably as far as I'm concerned. Next time would buy the cheaper for the size I'm interested in.

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

Best solution is a RAID 5 NAS box with 3 2 terebyte drives in, this will give you 4 terebyte space and use the other 2 as redundancy so any 1 of the 3 drives can fail and you won't lose data.

But failing that buy a slow drive for large files, faster spin speeds give faster read rates but that mainly effects lots of small files which benefit from the speed, high speed can lead to shorter working life. and for the stated use won't benefit you.

Server farms wouldn't use WD Seagate or any other brand if they were not reliable.

Personally I like Samsung, but there is nothing wrong with any major brand.

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By *heOwlMan
over a year ago

Altrincham

From a personal perspective, I always use WD disks, both internal and USB (though I don't use USB disks for anything other than as a windows backup location or purely for portability).

Professionally, we use Seagate and Western Digital, there is little difference in reliability, often it is just cost.

In all honesty there is little difference between the two companies, and especially if you are after a reliable external storage solution.

I woud agree with the previous suggestion of getting a NAS box which can support RAID 1 or preferably RAID 5, rather than use a USB Disk. This will cost a good bit more, as the NAS box will need to have at least 2 disks for RAID 1 (where the disks are mirrors of each other) or 3 disks for RAID 5 (where the data is spread over the disks with addidtional information being stored to allow for the retention of the data from one disk in the event of a failure).

The main reason for suggesting this is that USB drives can fail (the more they are moved, the more likey the failure) and if they do fail they generaally take all the data with them. This is fine for backups or temporary storage, but not reliable enough for what you are planning on using it for.

(BTW the supposed accusition of WD by Seagate was an April fools news release, they are still seperate companies.)

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

RAID5 is rubbish. If you are going a dedicated NAS route, then go all the way and set up a RAID-Z array and enjoy redundancy that will not destroy your shtuff when things go awry.

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By *alandNitaCouple
over a year ago

Scunthorpe


"RAID5 is rubbish. If you are going a dedicated NAS route, then go all the way and set up a RAID-Z array and enjoy redundancy that will not destroy your shtuff when things go awry. "

Raid 5 "IS" the industry standard (not rubbish at all). Where as Raid Z is new technology which is not really being used much in Industry yet.

Theoretically Raid Z will be good, but it does require more space to be lost to "Parity" functions (the bit that protects your data) and doesn't use the same fixed parity size.. making it harder to work out available storage capacity.

Oh and in 20 years of working in IT, I've never lost any data from a Raid 5 Array..

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

As above Raid-Z is new(ish) and already on version 3 with 4 on it's way. until it becomes stable it will remain a software raid system which has major drawbacks over existing hardware raid technology.

Maybe one day, but then the concept of hdd storage may change before that happens.

If you want to protect your data then RAID 5 presented as a NAS is a good compromise with good read and write speed over a variety of file size and type. BUT it is more expensive and slower than a single disk connected by USB 3 (especially if you use WiFi to access your home network) so compromises have to be found.

One such compromise is to use the single disk USB 3 concept as your working system, then gather up all your old disks and an old tower computer and build it as a JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) array and use that to backup the master disk as regularly as you need to, e.g. after adding new movies

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

Whichever vendor you choose, they're all much the same to be honest, make sure you have a backup of a backup.

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By *iRachelWoman
over a year ago

Derby

OMG confuse the poor guy... lol... go for any that has the capacity you need, preference any that come with cloud backup option which from memory wd live series does, and if you can afford it get something like drop box business £100 a year for 1TB I think, then you can access from any device that can access the old tinterweb.

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

I have a couple of seagates and also an old Phillips one.

Just ordered a new click free.

If you're not keeping much physically on your PC/laptop, it's worth considering buying two drives, one as a back up and one as the back up of the back up (and keeping them in separate) locations)

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