Which external hard drive should I buy?

[rohitmusic]

Hi Friends,

Can you please suggest a good external hard drive which is reliable?

Minimum storage 1 TB. Looking for 1.5 TB with USB 3.0

I already have a 500GB WD and another 250GB WD. Need a new one to store photos (DSLR - JPEG large)/music.

You can suggest specific models. (browsed online but there seems to be too many to choose from) So need your opinion

Thanks!

 

[GeorgeO]

Look at the best ASS, in my personal experience WD is good, Seagate not so good.

 

[panditji]

I have been using a Transcend hard drive for 4-5 years now with no problem...However it is never mentioned on the forum...Has anybody had a bad experience with Transcend drives?

 

[spirovious]

I am using WD 1TB ,USB 3.0 without any issue.Price around Rs.4300
http://www.ebay.in/itm/1-TB-WESTERN..._DefaultDomain_203&hash=item1c33a2adf1&_uhb=1

 

[hydrovac]

I am using 2 TB WD and Hitachi without any problems.

 

[rohitmusic]

I am using 2 TB WD and Hitachi without any problems.

OK so WD seems to be way to go.
(BTW i saw that most 2 TB are externally powered. Max USB powered I have come across is 1.5 TB. Is that right?)

 

[izn_47]

yeah go for WD
As I guess WD offers 2 year warranty or more. but seagate and other brands offer only one year.

 

[xsabhishek]

i m also using WD 1 TB drive for the last 2 years...no issues what so ever

 

[lake1988]

Seagate offers 3 years warranty.

 

[sandesh1978]

I am using two 1tb seagate harddisk for more than 2 yrs no issue... seagate after sale s is good in pune...never used wd. Yes it gices 3 yrs warranty...

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Remember that no warranty covers your data, and that hard disks are one of the most mortal of computer components! None of them live for ever.

 

[mukesh soni]

Remember that no warranty covers your data, and that hard disks are one of the most mortal of computer components! None of them live for ever.

NON OF THEM LIVE FOR EVER ,,

You are right

but for data protection

HDD IS THE ONLY OPTION

Any suggestion for media storage

Please pm me 2nd copy cc your reply

 

[apk]

I have been using a Transcend hard drive for 4-5 years now with no problem...However it is never mentioned on the forum...Has anybody had a bad experience with Transcend drives?

Yes, I've had bad experiences with Transcend a couple of times. The first one failed on me after about 4 years, and the second one after 2 years. Luckily for me, my data was backed up on another hard drive.

I use WD now, and so far have no issues.

On a side note, I have found transcend flash drives to be reliable. Still use a 256MB pen drive that I bought in 2005.

Best,
APK

 

[apk]

Hi Friends,

Can you please suggest a good external hard drive which is reliable?

Minimum storage 1 TB. Looking for 1.5 TB with USB 3.0

I already have a 500GB WD and another 250GB WD. Need a new one to store photos (DSLR - JPEG large)/music.

You can suggest specific models. (browsed online but there seems to be too many to choose from) So need your opinion

Thanks!

I would say stick to WD. They are the most reliable in my opinion. I used to have Transcend before, but moved to WD after a couple of the Transcend HDs failed on me.

The WD passport is a good model to buy - I use the 1 TB one.

Best,
APK

 

[Rupam]

I'm using a Seagate Expansion 2 TB External Hard Disk for last 7 months. Works fine. I wrote a review on flipkart. The price has also gone down. Now its only Rs. 5995.
Seagate Expansion 2 TB External Hard Disk - Seagate: Flipkart.com

 

[umapati]

I am using Two 3 TB external powered HDD.One is Seagate & other one is WD.In terms of transfer rate WD seems somewhat slower than Seagate and don't know why but from the very first day on my WD HDD I can not transfer a file bigger than 2 Gb in one stroke.It fails in between ,while it works flawlessly with Seagate.Transferring from WD to pc is not a problem.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

but for data protection

HDD IS THE ONLY OPTION

Which is why you must have at least two. I have two external 1tb drives, both containing copies the data on my PC, and keep one of them at someone else's house, swapping them around from time to time. Even a house fire, ultimate disaster, would only cost me the data from that period.

One of my external drives is Toshiba, the other seagate. Both the HDDs in my machine are WD. The current state of hdd rumour (you can see it on this thread even) is that WD is more reliable and has better customer service, and I simply let that influence my buying.

If you want to go further, then you have to read the techie articles about performance. Please bear in mind that faster hdds consume more current, create more heat, and may make more noise than slower ones

 

[jagdish_p]

I have both WD and Transcend 1 TB disks for use with WD TV. I have a strange problem with Transcend. Some of the music files show up as blank folders with the song name and the files disappear randomly. Havent been able to figure out why. I reformatted the Transcend HDD from Factory FAT32 to NTFS initially- not sure if this causes a problem.

 

[sanjgupt]

I would suggest you should buy network HDD. so that you can sync HDD with all contents over wifi. WD has such network HDD models.

 

[Audiodoc]

I have around 16 terabyte of hard drive space. Most of these are 2TB drives. All are either esata or USB 3.0.
I have ones from hitachi, western digital and seagate. I even have the seagate momentous hybrid and western digital Scorpio black drives as well as a Samsung 256 GB SSD. Got to test them a week ago for performance.

Going back to reliability. Any hard drive can fail. There have been some batches of seagate hard drives with an unreliable firmware glitch. The only drives I have seen failing are the ones that the my friends and airport officials were careless to drop. SO ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR DATA.

Most of my 2TB drives were purchased in the good old days when they cost between 4000 to 5000 bucks. Most store movies, music and pictures. Run on a UPS power supply and are not powered on all the time. In my opinion it is better to buy 2TB ones instead of 3 or 4TB ones and back up your important data to both.

Regarding transcend drives most used third party hard disks. Personally I have two eSATA casings from transcend running WD green drives and are working fine since 2009.

With respect to performance of ready made 3.5 inch USB 3.0 drives the seagate go flex performs better than the western digital. Sequential transfer speeds of greater than 80 MBps in the later case. USB 3.0 performs slightly better than eSATA.