What external harddrive to get?

[Viscra Maelstrom 3,718]

what the title says, basically. i'm running low on harddrive space, and i have a whole new year ahead of me to get more music in. and since i have a bit of money to spend now, i'm thinking about getting an additional external harddrive.

 

the plan is, i've had my WD 1TB drive for roughly a year now, and it's starting to get full (hell, basically is). so i'm planning to get a harddrive that's a step up in storage size, i.e. 2TB. when getting it, i'll copy everything on my old drive into it, so i then have 2 copies of all my stuff. by doing that, i can let my old drive rest as a backup drive, and use the remaining roughly 1 TB of space on my new drive for this coming year. i think it's a solid way to go through with, but if you have any better idea yourself, feel free to tell me.

 

anyway, here comes the problem; i don't know what drive to get. i've been looking at several different drives, and looked at reviews of drives failing to work properly, or dying early, so i'm struck with a bit of paranoia, you could say. i've looked at Seagate, Western Digital, and Verbatim drives, respectively. so far i seem to have my eyes on the WD My Book drive that's at 2 TB. i was earlier set on the 2 TB Elements drive, but i've heard bad things about it (though my current drive is a 1TB Elements drive and it has worked perfectly upon constant usage. even my brother's drive, which he has misused quite a bit, is working properly).

 

so basically, i'm looking at either a WD My Book drive, a Seagate drive, or a Verbatim drive, but i can't decide which one's the best to use (i might have to mention, i plan to use the drive mostly for streaming audio, so it'll be used quite a bit. my current one is of the same idea).

 

any help is greatly appreciated.

[Commander Urdnot 2,680]

Just get the cheapest one. It's hard to go wrong with an external drive.

You don't have to worry about RPM because chances are, it's gonna be bottlenecked by your USB port.

[CloudsdaleCompanion 342]

Don't get WD or Seagate. They are destined to fail.

 

The most reliable Hard Drives available are the Hitachi Travelstars, but they are very expensive. Toshiba comes in at second place.

 

If you want good but cheap, I'd go with Samsung. I've had a few Samsung drives and they all worked very well. However, unlike Hitachi and Toshiba they can't take physical shock, so be careful.

 

Go with a low RPM, like Pinkie said, USB (2.0) isn't fast enough anyway, so might as well get slow but reliable. 5400 should be perfect. Don't go for 7200, you won't notice a difference. (except for noise and price)

Edited January 6, 2013 by CloudsdaleCompanion

[Viscra Maelstrom 3,718]

Just get the cheapest one. It's hard to go wrong with an external drive.

 

You don't have to worry about RPM because chances are, it's gonna be bottlenecked by your USB port.

that's why i first decided to get a Elements drive, since it's by far the cheapest drive there is. but i've heard bad things about the drive's stability, though, which is making me reluctant to buy the thing.

[Jokuc 8,173]

I have a Seagate 2TB

 

 

 

 

I bought it at Elgiganten (Cykel på köpet loljk) for about 500 SEK (since you're swedish so....why not answer in sek..)

 

It's working well for me, though I got confused at first cause there was some installation files and shit on it but I deleted it and it works fine. Haha. Though, when buying an external hard drive you must think at what you'll use it for.

 

If you will use it as a backup for your files you should probably go with something like that one. But if you're using it more like an usb stick to for example bring some movies to a friend or something you should probably buy one of those 500GB ones since almost all external hard drives that's over 1TB does mostly require an electricity cable and it's kinda annoying sometimes. With a 500gb it's easier to just plug in and it's much smaller.

 

But for you a 2tb one sounds good.

 

oh and I forgot to say, I don't know about the other drives

Edited January 6, 2013 by Jokuc

[Commander Urdnot 2,680]

that's why i first decided to get a Elements drive, since it's by far the cheapest drive there is. but i've heard bad things about the drive's stability, though, which is making me reluctant to buy the thing.

I've purchased and used many WD and Seagate drives. Haven't seen any difference between the two of them. Never had any of them fail, I've got a WD that's 5 years old that's still going strong. Sometimes you'll get a bad drive, it doesn't matter what brand it is. They're mass-produced, it's only natural you get a dud here and there. Which is why you TEST IT BEFORE YOU USE IT.

 

WD is the most widely used brand, it's only natural you'll hear more crap about it. People get mad because they didn't test the drive before they found out it was a dud before they started moving their crap to it. So they vent their frustrations by bashing the brand.

 

It doesn't matter what brand it is, duds happen, go for the cheapest. Make sure you test the drive before using it. Don't worry about RPM, it'll be bottlenecked by your USB port, especially if you're kicking it old-school and using USB 2.0.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Urdnot Pinkie Pie

[Betez 1,734]

I got a WD My Passport 1TB harddrive for Christmas. It works great, it's small(roughly 5x4 inches), and I haven't had any problems with it. I'd say get WD if it's not too expensive.

[truemlp_fan98 20]

A few things you gotta keep in mind.

What size is the external hard drive? You want a big one. Bigger drives hold bigger files.

Is it reliable? You want a reliable one. Unreliable drives will ruin your files.

[Viscra Maelstrom 3,718]

Don't get WD or Seagate. They are destined to fail.

 

The most reliable Hard Drives available are the Hitachi Travelstars, but they are very expensive. Toshiba comes in at second place.

 

If you want good but cheap, I'd go with Samsung. I've had a few Samsung drives and they all worked very well. However, unlike Hitachi and Toshiba they can't take physical shock, so be careful.

 

Go with a low RPM, like Pinkie said, USB (2.0) isn't fast enough anyway, so might as well get slow but reliable. 5400 should be perfect. Don't go for 7200, you won't notice a difference. (except for noise and price)

i've heard not so favorable things about WD, but i dunno; the one i've been using for over a year have worked perfectly under almost constant usage. i'll take a look at Hitachi and Toshiba and see if they are any good.

 

I have a Seagate 2TB

 

 

 

 

I bought it at Elgiganten (Cykel på köpet loljk) for about 500 SEK (since you're swedish so....why not answer in sek..)

 

It's working well for me, though I got confused at first cause there was some installation files and shit on it but I deleted it and it works fine. Haha. Though, when buying an external hard drive you must think at what you'll use it for.

 

If you will use it as a backup for your files you should probably go with something like that one. But if you're using it more like an usb stick to for example bring some movies to a friend or something you should probably buy one of those 500GB ones since almost all external hard drives that's over 1TB does mostly require an electricity cable and it's kinda annoying sometimes. With a 500gb it's easier to just plug in and it's much smaller.

 

But for you a 2tb one sounds good.

 

oh and I forgot to say, I don't know about the other drives

2TB is what i need, yes. no more no less.

 

i'm using my HDD admittedly more as a internal one rather than an external one for backup or such. don't know if this is the smartest way to use a HD, but mine haven't suffered any issues as far as i know, the disk still spins and the drive appears to be in a healthy condition for its age. extra power is of no concern of mine, as i plan to have it resting on my desktop anyway.

 

I've purchased and used many WD and Seagate drives. Haven't seen any difference between the two of them. Never had any of them fail, I've got a WD that's 5 years old that's still going strong. Sometimes you'll get a bad drive, it doesn't matter what brand it is. They're mass-produced, it's only natural you get a dud here and there. Which is why you TEST IT BEFORE YOU USE IT.

 

WD is the most widely used brand, it's only natural you'll hear more crap about it. People get mad because they didn't test the drive before they found out it was a dud before they started moving their crap to it. So they vent their frustrations by bashing the brand.

 

It doesn't matter what brand it is, duds happen, go for the cheapest. Make sure you test the drive before using it. Don't worry about RPM, it'll be bottlenecked by your USB port, especially if you're kicking it old-school and using USB 2.0.

test before usage... how do you mean by that, exactly? like drag random files into it and see if they work or not?

 

so i should go for the cheapest one... well that's certainly WD then. would it run fine if it's put under a lot of usage?

 

A few things you gotta keep in mind.

What size is the external hard drive? You want a big one. Bigger drives hold bigger files.

Is it reliable? You want a reliable one. Unreliable drives will ruin your files.

i'm pretty sure i've already said that i need a 2TB drive that works fine under a lot of usage. so there.

[Commander Urdnot 2,680]

test before usage... how do you mean by that, exactly? like drag random files into it and see if they work or not?

 

so i should go for the cheapest one... well that's certainly WD then. would it run fine if it's put under a lot of usage?

Whenever you get a new hard drive, ALWAYS reformat it. Even if it already is formatted.

 

Also, you should just copy the files onto there, and keep a copy on your internal drive. That way, if it fails, you're still good. If everything worked out, then delete the copies, and you're good to go.

 

It should run fine under a lot of usage.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Urdnot Pinkie Pie

[Viscra Maelstrom 3,718]

Whenever you get a new hard drive, ALWAYS reformat it. Even if it already is formatted.

 

Also, you should just copy the files onto there, and keep a copy on your internal drive. That way, if it fails, you're still good. If everything worked out, then delete the copies, and you're good to go.

 

It should run fine under a lot of usage.

i don't think i reformatted my old external drive, truth be told. :x

the files i'm gonna put on the new external drive are already all on my external one. like i said, it's part of my plan; i have two copies of my old stuff, and on my new external drive, i have one terabyte extra space to use. that should last me well into this year because of the fact that my old drive have verily done so.

[uuunph 288]

Don't get WD or Seagate. They are destined to fail.

 

The most reliable Hard Drives available are the Hitachi Travelstars, but they are very expensive. Toshiba comes in at second place.

 

If you want good but cheap, I'd go with Samsung. I've had a few Samsung drives and they all worked very well. However, unlike Hitachi and Toshiba they can't take physical shock, so be careful.

 

Go with a low RPM, like Pinkie said, USB (2.0) isn't fast enough anyway, so might as well get slow but reliable. 5400 should be perfect. Don't go for 7200, you won't notice a difference. (except for noise and price)

Agree with that last point. 5400RPM is good. It should be quiet, and with a lesser failure rate.

 

I do have a 7200RPM drive though. It's a 2TB Toshiba Canvio, which uses USB 3.0. When transferring music of maybe like, 6MB per file, it writes at about 70MB/s. With huge files, it can get up to like 140MB/s. I don't have a lot of money to spend on other products, but that's like, three times faster than my internal drive, which is a 1TB Seagate drive on SATAIII. Even though a 2TB drive should have twice the platters as a 1TB drive (and thus be slightly faster), it's still blazing fast compared to an internal drive, which is supposed to be faster than an external. It also really quiet. I've only had it for a bit though, so I can't say much about reliability. Very satisfied in the time I've had it though.

 

OP, what exactly do you mean by "constant usage?" Is it like, always connected to your computer? A lot of people don't recommend that if it's possible, as you get better longevity if you only connect it when you're backing stuff up. If you have to be streaming your audio from the external drive, then I'd recommend getting a 5400RPM drive, since it'll be plugged in all the time.

 

Anyway, with what you've been hearing about hard drives failing, it's not really limited by brand. Hardware fails all the time, and if it does for you, just RMA it. If it makes you more comfortable though, try looking for a brand which offers a good warranty. Western Digital offers really long warranties (5 years, I'm pretty sure), Seagate usually only gives out 1 year warranties.

 

Hope that helps a bit.

[Viscra Maelstrom 3,718]

Agree with that last point. 5400RPM is good. It should be quiet, and with a lesser failure rate.

 

I do have a 7200RPM drive though. It's a 2TB Toshiba Canvio, which uses USB 3.0. When transferring music of maybe like, 6MB per file, it writes at about 70MB/s. With huge files, it can get up to like 140MB/s. I don't have a lot of money to spend on other products, but that's like, three times faster than my internal drive, which is a 1TB Seagate drive on SATAIII. Even though a 2TB drive should have twice the platters as a 1TB drive (and thus be slightly faster), it's still blazing fast compared to an internal drive, which is supposed to be faster than an external. It also really quiet. I've only had it for a bit though, so I can't say much about reliability. Very satisfied in the time I've had it though.

 

OP, what exactly do you mean by "constant usage?" Is it like, always connected to your computer? A lot of people don't recommend that if it's possible, as you get better longevity if you only connect it when you're backing stuff up. If you have to be streaming your audio from the external drive, then I'd recommend getting a 5400RPM drive, since it'll be plugged in all the time.

 

Anyway, with what you've been hearing about hard drives failing, it's not really limited by brand. Hardware fails all the time, and if it does for you, just RMA it. If it makes you more comfortable though, try looking for a brand which offers a good warranty. Western Digital offers really long warranties (5 years, I'm pretty sure), Seagate usually only gives out 1 year warranties.

 

Hope that helps a bit.

i don't have much choice than to stream audio from my external. i don't much trust myself with handling internal components (mostly because computer classes at school have almost all instances of me picking out things from a computer resulted in error. whether that be because the computers we had there were shit or if it were because of my own incompetence, i don't know), and i find it more reliable to have an external drive. i dunno, maybe that's just me.

 

as for transferring speeds, it won't do much good on this computer, as it's old and utilizes a chipset which comes with only 2.0 ports. i'll go look for drives with warranty, then. i'm sure i've seen several ones that has it already.

[Harmonic Revelations 8,835]

I'm not sure specifically. But if you're looking for a reasonable price and still good size I'd recommend a 300 GB external hard drive because it'll have intermediate price and still a good amount of space. I got one for about $50

[featheredone 56]

hidden post content hidden

Edited June 14, 2022 by featheredone

[Viscra Maelstrom 3,718]

Newegg's got a pretty good selection of external hard drives.

 

I've already done the 2TB Parameter for ya. You can do the rest. Hope ya find anything you need.

unfortunately, Newegg isn't an option that's available for me, because i happen to live in Sweden, and they don't ship items to here.

 

edit: ok, so i've settled on what harddrive to get. problem is, however, that i've realized that transferring everything from my old external drive to my new one, so i have 2 copies of my files, is going to take a buttload of time. if i'd get a PCIe USB 3.0 port in my computer, would that make the transfer faster, or would it make only my newer one faster and the transfer from the old, 2.0 one to the new, 3.0 still go as slow?

[Prismatic 49]

Well I'm late to the party.  I went the expensive route and got myself a NAS because speeds were no worry and I needed to access files on my ThinkPads and Toughbooks (one chipset before the faulty ICH5 and USB 1.1 respectively).  I was going to add that I've had 15+ year old Western Digital 3.5" drives going strong but the 2.5" Scorpio Blues are programmed to self destruct by means of continually unloading heads per 3 seconds of inactivity.  I'm more of a Hitachi user for laptops in which both my ThinkPads and Toughbooks use (and formerly IBM's hard drive manufacturer).  Bear in mind Hitachi is now owned by Western Digital.

 

Push comes to shove if you build your own external drive you do get a better warranty on the hard drive's physical components (data is never under warranty).

[SPLinux 380]

Princess Viscra Maelstrom, on 31 Jan 2013 - 13:01, said:

unfortunately, Newegg isn't an option that's available for me, because i happen to live in Sweden, and they don't ship items to here.

 

 

edit: ok, so i've settled on what harddrive to get. problem is, however, that i've realized that transferring everything from my old external drive to my new one, so i have 2 copies of my files, is going to take a buttload of time. if i'd get a PCIe USB 3.0 port in my computer, would that make the transfer faster, or would it make only my newer one faster and the transfer from the old, 2.0 one to the new, 3.0 still go as slow?

If you are transferring from a USB 2.0 device to a USB 3.0, the 3.0 rate (max 5.0Gb/s) will slow to the lowest common dominator and not have the 3.0 speed. (max 480Mbs/s) If you were to transfer to a SATA HDD first and then transferred that to the 3.0 External it would be quicker.

 

Note that a USB3 PCIe card wont provide the same speed as native motherboard support, my USB3 PCIe card for example only gets 700Mb/s instead of 4-5Gb/s

 

A USB3 PCIe will still improve the transfer situaution though as long as you copy from SATA to USB3 and not USB2 to USB3.

 

note that these rates are in Megabits and Gigabits not Megabytes or Gigabytes. A Byte = 8 Bits.

Edited January 31, 2013 by superponylinux

[Viscra Maelstrom 3,718]

Well I'm late to the party.  I went the expensive route and got myself a NAS because speeds were no worry and I needed to access files on my ThinkPads and Toughbooks (one chipset before the faulty ICH5 and USB 1.1 respectively).  I was going to add that I've had 15+ year old Western Digital 3.5" drives going strong but the 2.5" Scorpio Blues are programmed to self destruct by means of continually unloading heads per 3 seconds of inactivity.  I'm more of a Hitachi user for laptops in which both my ThinkPads and Toughbooks use (and formerly IBM's hard drive manufacturer).  Bear in mind Hitachi is now owned by Western Digital.

 

Push comes to shove if you build your own external drive you do get a better warranty on the hard drive's physical components (data is never under warranty).

i'm... not exactly sure what you are referring to here.

 

 

If you are transferring from a USB 2.0 device to a USB 3.0, yes the 3.0 rate (max 5.0Gb/s) will slow to the Lowest common dominator and not have the 3.0 speed. (max 480Mbs/s) If you were to transfer to a SATA HDD first and then transferred that to the 3.0 External it would be quicker.

 

Also a USB3 PCIe card wont provide the same speed as native motherboard support, my USB3 PCIe card for example only gets 700Mb/s instead of 4-5Gb/s

any speeds would be useful, though. my friend calculated that the rough estimate of transferring almost a terabyte's worth of information to the new external drive is gonna take approximately 800 hours, which is just under a month's worth of time.

sooooooo...

[Prismatic 49]

Remember when looking at the bandwidth to divide by 8 to get the number of megabytes (MB).

 

Laptop drives are generally slow compared to desktop drives.  You'll never be able to hit the bandwidth caps on them.

 

i'm... not exactly sure what you are referring to here.

 

Western Digitals are decent desktop but bad laptop drives.

Hitachi is now owned by the above.

You can buy a barebones laptop drive and a hard drive enclousure.

 

I have no idea where I am going with this either.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Prismatic

[Viscra Maelstrom 3,718]

Remember when looking at the bandwidth to divide by 8 to get the number of megabytes (MB).

 

Laptop drives are generally slow compared to desktop drives.  You'll never be able to hit the bandwidth caps on them.

 

 

Western Digitals are decent desktop but bad laptop drives.

Hitachi is now owned by the above.

You can buy a barebones laptop drive and a hard drive enclousure.

 

I have no idea where I am going with this either.

oh, ok, that makes more sense. though i don't use a laptop and probably won't do so other than on my school laptop, so...

don't exactly understand the technical terms completely though because i'm a bit of an idiot when it comes to computer stuff despite being in a computer class for a year or so.

[SPLinux 380]

Are you sure it would take 800 hours to transfer 1TB of data? even at USB2.0 Speed it shouldn’t take anymore than 10-12 Hours (even that might be too high of an estimate).

[Viscra Maelstrom 3,718]

Are you sure it would take 800 hours to transfer 1TB of data? even at USB2.0 Speed it shouldn’t take anymore than 10-12 Hours (even that might be too high of an estimate).

it took me over 24 hours to transfer 30-40ish amount of gigabytes on my old external drive when i first got it. now calculate how much time it would take to transfer 930+ gigabytes of data between two external harddrives on here.

[SPLinux 380]

it took me over 24 hours to transfer 30-40ish amount of gigabytes on my old external drive when i first got it. now calculate how much time it would take to transfer 930+ gigabytes of data between two external harddrives on here.

 

To transfer 35 GB in 25 hours for example at that speed would indicate a transfer speed around max 287KB/s which is much slower than a USB2.0 max 60MB/s(480Mbs/8=60 MB/s). at 287KB/s a TB would take around 1040 hours, yikes (maybe i messed up the math there, please correct me). Sounds like something fishy causing it to perform that slow. If running a Windows OS have your preformed a defragmentation and Malware scans?

[Viscra Maelstrom 3,718]

To transfer 35 GB in 25 hours for example at that speed would indicate a transfer speed around max 287KB/s which is much slower than a USB2.0 max 60MB/s(480Mbs/8=60 MB/s). at 287KB/s a TB would take around 1040 hours, yikes (maybe i messed up the math there, please correct me). Sounds like something fishy causing it to perform that slow. If running a Windows OS have your preformed a defragmentation and Malware scans?

the weird thing is, i've used a couple of computers in the past that has 2.0, and they were transferring data to my harddrives at speeds i haven't seen on this computer at all. my brother's computer, my mom's laptop, my school's laptop and more have been faster transferring to them. maybe my motherboard's chipset is very old?

 

the system auto-defragments every day or so, and i am running scans on the computer when i am noticing something going amiss on here (mostly the case of trojans i've accidentally slipped onto here).