Author Topic: Good external hard drive (Read 3687 times)

XinWind · « **on:** August 31, 2009, 01:38:33 AM »

I was wondering what external hard drives you guys use and what you would recommend me to buy.
I'm looking for a good 1TB hard drive, but isn't too costly.

Arveene · « **Reply #1 on:** August 31, 2009, 02:06:10 AM »

I use the Western Digitnal My Book. There are a couple different types.

Essential Edition - USB 2.0
Home Edition - USB 2.0/Firewire 400/eSATA
Mirrored - RAID 0 or 1
Studio - USB 2.0/Firewire 400 or 800/eSATA

All available in 1 TB sizes. Prices range from about $80/90 (Essential Edition) to $200ish(Mirrored)

XinWind · « **Reply #2 on:** August 31, 2009, 02:15:39 AM »

Thank you. I'll check them out.

Klocknov · « **Reply #3 on:** August 31, 2009, 04:24:40 AM »

I would say Western Digital as the Arveene said or Seagate. Those seem to have the best reviews for externals

morrefule · « **Reply #4 on:** August 31, 2009, 04:42:12 AM »

WD and Seagate are good, I personally love my WD turbo. Probably get a second in a month or so.

Just be careful about Maxtor, some of thier drives use cheap parts.

XinWind · « **Reply #5 on:** August 31, 2009, 05:12:38 AM »

Good to know. Also I'm most likely going to pick one from western digital. Thanks for the info guys =].

Chiyachan · « **Reply #6 on:** August 31, 2009, 10:44:37 AM »

DON'T get a seagate or a Maxtor.
They're fucking stupid.
I got a 750gb Maxtor and one of the airvents is on the bottom where it stands on.
It boils the harddrive on a warm day.
I could go on and on. But srsly, they suck suck suck.

Tatsujin · « **Reply #7 on:** August 31, 2009, 05:41:51 PM »

Quote from: Arveene on August 31, 2009, 02:06:10 AM

I use the Western Digitnal My Book. There are a couple different types.

Essential Edition - USB 2.0
Home Edition - USB 2.0/Firewire 400/eSATA
Mirrored - RAID 0 or 1
Studio - USB 2.0/Firewire 400 or 800/eSATA

All available in 1 TB sizes. Prices range from about $80/90 (Essential Edition) to $200ish(Mirrored)

End of story. I use 4 of those. I need more.

Quote from: Chiyachan on August 31, 2009, 10:44:37 AM

DON'T get a seagate or a Maxtor.
They're fucking stupid.
I got a 750gb Maxtor and one of the airvents is on the bottom where it stands on.
It boils the harddrive on a warm day.
I could go on and on. But srsly, they suck suck suck.

Yes, avoid those two. Specially Maxtor. Seagates is an upgrade of Maxtor with short or long term problems. I have a Seagate 300 GB and I'm gonna probably kill it sooner than later for pissing my computer off. Piece of shit external HDD.

quekmeister · « **Reply #8 on:** August 31, 2009, 06:31:45 PM »

I use a WD Elements external, I have an older 160GB 2.5" and a 1TB 3.5". It may not look as classy as the MyBook, but I've always liked having slabs of metal lying around, and the Elements casing is basically a slab of aluminium.

morrefule · « **Reply #9 on:** August 31, 2009, 11:54:51 PM »

It seems you guys have seen the same problems I have with the Maxtors... Take one apart if you ever get the chance and check out the parts. Talk about cheap!

XinWind · « **Reply #10 on:** September 01, 2009, 12:33:50 AM »

Thanks for all the input guys. =]
Its really helpful.

equnai · « **Reply #11 on:** September 01, 2009, 10:45:31 AM »

I'm using a WD elements 320GB external drive, and I've not been very kind to it. Yet it still functions like it's brand new.

Here a 1TB version is €80, not much for a good quality device.

theprophet · « **Reply #12 on:** September 02, 2009, 07:37:22 AM »

I personally like the Seagates, I have always used seagates since I have been using computers. I am currently using 2 500 gig Seagate HDs. They do the trick, were cheap, and were easy. I like them better than the WD drives personally. I am not dissing on the WDs in fact they are my second choice of hard drive maker. Seagate has always done good for me. Everyone is going to have different experiences with different companies. I have personally had 2 WD drives crap out on me and I'm still running a Seagate in a computer from like 10 years ago and still runs like a champ.

In the line of externals though I am confused, people buy the cheap model and then complain about the quality of the device. To cut back on retail cost, you have to cut back on production cost. I personally go for the mid range products. Around $75 for each of those 500 gig HDs I'm using. Truth be told though, this is the age of the external HDs so alot of these are newer products and alot of us can't speak for years down the road. Good luck on making your descision!

I say go to Wal-Mart and buy it. Keep the box, if the thing dies on you return it!

Tatsujin · « **Reply #13 on:** September 15, 2009, 12:03:27 AM »

First and Last time to buy an Elements WD. Slow freaking piece of junk. Doesn't wanna go beyond 10 MB. My other external WD go 20 ~ MB average, nothing less than 19.

I have 4 x of those. Beautiful. Nothing less.

Now, I hope they'd bring down those prices. I want more space. I'm gonna start getting Internals to replace the 4 old HDDs I have. One of them is a Seagate and it's scaring me. The other three are WDs.

Slysoft · « **Reply #14 on:** September 15, 2009, 12:04:40 AM »

Can't you just buy an internal hard drive and put it in an external case?

quekmeister · « **Reply #15 on:** September 16, 2009, 03:27:33 PM »

Quote from: Slysoft on September 15, 2009, 12:04:40 AM

Can't you just buy an internal hard drive and put it in an external case?

In my experience, external cases are an iffy proposition, the one I have has really bad ventilation and cooling, not to mention a crappy socket for the USB extension.

Tatsujin · « **Reply #16 on:** September 16, 2009, 04:11:26 PM »

Quote from: quekmeister on September 16, 2009, 03:27:33 PM

Quote from: Slysoft on September 15, 2009, 12:04:40 AM
Can't you just buy an internal hard drive and put it in an external case?
In my experience, external cases are an iffy proposition, the one I have has really bad ventilation and cooling, not to mention a crappy socket for the USB extension.

The internals will get (start to) replaced around November or this upcoming January. Right now, I needed a quick external HDD. Elements is just the wrong external HDD ... piece of freaking crap.

Edit -- I'm thinking of filling all 6 slots with 1.5 TB for Internals and getting rid of the other HDD's. That'll cost me around 700 US dollars or so. I hope the price drops for 1.5 TB around Jan/Feb of next year.

I just saw that this Elements came as FAT32 format. I'm going to do the NTSF (was it?). Would that improve its speed at all? I couldn't transfer some very large files anyways.

bloody000 · « **Reply #17 on:** September 16, 2009, 08:24:47 PM »

1. Buy hard drive.(WD, Seagate, Samsung)
2. Buy good enclosure.(Vantec)
3. ????
4. PROFIT..NOT!

Xtras · « **Reply #18 on:** September 17, 2009, 02:17:47 AM »

Which is more likely to fail? And external hard drive that is used to store anime and just left sitting for most of the time in a cool dry place. Or an internal hard drive that is used as a secondary (i.e. it only has stored anime, and not the actual OS)

kureshii · « **Reply #19 on:** September 17, 2009, 02:47:42 AM »

A hard drive that is used as little as possible will likely last longer. If it's just for storage it shouldn't tax the hard drive too much, but I wouldn't recommend seeding for long periods of time off an external.

I greatly prefer mounting hard drives internally, and the basis of this preference is the increased cooling capacity provided by a good computer case (8cm-or-larger fan for ventilating hard drives, v.s. 4cm-or-smaller fan in an external enclosure, if not none at all).

On this premise, internally-mounted hard drives without forced ventilation are not much better than hard drives in an external cage (this is usually the case in a basic super-cheap computer case, and possibly in some budget pre-builts as well). If ambient temperatures and humidity are really low there, you might be able to get away with it. But I live in the tropics; humidity is typically >80%, and temperatures never go lower than 25˚C—no way I'm going to risk hard drives going unventilated here.

[Confession: Okay, so I do have an unventilated external... but I don't use it for seeding, and it's currently only being used to archive some raw data.]

If you have SMART reporting on your hard drives, check the drive temperatures. Anything above 50˚C is way too hot (unless it's an enterprise drive designed to withstand such temperatures over 24/7 operation… but why would you put such a drive in an external enclosure?), and personally I try to keep it no more than 45˚C. Ideal temperatures are probably in the 30˚C region (depending on your regional climate).

Note that even if you follow the guidelines above it is no guarantee against disk failure (just like there is no 100% guarantee against heart failure), but you certainly lower the risk of it happening by quite a bit (I think).