External Drive Shopping

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GoC_Derek

Weaksauce
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Mar 24, 2008
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So I'm looking for an external drive to backup my 500GB drive, which has about 60GB free, then some backups on my current drive. So I'm thinking 750GB should be enough, and I heard some things about 1TB sized drives failing apparently.
Edit. now that I did some research, I might be fine with a 1TB drive, if the reviews are all good, why not.

So here are the two 750s I'm looking at.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136176

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822204087


And then, if I were to get a TB drive, maybe this would be the one.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3572142&Sku=M261-8184




Thanks.
 
Last edited:
The links are broken :(

I will say, buy as big as you can afford, and get an eSATA external drive if you have an eSATA port on your system.
 
Ah, sorry, copied this from another thread, fixed the links.

And OK, so as long as most of the reviews are good, it should be fine then? I'll probably go with a 1TB drive, and am I wrong about the larger the drive, the more prone it is to failure? I get rather paranoid when it comes to my data and stuff, so I like to be overprotected.

And are all main brands pretty much the same? Like Seagate and Western Digital?

Thanks.
 
GoC_Derek said:
So I'm thinking about getting this..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822204089

This will give me an esata port, right? To use with the drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812186052

And do I treat the drive connected to this like a plug-in-play, or like an internal drive?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812156014


Thanks.
Click to expand...
First item looks good.

Answer to the second line is: Yes, that will give you an eSATA port if you have a free SATA port on your motherboard.

The third item doesn't help you much, as that adapter will still be limited to the speed of USB. The whole point of having eSATA is bypassing USB altogether. eSATA with a decent drive will get you basically whatever the drive is mechanically capable of, Somewhere between 80-100MB/sec is typical on a 1TB drive. USB only gets 40MB/sec on a good day, and some combinations of controller chips can will peak around 25 or 30MB/sec.

As for your second to last post about reliability...

Hard drives are reliable, but they do fail. All of the major brands are about the same. If they made drives with abnormally high failure rates, they wouldn't be in business. Seagate did have the small firmware issue with the Barracuda 7200.11 (that has been fixed). Before that, the last major issue with drives that were truly defective was the IBM "Deathstar" 60GXP disaster. IBM sold their HDD division to Hitachi because of it, but that was many years ago. If you have data that you can't afford to lose, you need some sort of off-site backup system like an online data backup, a tape rotation, or copies to non volatile optical media (DVD / Blu-Ray / etc)
 
I get rather paranoid when it comes to my data and stuff, so I like to be overprotected.
Click to expand...

That stuff has a 1 yr warranty.

I dunno 'bout you but when most HDs come with a 3-5 yr warranty, 1 yr doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy.

There's many threads where this has been discussed but this is one of the latest.
 
The vast majority of drives die either in the first three months or after three years. Exceptions to this are usually caused by non-routine causes, such as shock damage (especially the case with externals) or power fluctuations. Covered under warranty or not, a drive failure is still a pain in the neck, and one year plus from now there's gonna be a bigger, better drive available for less money.

Even with a minimum of three year warranty, both my dad and I have had zero failures covered by warranty in the past four years. The last drive I RMA'd was a 120GB WD. I've gone through numerous drives since then:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=934808 (scroll down to the sold section if you care to look, it's over 20 drives)

In addition, dad and I have since gone through four 500GB Seagates, a WD2500KS, SP2504C, a pair of 320GB Maxtor/Seagate drives, a pair of 400GB Seagates, two 300GB Maxtors, a number of (at least three) 300GB Seagates, 400GB WD external, 500GB generic external, 750GB Maxtor/Seagate external. Out of those 40+drives, three failed, and all three were after three years. The 250GB Samsung and both of the 300GB Maxtors were the casualties, all after their warranties expired. Hard drive warranties are overrated.
 
Hard drive warranties are overrated.
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I'm glad you have had great luck with your units and agree most HDs go beyond their time but I feel the warranty is an indication of the manfs. faith in their product.

Some premade externals do come with a longer warranty and is an indication of their faith that the product will last longer.

However, even within any premade's warranty period, opening that unit to TS drive/interface problems will void the warranty and any RMA will lose your data.

Buying seperate quality units with 5 yr warrantys gives you the the best possible scenario for safe storage, recovery, and warranty replacement.

The only downside to seperates is a increased cost but that decision depends upon how much your data is worth to you.
 
Old Hippie said:
The only downside to seperates is a increased cost but that decision depends upon how much your data is worth to you.
Click to expand...
If your data is worth anything, you won't trust it to any single device or system, making a failure irrelevant from a data integrity standpoint. Drive makers still don't pick up data recovery as part of their limited warranty.

I'll agree it's nice to have a manufacturer or vendor pick up the tab on a replacement drive in the case of a failure. However, there is little correlation between the length of the warranty period and the reliability of a drive. Factors under customer control (quality of power supplied, avoidance of shock/drops, keeping drives in acceptable thermal tolerances, etc) have much more influence over the life expectancy of the drive. Indeed, warranty much past three years isn't of much use to me. Three years ago, a 250GB drive was a big deal. Now, I won't buy a drive that's less than 500GB for my desktops or externals. I've got a pair of 250GB and pair of 320GB drives sitting in my parts bin because they just aren't big enough.
 
Hm, I might have to suck it up then and deal with the USB transfer rates on that 1TB drive. My 750i board doesn't have esata, so. Is there a way I could use an esata to sata adapter? Or would that pretty much be like the esata bracket I posted.

I do want to get a 1TB drive, so if you have any recommendations, let me know.




Thanks.
 
GoC_Derek said:
Hm, I might have to suck it up then and deal with the USB transfer rates on that 1TB drive. My 750i board doesn't have esata, so. Is there a way I could use an esata to sata adapter? Or would that pretty much be like the esata bracket I posted.
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That $6 bracket does the job cheap :D
 
We're talking 10-20 bucks and 2 minutes of assembly to get a five yr. warranty and the ability to TS without the loss of data or warranty.

By the sales of prebuilts, I know the expense is difficult for some to justify but I feel it's pretty much a no-brainer.

I'm not much of a gambler but I feel it puts the odds a little more in my favor.
 
DougLite said:
That $6 bracket does the job cheap :D
Click to expand...

But won't I get watered down speeds, near or less than USB with that bracket? I'm backing up a 500GB drive, that I can use with Acronis, then assorted drag and drop files.


The reviews look good on that TB drive I posted, so I'm leaning more towards that.




Thanks.
 
i never hear of Western Digital drives failing if they make it past the first 3 months
 
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