Need help chooing hard drive

[Julius]

Hey, I'm looking for an extra hard drive. I don't really care if it's internal or external, but I do prefer external, however I am not sure what's considered a "good" hard drive. I'm looking for lots of space of course but how do would I know it's failure rate? I will be storing very important files (music) and cannot afford any hard drive failures.

Any ideas/suggestions?

 

[engiNURD]

Without a huge sample size, you won't know its real failure rate. Even then, it won't prevent you from getting a drive that won't fail. Sure, it will increase your chances of avoiding a drive with high failure rates, but typically, its the brand new batches that fail more than others. I choose my externals as I would my internal HDDs... based on speed, warranty, and quietness -- which usually leads to either WD or Seagate. As far as data reliability goes, I have multiple backups, so I don't rely on a single drive as my backup. To avoid drives that may have high failure rates, I avoid any new batches of drives -- wait 3-6 months after the drive has been released. Storagereview.com is also a good resource for HDD info.

BTW, did you want USB or eSATA?

 

[PC_User]

Hey, I'm looking for an extra hard drive. I don't really care if it's internal or external, but I do prefer external, however I am not sure what's considered a "good" hard drive. I'm looking for lots of space of course but how do would I know it's failure rate? I will be storing very important files (music) and cannot afford any hard drive failures.

Any ideas/suggestions?

You can always get a good reliable internal drive (such as the Western Digital Caviar Green) and put it in an external case. Many of the latest drives (Seagate 7200.11 and Western Digital drives) are quite reliable. Now, it just depends on whether you'll be using this drive for performance where speed is an issue or mainly for storage and music playback.

Also, what size drive are you looking?

For speed/performance/main drive:
+ Western Digital Caviar Black
+ Seagate 7200.11

For storage/infrequent use:
+ Western Digital Caviar Green: 40% less power consumption, very quiet

 

[Julius]

You can always get a good reliable internal drive (such as the Western Digital Caviar Green) and put it in an external case. Many of the latest drives (Seagate 7200.11 and Western Digital drives) are quite reliable. Now, it just depends on whether you'll be using this drive for performance where speed is an issue or mainly for storage and music playback.

Also, what size drive are you looking?

For speed/performance/main drive:
+ Western Digital Caviar Black
+ Seagate 7200.11

For storage/infrequent use:
+ Western Digital Caviar Green: 40% less power consumption, very quiet

250GB or Higher, I will most likely purchase more than one after a certain amount of time.

I'm going to newegg to look now.

Thanks for the replies!