mssyAK Posted July 20, 2011 Posted July 20, 2011 I've been obsessively searching Amazon and other review sites and the external hard drives I've read reviews for sound tempermental at best. Any suggestions or personal accounts for amazing external hard drives that have never failed that you can't live without? Thanks!
SNPCracklePop Posted July 20, 2011 Posted July 20, 2011 Picked up a Western Digital 1TB about a year ago, and so far, so good.
mssyAK Posted July 20, 2011 Author Posted July 20, 2011 Picked up a Western Digital 1TB about a year ago, and so far, so good. that's what i almost went with, until i read dozens of reviews that said their WD 1TB shit the bed after only a few uses. not sure if i'm willing to try my luck...
timuralp Posted July 20, 2011 Posted July 20, 2011 that's what i almost went with, until i read dozens of reviews that said their WD 1TB shit the bed after only a few uses. not sure if i'm willing to try my luck... Barring a particularly bad batch (pretty rare), sadly, it does come down to luck. Also, aside from Amazon, check out the offerings on NewEgg. The search filters and the selection are better (in my opinion). Lastly, consider buying an enclosure separately from the drive. Make sure to pay attention to the form factor (2.5" vs 3.5") and the interface (IDE vs SATA, in particular). It really takes 5 minutes and (sometimes) a screwdriver to put the drive into it. That way you could get whatever "internal" drive is particularly popular/has good reviews and whatever enclosure looks nice.
rising_star Posted July 20, 2011 Posted July 20, 2011 that's what i almost went with, until i read dozens of reviews that said their WD 1TB shit the bed after only a few uses. not sure if i'm willing to try my luck... Honestly, you'll find reviews like that for *every* external hard drive. Some people swear by Western Digital, others by Seagate or even Toshiba. You can get a bad drive from any of those companies. I've had a Western Digital external (160gb) for the past 5 years and have had no problems with it. I'm going to order a WD 500GB portable external HD in the next few weeks to back up my research while I'm in the field. If something is really important, you should have four copies of it: hard drive, external HD, cloud (DropBox, SugarSync, Google Docs, etc.), and flash drive. At least, that's my opinion having had flash drives and hard drives fail.
blackshirt Posted July 21, 2011 Posted July 21, 2011 If something is really important, you should have four copies of it: hard drive, external HD, cloud (DropBox, SugarSync, Google Docs, etc.), and flash drive. At least, that's my opinion having had flash drives and hard drives fail. This. FWIW, I use Apple's 1 TB time capsule, which conveniently also doubles as a wireless router. I also have a cute little flash drive (total no-name brand) keychain that's disguised as a rubber superhero and I swear by it; it's compatible with every computer I've met (everything from old Dell & BM laptops to brand new iMacs) and less at-risk for being stolen since it looks like some little trinket a kid gave me. For cloud backup, I recommend Mozy; it syncs beautifully between my macbook, the internet, and my iphone. And, you get to choose which files to back up or not back up. When I get to my PhD program in the fall, though, I'm going to get in the habit of saving everything to Dropbox too; it keeps archives of past versions of your documents. This is incredibly useful in case you make big changes to a paper/article that you end up not liking. mandarin.orange 1
mandarin.orange Posted July 21, 2011 Posted July 21, 2011 (edited) that's what i almost went with, until i read dozens of reviews that said their WD 1TB shit the bed after only a few uses. not sure if i'm willing to try my luck... I read those reviews and researched this extensively, and still went with the WD 1TB. Mostly, I liked the size and easy Mac compatibility. I set it up about 2 weeks ago, so can't speak for its long-term functionality. I have done 2 backups, and so far so good. I second the poster who commented about storing the most important things in multiple locations, as I had a laptop get smashed in a car accident during my M.S. and am super vigilant about backing stuff up now. So, if this thing gets fried, I foresee a slight monetary setback...but I won't lose my data. Edited July 21, 2011 by mandarin.orange
Agradatudent Posted July 21, 2011 Posted July 21, 2011 Personally I hate my WD. It's the worst of my externals. I have a 8 year old Maxtor HD that runs better than my WD. It's testy. It frequently wont connect to my computer (and long ago the E-Sata stopped working), and it also excuses itself from being connected to my comp too often. I'd go with Seagate or even Maxtor (I just formatted the windows externals I had for Mac, easy)
jaxzwolf Posted July 23, 2011 Posted July 23, 2011 I, too, have a WD 1 TB for my Mac. I reformatted it with disk utility to Mac's native file format and set it up to work with Time Machine, and I've yet to have any problems with it.
SNPCracklePop Posted July 23, 2011 Posted July 23, 2011 I'm sure you'll be fine with either a Time Capsule or WD. If you can, hold out until Black Friday or Cyber Monday, and you'll save a bundle. There are always external hard drive deals.
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