Thread: What Are Some Good External Hard Drives?

I am looking to purchase a new external hard drive very soon, and I wanted to gain some insight. I'm sure almost everyone, if not everyone, here uses theirs daily if not weekly, and for the same purposes I do. I feel like I can get the best reviews here in terms of satisfaction, durability and the overall functionality of the device.



I prefer to get as much space possible (1TB+) over the transfer speed. It would be a plus for the hard drive to small physically speaking, but I don't want to limit your review for that reason.

As far as the pricing goes, I am not too concerned. However, try to keep the price range reasonable.

The reviews do not need to be that in depth, I'm just looking to get a general idea about a specific drive.
(Basically, just mention the brand, how long you have had them, and whether or not you would recommend them, anything extra would be helpful and much appreciated).

Hard drives have all but become a commodity product. Unless you are paying a premium for high end, high performance drives.. you won't find a lot of difference in performance between brands, at least IMO. So you can almost shop by whatever model is on sale at the moment.

FWIW, I strongly prefer a drive that has a longer warranty. All things being equal or for a modest premium, I will go for the drive that has a five year warranty over one that is covered for two or three years. I only buy recognizable brand names, but generally speaking don't have much preference for any particular brand. Some will say stay away from this brand or that brand because they had a drive of that brand fail or have heard a few anecdotal reports of the same. But every brand has had problems at one point or another. And *all* hard drives will fail. You just hope that it happens later rather than sooner.

It sounds like you aren't especially sensitive to price, so I'd recommend that you look for a drive that is A/V rated (more or less, this means designed for heavy use) or at least a 7200, rather than 5400 rpm drive. A bigger than normal cache would be icing on the cake. Not a generic brand and with a five year warranty if you can.

Probably someone else can recommend specific models for you. You imply but didn't say that you are thinking of an external drive (small size)? You might want to clarify that + if so, try to get an USB 3, rather than USB 2 drive.

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WD Caviar Black. They can handle the brunt of whatever you are using them for. a 2 TB WD Caviar Black costs $150 on newegg and it's internal, biut you could just buy a really cheap sata enclosure also. Or one of those crappy hot swap docks.

WD its very trustfull

I've been using a 1TB Lacie hard drive for about 2+ years now. I can't remember how many years I had it but I used to own a Western Digital hard drive and it broke, lost hundreds of gigs worth of stuff so I don't want anything to do with them anymore.

I have 2 external drives, both WD. Great company and reliable products from my experience.

Originally Posted by lively_ren

I've been using a 1TB Lacie hard drive for about 2+ years now. I can't remember how many years I had it but I used to own a Western Digital hard drive and it broke, lost hundreds of gigs worth of stuff so I don't want anything to do with them anymore.

When an external hard drive "breaks", it's usually not the drive itself, just the shittily made drive enclosure. If you crack it open, it voids the warrenty, but you can buy a new enclosure and place your drive in there. Chances are, you won't be sending your torrent hard drive in for data recovery anyway or to be fixed. I had a 1TB WD drive also and like an idiot, I thought it was the drive itself. Then I read up on it and decided to buy a new enclosure. Worked like a charm and no data was lost.

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have a lot of HDD.but mostly WD RE2 and RE3 and only afew Seagate SV series hard drive.all purely for storage and backup.as far as im concern the life span is very subjective,if the hard drive running for 24/7,be expect it to fail after 3 years.Just my experience.So,get the best hard drive within your budget.even WD enterprise hard drive had failed me a few times before.

I just picked up a Seagate Expansion 2TB yesterday for $99aud. It's nothing flashy I guess but it's a lot of storage for the money.