Storage: External Hard Drive

[sheika]

My Western Digital external hard drive just bit the dust. I’ve only had it approx. 3 years. I'm looking to replace it soon and would like suggestions on name brands.

Thanks.
Sheika

[Dave.Cox]

Western Digital is a good brand, and typically has a good life. But Hard drives Will and Do wear out. Especially if you buy the cheapest available. Don't skimp on the price of hard drives. It's better to pay a little more for good quality. Also, to avoid loosing data, keep a good back up plan, or set up a Raid drive array, set for RAID 5, or mirroring.

[Kraellin]

hi sheika and welcome to RP.

western digital would be my choice. you basically have three choices, western digital, maxtor and seagate. since maxtor recently bought out seagate, it's more like two choices.

i've bought maxtor for years and never was really happy with them. some seemed good and some not so good, so it seemed like a hit and miss situation. seagate, had maxtor not bought them out, would have been my first choice. seagate has a good, long term name going back to 8 bit days and recently had added a five year warranty to their product. but again, maxtor bought them out, so that leaves western digital, given that you can find one in the size/capacity you want. after that, i'd go seagate, then maxtor if nothing else is available.

[nicosphere]

i had a lacie 500 gig drive stop working on me last year....i only had it for less than a year and i was dumb enough to not back up everything. it cost me $1500 to recover the data, which thankfully was a possibility.

prior to the technician opening the drive, i asked him which brands he sees the most. he told me that hitachi comes into their shop alot. a few minutes later, he opened my lacie drive and it had two hitachi drives inside.

on the other hand, i have two other lacie drives that have not given me any problems. go figure.

[sheika]

Thanks to all of you for your replies to my request. My WD external drive didn't die after all. The USB port it was connected to failed.

[Dave.Cox]

Yea, I'm glad that you didn't lose your data. Now is a good time to do a back up. Norton Ghost is a good tool for that.

Dave