External hard drives

[disneydreamin247]

I'm looking for a new one and it seems every single one has multiple reviews saying they fail in a few weeks, months, etc. Are there any that are worth buying? I can't risk losing photos, videos, or documents when a hard drive fails.

 

[NCtoFL]

To be blunt, any hard drive can fail. Does not matter how reputable any particular drive is, it can fail at anytime. The best solution is to duplicate any important data on another hard drive/cd/dvd/online backup solution.

With that being said, I've always had good luck with Western Digital drives.

 

[Pixel Dust]

I would have to agree with NCtoFL. My solution was to do 2 external drives that are exact copies of each other while also having the photos on the computer itself. At one point I only had one external drive and there were a few files that were only on it and nowhere else... and of course it failed. So now I backup the backup because there isn't enough space on the computer for a copy of everything. If you can do multiple mediums, Hard Drive/DVD/online it would be even better. I also use western digital, but I did have one fail. No brand is immune to failure.

 

[zackiedawg]

Right - failure can happen, at random, anytime, with any drive. Sad but true. Of course, you could say the same about a car accident - could happen any time. Yet we all drive around as we need to, and for the most part, a majority of the time, we're safe. Same goes for the harddrives...what you see unfortunately when you read 'user reviews' of a product is an inordinate number of highly conflicting reviews - one group says the product is the greatest thing since fire, while the other group says it's a total faulty piece of junk that ruined their life. Take all of that with a grain of salt...think about who generally takes the time to go to a retail website, finds a product they bought, and writes a review about it. Mostly, it's going to be someone who is an extreme fanatic who loves it maybe a little too much, or wants to help that brand...or it's going to be someone who experienced a problem or flaw and is peeved about it. The great masses of buyers in the middle - those perfectly satisfied and fault-free but not particularly fanatical about the product or company - don't bother to write a comment or review. So don't base your decisions too strongly on the comments and user reviews - take them as a small part of your considerations, along with professional tests and reviews, long-term quality reports, your own like of the product design, warranty or the product, and/or any experience you have with the company or product.

That advice goes for almost any product!

For what it's worth, I have had good experiences with two different harddrives so far - I have a Maxtor drive which has been backing up my whole system for 7 years, and I have 3 Western Digital Passport drives that I use for data backups, additional backups, and travel backups all of which have been reliable. I've had two harddrive failures in 18 years between probably 20 total drives, both internal and external included. Both times it was an internal drive that came with the computer - the first time I had no backup, the second time I did. I learned from that first time!

 

[Gianna'sPapa]

I have to echo Zackiedawg's sentiments. In over twenty years I have had only two hard drive failures. Both were older external hard drives. I still have them because I believe the data is retrievable (I believe the fault is with something else other than the drive disc(s) itself). I haven't needed the data because of additional back-ups. I use Western Digital and have been very happy with them.

 

[photo_chick]

It's already been said here, any drive can fail. Any data storage method has the potential to fail. That's why you need more than one backup. Backup, backup your backup, then keep one more backup off site. And that one off site is important. It will cover you in case of flood, fire, theft... don't think those can't happen to you. I didn't think I had to worry about those things either until my home was burglarized. Backup often and off site.

As far as the question of drives failing... I got my first computer with a hard drive in the late 80's. In all that time I've had a lot of hard drives. I've only had 3 fail.

 

[disneydreamin247]

Thanks everyone. It looks like I'll be buying 2. I've been burned before so I don't want to take any chances. Luckily it wasn't anything irreplaceable that was lost.

 

[Shutterbug]

Sometimes with external hard drives, its not the drive that fails but the enclosure part. What I do is buy an internal hard drive and place it into encloser like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153066

That lets me swab out hard drives easier. Also generally internal hard drives are less expensive then external (when compared with similar specs).

 

[reimero]

A couple years ago, it was circulating in tech circles that 1TB+ hard drives were failing at a much higher rate than 500GB drives, and that there was a confirmed relationship between number of disk platters and failure rate. The long and short of it is that smaller drives are (or were) statistically more reliable than larger drives.
At the end of the day, though, redundancy is key. Backing up to archival-grade disk is strongly recommended.

 

[NCtoFL]

When I look at photos of my kids at different ages from birth to now, it reminds me that while I would be ok losing most data files, my photos are an exception. With that in mind, I keep my photos on a 2TB internal drive. That internal drive is backed up to a 3TB external WD drive, and also backed up to carbinite.com. Once a quarter, I will take the external drive over to my parents house, and dump the contents onto another external drive that is stored there.

Of course, I also backup my other data files in that process as well, but my photos are irreplaceable. I take no chances.

 

[manning]

I had one fail one month after I got it and I'm not a heavy user. No warning signs when it quit.

 

[Princess Yellow]

Not sure if this is always an option, but I had a WD EHD fail just after our twins were born. Pics of the birth were still on the camera, but shower, pregnancy photos wereon the HD and not backed up (photose before the pregnancy were backed up). DH took it to the guy who does IT for his business and he was able to take out the actual part with the memory/storage and put it in new housing for $80. Has worked great for 3 years and is always backed up!

 

[wdwwishes]

I have an external terra bite hard drive to back up my computer so I'm thinking the pics are there along with backing them up onto archival gold c.d.s and a separate external hard drive just for photos.