External Hard Drive Users....

What brand of external hard drives do you use? Prefer? Recommend? Size?


I have a 750gB Seagate Go Flex (my trusty friend for many years), a Western Digital Elements 2.5TB for my TV and Movies, a 320gB Western Digital Essential for my work stuff, and a Buffalo MiniStation 1TB for my digital music collection. I'd like at some point to consolidate all my media on a 4TB drive, once they become affordable.

I was given a Maxtor 1TB fully loaded with stuff in both audio and video about 4 years ago. I have had no issues with it and am amazed at how much stuff is on it.

Lacie.

Stay away from Seagate, I've had bad luck with them in the past.

Western Digital "My Book". the only brand i will buy.

i have several 500 gb & 1 tb drives since 2007. so far all of them are still very functional & have never crashed or lost data.

mc666 wrote:

Western Digital "My Book". the only brand i will buy.

i have several 500 gb & 1 tb drives since 2007. so far all of them are still very functional & have never crashed or lost data.

Agreed, I have an older Western Digital drive and have never had any issues with it.

when it comes to Hard Drive storage I trust one brand and one brand only....

Western Digital Ive never gone wrong with them yet and ive been buying their products for over 10 years. I have a 1 TB Western Digitial Worldbook I think , its a Network External which means instead of hooking via usb It hooks via a network cable. I have it hooked to my router and can access it from any PC on the network (which is only 2 computers) I Love it! it was my last bday present from the ex wife (even though I went and picked it out and bought it so technically its from myself)

I also have a 2 TB Western Digital HDD that hooks up via usb. I dont use it much because I have the 1TB but one day I intend to organize the stuff and hook it up to the tv and use it for movies and stuff...

Mine is Western Digital.

I have a 1TB Western Digital...so far I love it.

The Skyliner record is currently on a WD MyBook so I know that works pretty well... Just don't lose the cord.... USB3 to USB.

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

I have a 1TB Western Digital...so far I love it.

same here. good machine!

exact33 wrote:

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

I have a 1TB Western Digital...so far I love it.

same here. good machine!

Me too. Got mine as a Christmas present. No problems with it.

I have a 1 TB seagate external and a 2 TB Iomega external, neither have crapped out. Both work fine.

I've had a Seagate Freeagent 1TB that I have used for a long while. It's my first external hd.

I've had two Iomega drives that crashed within several months of each other (one I was able to salvage my files from, the other wiped out many of my albums) so there is no way in hell, I'd recommend those. However, my Western Digital hasn't had any problems so I will agree with those who have already endorsed them.

I have a 1tb iomega drive. It is the second one I've had, as the first one tipped over, and was ruined. I'm thinking about replacing the one I have now also, as it is really slow.

kmorg wrote:

I have a 1tb iomega drive. It is the second one I've had, as the first one tipped over, and was ruined. I'm thinking about replacing the one I have now also, as it is really slow.

Do it before it crashes. I could have saved myself a lot of grief and anger had I given up on Iomega after the first one crashed.

Eventually Id like to get I think its the Worldbook 2 which is a network external (by WD) but the cool thing about it is its setup as a Raid 1 so if the drive craps out you can open it up and replace the bad drive and whola.

I remember reading about it when I got my network one....

Since I will be on the road for weeks on end, I need something to store all my music for on the go. I've got myself a portable Toshiba hard drive (2TB) so I can have all my music in a small compact device. Hopefully I will not have any problems or I'd have to wait til I went home for a few days before I could have all my music (I have a lot of my favorites on my laptop but less than half of my collection is there).

I hope it serves you well

This is crazy how much good I'm hearing about WD drives because I went through two 1TB's in the same year! My first drive wouldn't read after two weeks so I was able to get an exchange through Amazon. The second one was good for six months then up and crashed. I had it near full and was only able to recover a third of the original content, including two years worth of family photos and videos, including the birth of my firstborn. I was talking with a tech buddy of mine who builds computers B2B and he told me to stay away from external WD drives in general as they are some of the least reliable. Now I don't know what to get so I've just been Google Driving everything.

No matter what brand you buy you always need to purchase 2 of them. 1 as your primary and the other as a backup in case of hardware failure.

S.D. wrote:

No matter what brand you buy you always need to purchase 2 of them. 1 as your primary and the other as a backup in case of hardware failure.

Yep, this is my third one. For the others, I have one on my main computer and one I keep in a fireproof safe and I update it every few months or so.

S.D. wrote:

No matter what brand you buy you always need to purchase 2 of them. 1 as your primary and the other as a backup in case of hardware failure.

True. And never leave the backup connected at all times. I ripped everything to my computer, cut and paste it to my primary external drive (which is a 1TB Fantom Drive and has been great for years now), dump it in iTunes and add artwork and so forth, then copy it back to my computer.

Then once every week or so I connect the backup drive (also a 1TB Fantom), and move all the new stuff to the appropriate folders.

I've had friends lose everything because kept their primary and backup connected and on at all times. Dumb. One strong power surge can ruin it all.

But remember, when drives go bad, the file structure is usually still intact and accessible with an external USB hard drive connector. These thing cost under $20. Never pay a company hundreds of dollars to recover your files. All they do is use that less-than-$20 connector.