Best, Most Reliable External Harddrive? Suggestions Welcomed

I'm looking to buy a new external harddrive since my notebook harddrive is getting a bit full. Something like 320GB or 500GB is more than adequate for me. I don't want the HDD to fail and lose all of my data so reliability is important (although i'll probably back it up twice onto a desktop). All reviews I've read came from online review websites and user reviews from newegg.com, buy.com and amazon.com.

I've been looking and researching for quite a while now, mostly Western Digital, Seagate and LaCie.

At first considered LaCie because the price was very nice for the 500GB model and the reviews were pretty good (not too many HDD faliures). But the 1 year limited warranty was a bit small.

Then I looked at Seagate's FreeAgent Pro because of the decent price for the 320GB model, nice design and the nice 5 year limited warranty. But then i read some less than stellar reviews on HDD faliure rates and poor eSATA support.

Then I looked at the Western Digital MyBook's because of the decent price, nice design but again, lots of bad reviews on excessive faliure rates. The Passport was a good choice because the reviews were generally positive and the design was very compact but kind of pricey per GB.

So now im stuck in a quandry on which external HDD to pick. I need something thats pretty reliable and well priced (under 150).

Any suggestions and ideas welcomed.

 

As a more controllable alternative, consider getting a hard drive enclosure (empty) and putting in it the most reliable hard drive you can find. StorageReview.com may be of some help in choosing. I have no first-hand experience with enclosures, but I'd go for an aluminum one with at least one fan. You obviously have a choice of interfaces too. HDD-wise, I've had horrible experience with numerous Maxtor drives, fairly good one with IBM/Hitachi and Seagate, Okay with WD. Maxtor is now masquerading as Seagate, so it's sometimes hard to tell what you're getting... Anyway, just a thought...

 

I have a Seagate FreeAgent 250GB 7200rpm external drive and it's worked great so far. I got it for $80 from amazon.

 

I'd probably buy a reliable HD from newegg and then buy an enclosure, cuz that way if the enclosure for some odd reason goes bad, you can take the HDD out and buy a new enclosure without having to pry open some factory sealed proprietary enclosure. I don't see any reason you would need a fan in the enclosure, unless you were gonna be using the fire out of it, or insulating it with thick blankets or something. A notebook doesn't have a fan on its HDD and neither does a desktop, so something in the open air shouldn't need one either. Aluminum case is nice, some have some padding around them in case of drops, this might be a good thing to look at in case you trip over the cord or something.

 

I love my Apricorn Aegis Portable, and their larger drives are just as good. Solid construction, tough plastic, and it hardly gets warm. Other brands I'm a fan of are SimpleTech and Buffalo. I'd probably get a Buffalo this time around, since the black better matches my tendency towards business class notebooks and they have the built-in cable.

If you want something attractive, Lacie or SimpleTech are your best bets.

But, personally, unless you want something portable, I'd suggest a nice little NAS. You can get a 320GB Lacie from Newegg for $150, a 500GB for about $180 I believe.

By the way, Apple sometimes has very good prices on Lacie parts.

 

My enclosure is Cooler Master X-Craft 250 Lite... it has heat vents, shock absorption & Cypress Chipset

 

what makes external harddrives so prone to faliure when they are made by the same, reliable companies?

i've thought about building my own external hdd with an enclosure but which harddrives would be reliable? aren't the harddrives that WD or Seagate make the same ones as they manufacture for internal usage? sounds like i would be back to square one.

although building my own would make it easier for me to swap out the harddrive if it breaks or if i need to upgrade to a larger size. it's all a bit more costly though, or would be the same price.

 

In my experience, the Buffalo drives are built the best.

 

Best Buy are doing a 250Gb WD Passport for $139.99 this week. Not sure if its big enough for ya but good price.

 

thanks for the suggestions

i was interested in the passport for the portability and high ratings but the space to price ratio is not that great. 320GB is probably the minimum I would go.

 

It's mostly heat and shock mounting, I think, but theoretically there could be issues with the supply of power. There may also be issues with handling of the drive on any given assembly line, as well as packaging.