Can You Recommend a Good External Hard Drive?
Can You Recommend a Good External Hard Drive?
☝️ Quality and features in external hard drives change over time. First, look at what you need.
☝️ External hard drives
When choosing an external hard drive, consider physical size (for portability, 2½-inch drives travel well), speed (5400 RPM is common for durability, 7200 for speed), and capacity (2TB minimum these days). Reliability varies, and manufacturers seem to cycle from good to bad and back again. Focus on your needs: size of backups, number of backups, additional uses, and, of course, your budget. Backing up is crucial regardless of drive specifics.
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✅ Watch next ▶ Can an External Drive Fail? ▶ https://youtu.be/TMl9YJP93F8
Chapters
0:00 Good External Hard Drive
1:00 Considering physical size
2:45 About speed
3:40 Capacity
4:00 Things to think about
6:00 Brands
7:45 SSDs?
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Great points I agree with Leo, esp. about the Brand QUALITY changing yearly! Recently went through hundreds of AMZ reviews for researching a new one, good news = prices are way down, the new min standard is 2TB for only $40, 5TB for $99-$130 😎👍 Bad news is quality and warranties have come down HARD from 5yr to 3 or 1 yr esp. for Seagate! Even though they’re a top brand, the sheer volume of 1 star failures (esp. on Mac!) in the last 2 months is crazy high, over 100+, whereas WD only had 15 1 star reviews going back to Jan (6 months). Lots of Seagate nightmare stories of failure in SEVERAL drives by each owner with pricey $$$ 14TB drives! I wonder if thats why they offer their "Free" or cheap Recovery insurance to get you to pay for the big fish who’s willing to pay $$$$ for huge data loss or give them a refurb drive if the drive fails early with cheap mfg? Bigger profits for neglible losses? 😆 WD for the win. They own SanDisk and G-technology also. Seagate owns LaCie which I’ve had a quick failure with in the past. Dont recommend 3.5" either as 7200 rpms spins too fast for platters, more prone to fail in external HDD and noisey with plug power.
I do plan to store the "Back up" on the internal drive instead of external. As I just want it to be easy access, instead of taking the external HDD out and plugged in when needed.
But I do notice a problem where is, that "internal 3.5" HDD that I using seems to be degrading faster? As some of the file in that drive start to corrupted.
My guess here maybe it "on and off" in my desktop PC too often causing my internal HDD to degrade faster? Maybe I need the a better HDD for it? like the HDD for the cloud or server base?
Another question will be, for the large capacity Backup HDD example 5TB or 8TB, is the partition recommended? Or just do the folder to separate it? i know maybe it sound risky as I store all my data in 1 HDD only. But I just don’t like to manage that multiple 4 2GB HDD or even 2 4GB HDD.
I have a number of portable drive for backup, I tend to buy a new one every year or two to add to what I have. I mostly look at what drives are available in the size that I want and I’ll look at all of the user reviews that I can find and pick a drive with the best reviews. In the past few drives I have bought that has been Toshiba brand but the next time I buy a drive it might be a different brand. If a person is traveling a lot with an external drive an SSD might be worth it for durability but otherwise I buy mechanical drives for backup because they really aren’t plugged in and running for very long.
choose a backup minimum twice the size youre pc drive. 1 tb internal you backup with a 2tb external drive
Used to use a Seagate external spinning hard drive until I picked it up to dust one day and in doing so crashed the heads into the disk. The drive could never be read after that, and the data completely unrecoverable even by the Geek Squad. These days with the thumb drive sizes reaching 1TB, I just use those. Inexpensive, reliable enough, and I’ve only got 256GB of data on my main computer.
Well done. As you stated, the RPM of the drive is meaningless when used as an external backup. And so data transfer throughput also depends on the connectivity. Old USB 1.1, 2.0, 3.0?, and USB technology keeps evolving so, for backup, basics are fine. What I recommend is to first backup your machine. Then backup your data, and full backups and incremental backups all depends on how critical the backup is. For storage savings, only keep relatively important data on your machine, with regular backups, and keep music, and photos on external drives of some sort. For brands, since the 80s, I’ve been using Seagate and Western Digital exclusively for hard drives, both in the machine and backups. Of course, in my IT world I worked we used 15K RPM SCSI, RAID 5/10, SANs and other things but that’s for server farm levels. Just backup regardless. Even a fairly large USB stick drive for temporary use is better than nothing. Great video indeed.
thank you so much for this guide
I have been using a ‘WD 12TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive, USB 3.0 – WDBWLG0120HBK-NESN’ for Backups since Nov 2020 and have not had any problems. I have it on my Server and it run 24/7 however the Drive does go into a built-in hibernation state after a certain amount of time not being used, then wakes up when accessed as needed. Great for backups if you don’t need to take the drive anywhere. You can also get a 3TB, 8TB or up to a 20TB version of these drives.
well given how easily HDD drives fail, ill stick with a external ssd
The only thing he got right on SSDs is they cost more. Wow specs on good usb 3 drives is faster then spinning rust.
SSDs are better back up precisely because they have no moving parts. but you need to keep powering them up every 6 months for the data to be refreshed and it doesn’t get lost. you might be able to do it once/year and they will last for 10 years.
but here is a mistake, that you fall into, a backup in external drives, is ALWAYS a short/mid term back up, It is NEVER A LONG TERM.
For long term back up you need the king which is LTO (Linear Tape-Open) with LTO-9 standard of 2021 you can store up to 18TB in one cartridge or cassette, however you wanna call it. It is used by IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, made by Fuji, Sony. This is what is called Archival Format. The drive is expensive, around 5,000 USD, but each tape is super cheap.
The second best archival format, but is second by a long distance is Blu Ray M-Disc, the drive is cheap, around 50, 60 USD but the media is not as cheap as LTO in cost per TB.So this might be a great medium for archiving stuff like emails, photos and thats it. To archive video, I think the best is to use LTO.
I purchased an external memory device from AliExpress. It is similar to an old-fashioned hard drive, For some reason out of the 2 computers that I have; and About 10 USB ports on all of them; This external hard drive will only communicate with 1USB port The others don’t recognize it or keeps on making a clicking sound without being recognized by the computer.
This recognition on one USB Port came about after I managed to get my northern security to clean it, Quite frankly I’m terrified to put any information on it,
Is there any explanation to it communicating with one USB port?
Here’s another hint.
I have two connecting cables one with A charger another one Without a charger, It would only operate on the Cable with the charger.
My first computer had a 40 mg hard drive and the drive still works. It’s just a drive that sits on a shelf to remind me where I first started with these computers. I actually started with a VIC 20. LOL That’s a long way back.
Your advice is right on the money. Things are changing to fast to recommend a particular drive.. Excellent informative video. Thanks Leo.
I used to use Western Digital disk harddrives but I accidentally dropped one one and lost all the data, so for me the decision was simple: at great expense I bought Samsung SSD’s and transferred everything over to them and destroyed my Western Digital harddrives. I now also use cloud storage as extra backup for my files and some things mostly pictures I also store on DVD’s
I have a 1TB external hard drive. I was trying to delete some videos recently. It worked for a while. What happened is I would get a message that said it was loading files and would take a few minutes. A few minutes turned into 8 hours or more. I used to get a little square box in the upper right corner that I could check for videos I wanted to delete. I don’t get that anymore. I plugged the drive into my tablet and got a message that the drive was corrupted. Does that mean there is a file or video that is corrupted or is the whole drive corrupted? I found a software download to find corrupted files and it found some files, but I had to pay to finish fixing the corrupted files.
I use a WD My Passport 2TB HDD External Drive that I bought 5 years ago, and it still works
Watch next ▶ Can an External Drive Fail? ▶ https://youtu.be/TMl9YJP93F8
Before i start watching this video i am very sure that the first answer is: Wel, both yes and no or .. no i cant 😂
My take home message from this is that the rotating discs still can be good as a backup. I bought one recently, not realising it was a rotating disc. I paid just over a £100 for 4TB WD drive. Then I searched for SSDs of this capacity and they were at least twice the price for this capacity. I went with one, also because the mentioned portability and size. My next one may be a HDD again, if it really doesn’t matter as much.
A fun fact: I bought a Sandisk USB, what I thought was 64 gb capacity, went to create a bootable usb for my computer that needed anything larger than 32 GB and it failed… that little bastard was just 32 GB. But on the package, the item itself and description of the website (Currys), it was 64 GB. Got a refund for that, but it puzzles me how this company (Sandisk) and their distributor (Currys) could get it so wrong. Was it just one off or was there a whole batch that was faulty?
From 2021, G-Technology is rebranded by Western Digital into SanDisk Professional. Western Digital is a solid choice, but like any brand, they have bad years.
From personal experience, avoid Seagate.
Drop an HD and it’s gone. Trust me, it happened to me and I lost almost 500 GB of data that will cost me big money to recover–that is, if I recover it at all. If you’re a road person, get an SSD.
I wasted my time watching this post …. although this guy mentioned that brand name quality is CYCLICAL, and mentioned waht he was using, HE NEVER MENTION AN ACTUAL BRAND THAT HE WOULD RECCOMENT TODAY!
I’ve had issues with the WD 2.5 drives. Both with mini usb 3 cables and the drives dieing. They suck.
Thanks for your helpful advice, Leo.
I’m still in the clouds when it comes to which brand is safe and sound so, to some extent, it’s a bit of pot luck for non-geeks like myself. Stay well.
Great guidance as always. Any thought about backing up multiple partitions and/or multiple internal disks onto one external HD, assuming it has the capacity? Is there a back up software that would be easier to use with this approach? I’m assuming it would mean a separate disk image being created for each internal Disk and/or partition.
WD Passport. Been using them for years with no problems.
Why not speak about portable, small solid state memory drives? Too many "portable,external hard disk drive break down, I lost some data because of these unreliable devices+I only keep my valued files on solid state ones.
Is SRM bad?
What a waste of time hearing this useless discussion.
Watch this if you want to listen some bullshit
I still have a Seagate drive (1 TB) that is about 12 years old that I use for backups (total image). It’s a spinning platter. Every once in a while I’ll back it to one of dozen SSD’s laying around. Just in case. I’m worried about the life of the seagate being that old.
Buffalo and Transcend make great portable hard drives
Hi leo, I want to back up my video which I recorded in the year 1990 in Pal and then I used digital video recorder until 2010 on mini digital cassette Pal format. What is the file format I should record this tape and which will be the best hard disc you would recommend
not very good advice
I use 3 external hard drives for my AOMEI backups. 1 usb flash drive, 1 TB 2 1/2" usb powered and 1 TB 3 1/2" powered.
It’s ridiculous that the prices of SSDs have skyrocketed again. Probably about 2 years ago, they had finally come down to a reasonable price – I got a Samsung 4TB SSD for $288! (Australian dollars). And as of today, a Samsung 1TB is just over $200!! I can’t go back to using HDDs – it seems crazy to be using older technology.
As I found out to late make sure to test your backed up data is readable and performs as expected.
I do backups. But I plan to also start doing an additional backup on Blu-Ray, once a year. i.e. my most important data like files and photos.
Thanks sir the Content ❤
FWIW, I’ve found WD drives to be very reliable for internal drives (and USB external drives). I’ve had multiple problems with Seagate drives.
Yes brand does somewhat cyclic, but rule of thumb Western Digital is better than Seagate, except when there was Thailand flood and they moved the factory to Malaysia.
My reccomendation now is relying on Black Blaze report.
I knew I would love this video
a harddisk has their firmware in modern flash, which is now very small…15nm , which holds for some 10 yearsif stored at cool temperaturs, – the magnetic recording is also poor and needs a lockinamplifier for restauration and error correction
I use 2 WD 1 TB drives ( 3.5 ) in a dual docking bay I use manual backup method
Which brand?
NOT SEAGATE.
My own data — couple hundred drives
Backblaze data — tens of thousands of drives
NOT SEAGATE.
I installed a couple dozen WD drives (on my own PC, and others’); internal, external, NAS. In all for over 500 000 drive-hours (POHs). Not one failed so far*. OTOH, got 2 Seagates which BOTH failed within three years. Never again.
YMMV.
*) At one time one of them (a 2.5" Elements) started to make a ticking sound, often the preamble of an imminent failure. That was 2 years ago, the ticking stopped, and the drive still works.
From personal experience: External 3.5" "spinning iron" HDDs tend to be *EXTREMELY FRAGILE*. They are particularly vulnerable to being dropped (from only a few inches) or even just knocked over from vertical to flat. 2.5" HDDs are a little better, but not much. I have lost 3 3.5" drives due to this (I have poor coordination due to brain damage from a series of strokes). I generally prefer to keep them in a multiple (3 or 4 or more) drive enclosure, as they tend to be much more stable than single drive enclosures. They’re also a bit less likely to be mishandled (i.e., dropped) than smaller enclosures. Currently, I use 4 12TB HGST HDDs in a TerraMaster NAS box (using a RAID 5 array good for 24TB of storage) for backing up all 3 of my computers via my network. I also have 4 smaller 3.5" HDDs (ranging from 2TB to 8TB in size) in a 4-drive WAVLink enclosure (no RAID, just 4 individual drives) that connects via USB C for extra "miscellaneous" backups and other temporary storage. Both enclosures are fan-cooled and require external 12V 4A power supplies. The TerraMaster cost between $250 – $300 because it is a Linux-based file server, while the WAVLink is a simple USB C (with HDMI video output) "daisy-chainable" unit that cost about $80.
Thanks Leo excellent info on external drives for this senior! Cheers
Just as long as you stay away from any ADATA drives, they are really bad and fail, no support