Manic
When external hard drives were first getting big, I bought a simpletech 500gb external drive that to this day has never given me a problem. Though I bought it for close to $500.
Not only a few months later all hard drives were around $100 for a TB.
I NEED more space and my girlfriend has offered to buy me a new hard drive with more space on it for christmas but she doesn't know much about drives which is how I know what she's getting me, ha.
My father bought a Western Digital 500gb Ext drive a few months ago and it was working fine until it locked him out of the drive and there's no way back in.
I read on the new simpletech hard drives and they have terrible reviews saying that they're slow or that they just stop working after a few weeks.
I've heard that many hard drives fail fast and it's rare for me to see any that are worth the money.
What is the best hard drive I can find out there that is new today that I can find at best buy or walmart or at an online store, with atleast 1TB of space, won't lock me out, and won't die on me for the next 20 years.
Thanks much
Hey Robert, the Western Digital he had purchased from Best Buy came with a hard drive alone and no CD's for installation [my simpletech didn't come with any discs as well] but it was fine and he took it back to Georgia with him and one day his computer just failed to recognize that the drive was plugged into the usb port. He tried with both of his laptops as well as mine when he came back for a visit and no computers would recognize it. After searching through forums it looks like this has happened to multiple people who've used western digital drives and the only ones who could solve their problem were the ones who said they had the cds that came with their hard drive and it allowed them to 'unlock' it again.
Others said they took theirs to shops to get them fixed and no one could help them, that they were simply locked for good and something inside the hard drive mustve screwed up and locked it on its own by accident.
So I don't trust them.
But I do have a very small seagate hard dr
Answer
have you considered using a Seagate drive?
i have one and they are really great drives it has never given me any issues just format with windows (it will prompt you to) and your good to go
they range from 500GB to 3TB for the external hard drives. the 1TB drive is 124.99 for the portable drive or 114.99 for the desktop one on Seagate's website and they sell their hard drives at best buy, walmart, etc.
Also i have a question for you:
what do you mean the Hard Drive "locked him out"?
do you mean you set the Hard Drive up with some sort of data protection software and forgot the password or some other thing like that?
Anyway hope I helped
have you considered using a Seagate drive?
i have one and they are really great drives it has never given me any issues just format with windows (it will prompt you to) and your good to go
they range from 500GB to 3TB for the external hard drives. the 1TB drive is 124.99 for the portable drive or 114.99 for the desktop one on Seagate's website and they sell their hard drives at best buy, walmart, etc.
Also i have a question for you:
what do you mean the Hard Drive "locked him out"?
do you mean you set the Hard Drive up with some sort of data protection software and forgot the password or some other thing like that?
Anyway hope I helped
Help selecting most reliable desktop internal hard disk brand please?
AnOldGuy
Seems I have poor luck with drives, so reliability is important. Usually I would research this myself, but my disk is failing fast, and I don't know how much time I have left.
Looking for 2 or 3TB drive, SATA 6.0gb (this is the same as SATA/600), 7200rpm, 64 cache.
Any help is very much appreciated. Thank you.
firefox and full boot are now down, using IE in safemode :)
Answer
The first thing you need to understand is that, every hard drive will fail. Even the most reliable of them, which, in my personal experience, has been Western Digital. I have had HDD's of almost all manufacturers commercially available to general public.
In my experience, Western Digital HDD's have lasted longer than others like Seagate (my experience with Seagate is horrible and worth telling: I bought 2 identical Seagate HDD's with a computer, both HDD's were damaged within the 2nd month of having this new computer, so I lost all the data. They were within warranty so I got other 2 and a short while after the warranty had ended, another got damaged, more data loss and only 1 of those 4 HDD's is still working (well not working technically, it's sitting still in a drawer)
When it comes to external HDDs, these can be from a manufacturer like "Lacie" for example, but have an HDD from a different brand inside. When these HDDs stop functioning, the most likely is that the internal HDD inside the box is working perfectly, so just rip off the box (very careful not to damage the connections) remove the HDD and buy a new box or just use it as internal.
Now, as I said in the beginning, no HDD works forever, it's impossible to buy an HDD and guaranteeing it's not going to stop working 1 month later. I believe this even for Western Digital, which, in my personal experience has been the most reliable so far. So, if you want reliability, the ONLY WAY to achieve it is to have redundancy and Backups. You get redundancy buy using a raid 1 array (two hard drives and one is the mirror of the other) + periodic backups in external HDD. This HDD HAS TO BE UNPLUGGED FROM ANY CABLE AS SOON AS THE BACKUP ENDS, in case of some electrical mishap.
So, get yourself two identical HDDs, and establish a raid 1 array.
And get yourself an external HDD to make monthly backups (use some automatic software backup tool like Acronis for example)
And this is just protection against physical damage. But you also have to protect your data from software damage (such as viruses) so you have to get yourself a good antivirus software or no backups or redundancy will save your data. I trust ESET because it was among the best when I first got it and also because it's very light on the system. Kaspersky at the same level (possibly even better) but it's heavy on the system from my experience. If you get a free antivirus application, it's very important to make sure your computer is virus free each time you do your monthly backups to your external drive, or you'll infect and potentially loose all your data. Don't just get an antivirus, get a security suite, with Firewall, and anti-malware/ spyware...
edit:
Now, I'm not telling you not to buy Seagate. Because, with experience, one comes to realize that this is sometimes down to specific models (the same goes for cars, washing machines etc). This was just my personal experience with them and although I won't be buying another Seagate, that doesn't mean this is a a rational decision. It just means my brain has a hard time trusting it, but it's much possible that other folks had had similar experiences with Western Digital for example. You can never infer a general situation from a particular situation.
If you can't have a RAID 1 array, just to the monthly backup, but you have to find a way that it never fails. (i use Google Calendar to remember me each month. And I never put if off. After backing things up. Check if the backup is ok.
Peoklis is right. The only real sollution is redundancy, backups and software protection.
I like Stephen's answer but he's not right when it comes to SSD's reliability. They are almost as vulnerable as mechanical HDD's. It's just that they're vulnerabilities are different.
Your data will never be secure as long as you keep it in a single piece of hardware (even a flash drive, or even a cd). There is always something that can damage it.
Regarding SSD reliability, like Stephen says, they are much better for speed, and for withstanding vibrations and physical abuse such as falling to the floor, and I agree that you should get one, but they have their own vulnerabilities, and equivalent chances of damage. Read below:
"While SSDs appear to be more reliable than HDDs. researchers at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research "are adamant that today's SSDs aren't an order of magnitude more reliable than hard drives".[70] SSD failures are often catastrophic, with total data loss. While HDDs can fail in this manner as well, they often give warning that they are failing, allowing much or all of their data to be recovered.[71] Additionally, the robustness of an SSD varies greatly amongst models."
This message will self destruct in 5 seconds. Good luck Jim!
The first thing you need to understand is that, every hard drive will fail. Even the most reliable of them, which, in my personal experience, has been Western Digital. I have had HDD's of almost all manufacturers commercially available to general public.
In my experience, Western Digital HDD's have lasted longer than others like Seagate (my experience with Seagate is horrible and worth telling: I bought 2 identical Seagate HDD's with a computer, both HDD's were damaged within the 2nd month of having this new computer, so I lost all the data. They were within warranty so I got other 2 and a short while after the warranty had ended, another got damaged, more data loss and only 1 of those 4 HDD's is still working (well not working technically, it's sitting still in a drawer)
When it comes to external HDDs, these can be from a manufacturer like "Lacie" for example, but have an HDD from a different brand inside. When these HDDs stop functioning, the most likely is that the internal HDD inside the box is working perfectly, so just rip off the box (very careful not to damage the connections) remove the HDD and buy a new box or just use it as internal.
Now, as I said in the beginning, no HDD works forever, it's impossible to buy an HDD and guaranteeing it's not going to stop working 1 month later. I believe this even for Western Digital, which, in my personal experience has been the most reliable so far. So, if you want reliability, the ONLY WAY to achieve it is to have redundancy and Backups. You get redundancy buy using a raid 1 array (two hard drives and one is the mirror of the other) + periodic backups in external HDD. This HDD HAS TO BE UNPLUGGED FROM ANY CABLE AS SOON AS THE BACKUP ENDS, in case of some electrical mishap.
So, get yourself two identical HDDs, and establish a raid 1 array.
And get yourself an external HDD to make monthly backups (use some automatic software backup tool like Acronis for example)
And this is just protection against physical damage. But you also have to protect your data from software damage (such as viruses) so you have to get yourself a good antivirus software or no backups or redundancy will save your data. I trust ESET because it was among the best when I first got it and also because it's very light on the system. Kaspersky at the same level (possibly even better) but it's heavy on the system from my experience. If you get a free antivirus application, it's very important to make sure your computer is virus free each time you do your monthly backups to your external drive, or you'll infect and potentially loose all your data. Don't just get an antivirus, get a security suite, with Firewall, and anti-malware/ spyware...
edit:
Now, I'm not telling you not to buy Seagate. Because, with experience, one comes to realize that this is sometimes down to specific models (the same goes for cars, washing machines etc). This was just my personal experience with them and although I won't be buying another Seagate, that doesn't mean this is a a rational decision. It just means my brain has a hard time trusting it, but it's much possible that other folks had had similar experiences with Western Digital for example. You can never infer a general situation from a particular situation.
If you can't have a RAID 1 array, just to the monthly backup, but you have to find a way that it never fails. (i use Google Calendar to remember me each month. And I never put if off. After backing things up. Check if the backup is ok.
Peoklis is right. The only real sollution is redundancy, backups and software protection.
I like Stephen's answer but he's not right when it comes to SSD's reliability. They are almost as vulnerable as mechanical HDD's. It's just that they're vulnerabilities are different.
Your data will never be secure as long as you keep it in a single piece of hardware (even a flash drive, or even a cd). There is always something that can damage it.
Regarding SSD reliability, like Stephen says, they are much better for speed, and for withstanding vibrations and physical abuse such as falling to the floor, and I agree that you should get one, but they have their own vulnerabilities, and equivalent chances of damage. Read below:
"While SSDs appear to be more reliable than HDDs. researchers at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research "are adamant that today's SSDs aren't an order of magnitude more reliable than hard drives".[70] SSD failures are often catastrophic, with total data loss. While HDDs can fail in this manner as well, they often give warning that they are failing, allowing much or all of their data to be recovered.[71] Additionally, the robustness of an SSD varies greatly amongst models."
This message will self destruct in 5 seconds. Good luck Jim!
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