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External Hard Drive? (Mac)

Moe_Syzlak

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Looks like I need a new external hard drive. I've liked HD and Seagate in the past, but figured this would be a good place to ask for recommendations.
 

Vultural

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I have used and still use WD, as well as Seagate.
Like 'em until they die.
I have been hard on mine, using for torrenting and emuling.
Now I simply use them for storage and keep them unplugged most of the time.
 

Moe_Syzlak

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I use mine for my media library. I have a massive amount of music. It's  almost a year of continuous play. I'll probably go WD again if no one has any other suggestions.
 

TV's Frink

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I've been using WD for backup (duplicate and triplicate) for years now without trouble...except for the one I dropped.
 

ssj

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I'm in the market for a second backup drive. was going to buy a seagate, because amazon is littered with seagate options, but then I came across these numbers:

FY-2016-Failure-Rates-by-MFG.jpg


FY-2016-Drive-Failure-Rates.jpg


hadn't heard of HGST, but that's apparently a partnership between hitachi and western digital. now I'm considering forking over a few extra shekels for HGST.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-benchmark-stats-2016/
 

Vultural

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I checked the link.
Is it my inept math, or do the larger drives have a better fail rate?
8 TB is overkill for me.
Even 1 TB, I never fill.
My problem is them overheating when I run 'em hard.
 

hbenthow

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It's often better to buy a good internal SATA drive and place it in a good external USB enclosure than to buy a ready-made external drive (not only quality-wise, but sometimes even in terms of price as well). Also, keep in mind that the hard drive failure rates that ssj posted are all for internal SATA drives.

It's also a good idea to back up everything.

Currently, I have two internal SATA drives inside my computer itself. One is the main C drive (a 1 TB WD Black), and another is a 2 TB Seagate Barracuda that I designated drive F. I use drive F to store my media files, documents, and virtually everything else important.

I have a 1 TB WD SATA drive designed drive R in an external USB 3.0 enclosure, which I use to store system image backups of my C drive that I make using the free version of Macrium Reflect.

I also have an external USB 3.0 drive containing a 2 TB Seagate Barracuda (designated drive Z), which I use to back up everything on drive F (using FreeFileSync).

This way, if my system drive fails, I have system image backups of it on drive R, which I can use to turn any replacement drive into a clone of my old one, operating system and all. If drive F fails, I have everything on it backed up on drive Z (or at least everything from before I last ran FreeFileSync).
 
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