External Hard drives: Western Digital or Seagate?

APRIL 2, 2013 | max

[max americana]

Hi. Just wondering if anyone who owns one of these external hard drives (portable or desk) have a preference. Or if they had some bad experiences or better yet, swear by either one of the 2 if they crash easily or last long. We're changing our hard drives and prefer something physical to store for our staff, instead of relying solely on cloud-based storage. (Got rid of Carbonite when those clowns backstabbed Rush and we switched to Mozy)

It's almost 50/50 on people we spoke with (friends, co-workers, business partners etc). Some say Seagate sucks and crash easily while the other group say the same thing about WD. 4 TB is our storage target. Thanks.

PS Seagate sells the 4 TB ext HD on AMZ/best buy for $150 while the WD My Book is $180.

[JaguarXKE]

I recently bought a Seagate Goflex 3TB drive for $119 at Costco. Paid no tax because I got it on our states Tax free day. I bought this drive be cause I can later buy an adaptor that will make it a Thunderbird drive ( I have an iMac). My advice is get the most storage you can for what you’re paying. Both WD and Seagate make decent drives.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I've had both brands and then some. No real difference all else being equal. Buy big.

Then start doing your own offline backups by using Macrium Reflect. It's free and it rocks. Do an image once per week and you'll be protected against virus infections, boot drive crashes and any data loss.

You can even use Macrium to mount an image and randomly retrieve any data in the image. As I said, it rocks!

You can then get rid of Mozy. Too slow. Macrium does an image of your boot drive in about 20 minutes.

[spel_grammer_an_punct_polise]

I had mulitple failures during the warranty period of WD. I went with Seagate and have had not problems in over 15 years. I replace each drive when I start to get sector errors but they all outlast the warranty by several years.

[driftdiver]

Had a seagate until one of their disgruntled employees pushed out bad code. Apparently there is software on the drive which allowed it to be upgraded without your knowledge.

Turned it into a brick and lost all my data.

Pretty bad set of controls at that company to allow this to happen.

[RedMDer]

Support Free Republic

[Errant]

The Goflex is a great drive when portability is important. I've got one I'm shipping out west with a ton of family photos to a family member now.

The WD My Book is better for use as a Network File Server device, IMO, primarily because of the software.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***??? What did you buy it for?***

I got it as a Christmas present.

[PIF]

I think it matters more WHO you buy the drive from than manufacturer. Warranties and such are a good thing. Some vendors will attempt to recover data from faulty drives they sold you for a very small fee or free.

My preference for multi-terrabyte drives:
OWC
http://www.macsales.com/

[oh8eleven]

Have you read the User manual?

[stuartcr]

If you have a need for more storage, just plug it in like you would a thumb drive, then open windows explorer. If not, re-gift it.

[Hardraade]

My only drive that crrashed almost immediately was a WD. But I’ve had several kinds. The stuff in my netgear boxes now is Hitachis.

[The Cajun]

To be taken with a grain of salt.
Retired electronic tech and help friends and relatives with their computers.
Have had to replace 2 Seagate Barracuda drives (both 1 TB) and no WD drives.
I prefer WD drives, have added second drives to several computers and no problems yet.
My external drive is WD, no problems in 3 years.
Not a big sample size, so grain of salt statement.

[Fast Moving Angel]

I had a WD My Book that died after about 5-6 years and just replaced it last month with a Toshiba 500G from Walmart ($59). Love it so far - backed up both my desktop and laptop onto the same drive, easy to use.

[max americana]

“You can even use Macrium to mount an image and randomly retrieve any data in the image. As I said, it rocks!”

Thanks for that. Our IT guy said something about Macrium but we thought he was talking about a nightclub.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I’ll try again. I don’t trust anything that wants to make changes to my computer.

[max americana]

Ok, thanks. Now I’m hungry LOL

[max americana]

Thanks. I;m looking at the Amazon comments and there’s something about Seagate that there is a back-up problem if done auto but manually, it’s the best.

Just by reading the AMZ comments..

[max americana]

That’s an awesome streak. 15 years w/o no hiccups? That’s like my old Maxtors which I still use today. Sucks that Maxtor has been bought out by Seagate.

[max americana]

Just asking, was it the Seagate back Up Plus? and how many TB’s please..

[Ron C.]

I’ve had both, but long term WD has been best, lasting longer, and more importantly to me WD has been quick to replace dying or dead drives at no cost whatsoever in most cases.