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.

[max americana]

Thanks. We’re still in a quandary on returning bad HD’S when there are private info on the drives, regardless of the warranty but warranties help of course.

[spel_grammer_an_punct_polise]

Maxtors gave me touble, too.

[rktman]

It’s an older model. Probably 5 years old and holds (I think) about 250g. More than enough for my needs. I do know the newer ones hold a ton of info.

[tomkat]

100gig?

You forgot a zero > 1 TB = 1,000 GB

surprise !

[JaguarXKE]

My Goflex is the desktop version, not the portable. I use it as a media server ( my iTunes music and Movies are all stored there). I want to buy the super-fast Thunderbold adaptor to make it a TB drive, but the adaptor costs $80 more than I paid for the drive.

[JoeProBono]

Quite content with my Seagate - Backup Plus 3 TB 3.5" External Hard Drive

[carjic]

Ping

[Carriage Hill]

I bought 4 2Tb WD “My Book” external drives at $29ea, at Circuit City, when they were closing; they listed at $179ea. Also bought 20 32Gb Cruzer Flashdrives at $5ea, during the bankruptcy.

I also have an old 500Gb Seagate which runs like a charm, too,
left-over from my closed Family Farm business.

[Revolting cat!]

Both good. Both made by the same slaves in China, supported over the phone by the same “Chuck” and “Nancy” in Bangalore.

[Carriage Hill]

Plug it in, open Windows Explorer and see if it finds it, and use it for back-up and storage. Leave it plugged-in as an extra drive.

Here’s their Support Page for softare and manuals etc:

http://support.wdc.com/?wdc_lang=en

My Passport:

http://support.wdc.com/product/install.asp?groupid=222&lang=en

[tomkat]

  truth !

[Carriage Hill]

More on My Passport:

http://support.wdc.com/product/install.asp?level1=2&lang=en

[usconservative]

I’ve never had a problem with Seagate drives, I stick with the Barracuda line.

I wouldn’t take a WD drive if you gave it to me.

I have a 20TB storage array at home, all Seagate drives. Been running non stop over 2 years now.

[Bikkuri]

I have specifically used both WD and Seagate for a couple of ecades... and out of all of the HDs I have had (hundreds), as far as I can remember, I’ve only lost 1 seagate (and that was about a year ago). Can’t recall ever losing a WD..

(All of these were internals... the externals sold here are either IOData, Buffalo, or Logitec...)

[max americana]

That’s the one we’ve been really’ thinking of buying because it’s cheaper than WD, but 4 TB. 3 TB we can fill in a week :)

[lwd]

I'm going to echo the folks who say Western Digital.

I have used both brands over the years and think the WD units are built better. JMO...

I did once drop a 1.5TB seagate drive (filled with work data) in the asphalt parking lot. I thought for sure it was toast. I shook it and could hear parts inside rattling around. But low and behold, I plugged it up and it still worked.

[discostu]

I just had a control board on a WD fry out. I’ve got other WDs I’ve used for years, and heavy use too, that’s where I keep my music at work.

[lwd]

You may want to consider a netgear readynas since it sounds like you office will be sharing space.

[Monitor]

Whatever you do, stay far far away from the IBM Deskstar 75GXP.

#Deathstar