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External Hard Drive - Seagate or WD

lupi

lupi

Lifer
It looks like simply doing an upgrade install from my previous version of vista to ultimate didn't work so well as over the last couple weeks I've started to get blue screen crashes and sfc reports corrupted system files that it's unable to repair. so I'm just going to do a format and fresh install.

If I went through an online vendor I could probably get a little more size for the same price, but I'm limiting myself to what I can go out and pickup so I can do the work this weekend. Right now the I'm looking at the 500gb externals from either WD or seagate, both of which are currently on sale for $90.

It's hard going just by online reviews as so many other users don't post their experiences, but it seems the WD versions has a noticeable failure rate while the SG verion seems to run about average. I'll pretty much just be using this for backup storage of pics/music normally, and other files like mail database and savegame data while formatting my main drive. As such it won't be turned on but a couple times a year.

Should I just go for the SG, or does the WD perform much better than it seems, or any other ideas?

 
Eenie meenie minie moe...

😀

Just pick the drive with the better warranty. And don't leave your necessary data in just one place - as soon as you have your Ultimate set back up go ahead and copy your stuff back onto that system. That way if the new storage drive takes a crap you don't lose anything.
 
I like WD a whole lot more than I like seagate at the moment. I had a seagate drive go bad in under 1 month, I have had multiple WD drives for years. Thing is, you can never tell. That's the real problem today, for me and for a lot of people...deciding on the HDD for their backup. Which one won't crap out?
 
Bottom line is that they will ALL crap out. The big question is when.
While all Seagate externals now have 5yr warranty, that doesn't help you if your unit crashes. So, as was said, you need more than 1 backup plan.

Seagate seems to be having some QC issues if you ask me, going by what I have read around the net.

I guess that means, get 1 of each and see which fails first, and report back to us! 😉
 
Ive used both and have not had a problems. I think you can't go wrong with either drive. But if I had to pick I would lean toward WD just because of personal preference.
 
Originally posted by: Elixer
Bottom line is that they will ALL crap out. The big question is when.
While all Seagate externals now have 5yr warranty, that doesn't help you if your unit crashes. So, as was said, you need more than 1 backup plan.

Seagate seems to be having some QC issues if you ask me, going by what I have read around the net.

I guess that means, get 1 of each and see which fails first, and report back to us! 😉
Click to expand...

That's the thing, there's more reports of bad seagate drives (especially in the 750GB+ range) than WD.
 
I picked up 2 Maxtor One Touch 4 500Gb externals, one is working fine when I use it, the other lost the drive completely, i.e. I plugged it in and it didn't see anything. I had to go into My Computer->Manage->Disk Management and reformat the damn thing. I got it at staples, I just formatted it and went from there. Issue was I had my images on it for one of my desktops (other 500 is for other desktop) so if my system had crashed I'd have been hosed on a restore point. After reformatting it the drive has been running ok when needed. Problem is I have 10Gb free space and need to do another image. I think I'll be out of space so I want to get a 1Tb drive so I can keep more than 3 images backed up at any one time. The install is XP SP3 + Vista 64 Ultimate on RAID 0 config and is my DAW system, hence chewing up so much space (all those samples/instruments!).

So, should I look at the Western Digital My Book 1TB or something else that's a) reliable, b) doesn't require software installed to EACH PC in order to use it with them, c) anything else I may have forgot to think about. Trying to stay well under the $200 range also.

Thanks!

Mike
 
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