Getting a new ext hdd, need opinions

[nmwido]

Hey guys! I'm about to update my OS to Windows 10, and I really want to do it clean so I'm investing on an external hard drive to backup over 1tb of files, mostly media.

I believe 2TB would be the sweet spot for me, and after hours of research and looking into almost every article I can click, I've narrowed my choices down to these two:
Samsung M3 Slimline 2TB
and
Western Digital My Passport Ultra 2TB

The links are just for reference, I'm not actually from the US.

The major pros of the Samsung for me is it costs around $25 less in my country than the WD of the same size and I think it's faster(?) feel free to correct me on that regard.

The WD on the other hand has a higher sales record and history in hard drives, so more people can vouch for their reliability and performance. Also, it comes with more color variations, but that's a small thing. I also read it has more and arguably better bundled software. I guess I just want to know if all these is worth the extra $25.

If there's anything I missed or I misinterpreted, please have at me. If you guys know of a better drive/model I should look into, I'm open to anything.

 

[redzo]

Check the price/GB, warranty and brand! If you don't, then you'll end up paying additional $$ for nothing.
No one cares about mechanical external hdd's anymore. It's a chaotic over saturated market based on: trick the customer to pay more for false/fake fantasies. We're gonna trick them with our fancy box printing and false expectations.

I would probably get the cheapest price / $ from a well known(straight to the point branded) mechanical hdd manufacturer.

PS: I hate those 3.5inch "portable" hdd's. Carrying an additional power brick for a portable mechanical hdd nowadays is the most stupid thing ever.

EDIT: Just the grab the cheapest local market 2.5 inch usb 3.0 with the best warranty ! Portable mechanical s are DVD drives!

 

[therealnickdanger]

Check the price/GB, warranty and brand!

If it's mostly for a one-time or occasional backup, just get the cheapest drive that will meet your needs. Don't spend more than you have to. If you don't plan on carrying it around with you, just get a larger 3.5" model.

CAUTION: Do not use them in the vertical position on the included stand. If it falls over while operating, you may damage the drive and lose your data. Just don't do it under any circumstances.

 

[AlienTech]

I think the WDC drive has a built in USB port and the samsung is a regular laptop drive so I would go for the samsung as if something happens I can take the drive out and connect it to a SATA port to get my data off it. You can check the length of the case and if they use a separate USB bridge board it would be an inch longer than a regular laptop hard drive. The ones thats built in would be only as long as the hard drive itself.

 

[nmwido]

Thanks for all the replies guys! I'll be carrying it with me whenever I go out, but for now its primary purpose is to back up before updating.

Side question: Is there any modern or more polished way to 'optimize SSD' space? Last time I did this was back in January 2013 when messing with the registry had alot to do with the Users folder migration to a hard drive. And well... let's just say, since then, it was more trouble than it was worth with all the mess it made to my system.

 

[AlienTech]

Just use hard and soft links with junction type commands and move entire directories to the hard drive. That way you dont need to make any changes. Any folder that uses up a large amount of space can be moved to the hard drive and a junction placed in the original location. There are programs that add hooks to make this invisible to the user.. Wndows itself uses these links hence why you can not file copy the OS drive and why changes break things so easily. People have now created utilities so your own stuff never cause problems. Like renaming a junction or moving it would break things, but the program will intercept such things and do a safe move to the original files rather than the links which are artificial.. Spend some time googling the info.. A more than basic understanding will help you manage your data far more efficiently.. You can even get by with a 32GB SSD after a few tweaks and without all the problems with trying to move things around without using links. Even split stuff up so half is on the SSD and the rest on the hard drive etc..

 

[Charlie98]

PS: I hate those 3.5inch "portable" hdd's. Carrying an additional power brick for a portable mechanical hdd nowadays is the most stupid thing ever.

EDIT: Just the grab the cheapest local market 2.5 inch usb 3.0 with the best warranty ! Portable mechanical s are DVD drives!

I think, technically speaking, the 3.5" drives are 'external' drives, the 2.5" USB-powered ones are 'portable' (or 'ultra' portable... whatever that means.) I mistakenly bought a Seagate 'external' drive and learned very quickly to pay attention to what I was buying.

 

[larryccf]

the samsung is using a notebook HD that they mfgr with seagate (they combined their hd mfgring capacity because of the shrinking HD market

seagate sells it as the seagate backup slim plus, 2 TB variant is retail $99 and i've caught them at $79 shipped, here in the USA, on Tiger Direct - on my 4th one ( i use them for backup video file storage), have had no issues with any of them

 

[tweakboy]

Dont buy Seagate or Maxtor their the same company,,, Maxtor bought them, and now seagate drives suck

 

[nmwido]

Alright, I went with the Samsung Slimline M3 2TB. Thanks to everyone who gave their insight!

This is actually the first ext HDD I will own that's actually mine, so stupid question here but, what happens if I format/reformat the drive? Do I lose the stock software and folders/manuals that came with it?

 

[larryccf]

yeah but the stock software or at least the samsung migration software is crap - and currently isn't updated to work with win 10 yet

if you want to keep it, copy to another drive then copy back after the format