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Most Reliable External HD

M

mattluiz

Junior Member
Hey everyone,
I'm sure this question has been asked a hundred times. But I'm looking for an external drive ~$100, ~320 GB, that's bus powered so I can take it with me wherever I go. I basically need it just to consolidate my (very large) music collection which is spread across 3 different drives at the moment so I can have it all with me. Which company right now is making the best sub-$100 drives and most reliable? Best companies to buy from right now? Difference between reliability when it comes to 500 GB, 320 GB etc.? Recommendations would be most helpful. ^_^

Thanks!
 
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I'm going to come into these threads and say the same thing over and over again.

Anecdotal evidence means nothing. I doubt anyone here has done a cross sectional study on these drives and their reliability.

Plan for the worst and hope for the best. What I mean is get one with internal RAID-1 or get WHS/Drobo/Unraid.


But in the under $100 category I would get one cheap 500GB internal and put one copy of your data on it. ($55)

Then I would get the external of your choice to mirror that data ($55 - 320GB). I know its $10 more but it's safer.
 
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Hard drive reliability surveys are largely meaningless (except for really exceptional cases like the Deathstar, or if you plan to purchase thousands of drives for a datacenter). The best way to preserve data is not RAID or a reliable HD, but simply data duplication - having copies of your data on at least 2 devices, in DIFFERENT locations. Having an external and mirroring your data is a start, but I prefer an offsite solution - or if that is too expensive, something like mozy, backblaze, rsync, etc etc. For small amounts of data, even something like Google Docs or Skydrive is better than nothing; I'm currently mirroring my SVN repository onto skydrive (the 25GB really is convenient).
 
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So in terms of brand, Seagate, Western Digital, LaCie, etc. all have similar failure rates? One brand isn't necessarily better than the other?

I certainly get having a backup is the most important and plan on having it but the main point for my purchase is to have my music with me without having to plug the drive into an outlet.
 
i've got 7 external 2TB seagate freeagent - turn off the auto-sleep feature and ditch their crappy cable and they are all solid for d2d2d purpose.
 
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