Most reliable external hard disk

[plasmoid]

Hi all,
So I am in the market for a 2TB external hard drive. At present I have a WD 1TB drive which I have been using for the past 4-5 years which is almost full. When checking reviews on Amazon, I am seeing a large failure rate in hard disks across brands. Also most of them are sold by Appario Retail Pvt Ltd and I have read really bad reviews associated with this seller(selling refurbished products). So I have decided to pay a bit more and buy offline. Would appreciate some valuable advice on which brand is the most reliable these days. Thanks in advance.

 

[Srinivasa Rao]

Seagate Backup Plus Slim. I have both 2tb as well as 5tb, working with no problems (2tb more than 3 years old and 5tb 1 year old).

 

[Pardeep Bansal]

I am using Seagate external Hard drive quite reliable... working well with Windows but some compatibly issues with mac

 

[plasmoid]

I am using Seagate external Hard drive quite reliable... working well with Windows but some compatibly issues with mac

How long have you had it? Also can you elaborate on the Mac compatibility issues?

 

[Haribabu]

Seagate slim 1 TB has been running excellent from 2013,

 

[plasmoid]

Seagate slim 1 TB has been running excellent from 2013,

Then I guess it's safe to assume the new ones are problematic

 

[firearm12]

Hi all,
So I am in the market for a 2TB external hard drive. At present I have a WD 1TB drive which I have been using for the past 4-5 years which is almost full. When checking reviews on Amazon, I am seeing a large failure rate in hard disks across brands. Also most of them are sold by Appario Retail Pvt Ltd and I have read really bad reviews associated with this seller(selling refurbished products). So I have decided to pay a bit more and buy offline. Would appreciate some valuable advice on which brand is the most reliable these days. Thanks in advance.

I have used more than 6 external hard disks including both seagate and wd. 2 of the seagates have failed, my view, dont rely on harddisks for important data, they can fail anytime and leave you helpless. Always backup your data on cloud or use some raid based nas. As far as brands go, i will go for wd.

 

[skroderider]

I rely on Seagate, they have had a very low failure rate for me. I still have a 3.5 Seagate FreeAgent external HDD bought in 2009, running fine. My home made NAS has Seagate 1 TB internal drives, running fine since 2012.

For general backups I use a Seagate 4TB bought from Amazon. No problems so far.

My experience with WD has not been good. They are cheaper than Seagate but have a higher failure rate - then again, this is my experience.

But as firearm12 correctly said, depending on a hard disk for important data is not recommended unless you have multiple copies of them.

 

[turntablist]

I have used WD hard drives and they have failed twice. Experience with Seagate has been good since the past 2 years. I would recommend Seagate over WD

 

[dipdawiz]

So I am in the market for a 2TB external hard drive. At present I have a WD 1TB drive which I have been using for the past 4-5 years which is almost full. When checking reviews on Amazon, I am seeing a large failure rate in hard disks across brands.

If your usage is to store/backup data and seldom access them, only at the time of restoration, then any external HDD is fine. I agree with most that Seagate is less prone to failure than WD, but I have seen Seagate to fail (my own 400gb seagate USB 2.0 external hdd failed twice, formatting helped but could not restore data) when connected to different desktop/laptop frequently and copy data or watched movies.

All portable external HDD are made to backup data only and not for heavy use. To reduce cost, reliability of these HDD took a hit, so they fail easily. If you are planning HDD for watching movies or frequent heavy data transfer (say read and write of huge number of Images/Videos daily) or you frequently move around you HDD within different systems, better get NAS (even a basic one would be 100 times more reliable than costliest portable HDD).

Also most of them are sold by Appario Retail Pvt Ltd and I have read really bad reviews associated with this seller(selling refurbished products).

And from seller reliability point of view, so far all the high end devices I bought from Appario Retail Pvt Ltd were new, genuine and got delivered in original sealed pack; no issues so far. For example in last 6 months I bought Samsung TV, JBL soundbar, Samsung Galaxy S series mobile, different sets of SD and micro SD cards, rechargeable batteries from them; broadening the timeline for a year, I also bought Samsung monitor, MI power bank, WD MyCloud 3TB NAS, Wifi AC router from them and all is well. They are equivalent to Cloudtail.

 

[Naturelover]

Almost every Seagate drive I have owned failed. None of the WDs I have owned have failed. Go figure.

 

[MaSh]

Have been using Seagate for over 15 years now. All self-powered. Touch wood no issues till now.

MaSh

 

[Pardeep Bansal]

How long have you had it? Also can you elaborate on the Mac compatibility issues?

I am using it for 4 years working perfectly with Windows PC's but now does not pair with my MacBook air from a year or so..it shows connected to mac but doesn't show any content

 

[SanjayM]

I have seagate 2TB working from last one year without any problems

 

[plasmoid]

Thanks for all your suggestions...I finally bought a Seagate 2TB hard drive from Chroma two weeks back. Doing good so far(touch wood)

 

[efernand1]

As long as you handle with care and regularly scan the HDDs,,,,there should not be any challenges...make sure you register the HDD online so that you have warranty in place.