[ale] External disk recommendation

[dev null zero two]

relevant:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/

Sent from my mobile. Please excuse the brevity, spelling, and punctuation.
On May 19, 2016 5:43 PM, "DJ-Pfulio" <DJPfulio at jdpfu.com> wrote:

> +1.  Seagate lied, lied, lied for almost a year back in 2007 about
> terrible HDD issues.  I avoided them until a few years ago, when my need
> and their pricing tricked me - picked up 2 2TB Seagate HDDs from NewEgg
> during an EggCrusher ... let the pressure of the perceived low-pricing
> push my order BEFORE I'd done enough research.  30 min after my order,
> they'd already shipped and I'd discovered all the complaints on
> Seagate's forums for the drives I'd bought.  1 yr + 1 month later, 1 of
> those drives failed.  Rather than fight for the 1yr warranty to be
> covered (or use my CC to extend it), I bought 2 new HDDs - non-seagate.
>
> There was a study published about HDD reliability 5+ yrs ago. A vaguely
> recall that Seagate was significantly more likely to fail than any other
> major brand.  Hitachi was shockingly less likely to fail than the
> averages.  This was awhile ago, so all those numbers don't really count
> today.  I try to buy Hitachi-branded drives with at least 3-yr warranties.
>
> BTW, from 1985-2005, I always tried to buy Seagate because they had the
> best reputation and were very reliable in my uses.  Still have 6 of
> those pre-2005 Seagate drives spinning just fine here. Those HDDs had 5
> yr warranties.
>
> USB HDD warranties usually suck - 90 days or 1 yr. Never higher.  It is
> a reflection of the engineering and HW used.  They make tens of millions
> of these devices yearly and know about the expected reliability.  Best
> to get a 3yr warranty disk (no consumer-level 5yr warranties are
> available for a reasonable price anymore), and put that into a $9
> enclosure yourself.  If this is a desktop, it doesn't need external
> power. If you ever plan to use it with a laptop, get a powered
> enclosure.  If you don't plan to boot off this USB, then USB2/3 doesn't
> matter.
>
> SAS drives are a completely different thing. Don't know anything about
> those - those disks were always a DC choice.
>
> Hope this helps. That's about all I know related to HDDs and USB.
>
> On 05/19/16 16:06, dev null zero two wrote:
> > that's a horrible price and Seagate isn't quite known for their
> reliability
> >
> >
> http://dealnews.com/Western-Digital-3-TB-USB-3.0-Portable-HDD-for-100-free-shipping/1670903.html
> >
> http://dealnews.com/Western-Digital-2-TB-USB-3.0-Hard-Drive-for-70-free-shipping/1661636.html
> >
> http://dealnews.com/Toshiba-3-TB-External-USB-3.0-Hard-Drive-for-80-w-padding-free-shipping/1660976.html
> >
> >
> > On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 3:57 PM, Leam Hall <leamhall at gmail.com
> > <mailto:leamhall at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     This is a resend. For some reason the mailer said it would wait a
> >     couple days to resend and I told my wife I'd try to order the drive
> >     sooner.
> >
> >
> >     My wife has an old Mac and I'm looking at a ~2 TB or so external
> drive
> >     for her. Looking at the Seagate Expansion 2TB Desktop External Hard
> >     Drive USB 3.0 (STEB2000100)
> >     (
> http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STEB2000100/dp/B00TKFEE9E
> ).
> >
> >     Her computer is USB 2, and older iMac. Is there a better drive in the
> >     $100 range? Speed isn't as important as reliability.
> >
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