Reliable External Drive Recommendations?

[Mighty Motif Max]

Hello everyone,

 

I wanted to chat about external drives. I've been a Western Digital/WD user for a good five years or so, after moving on from some failed Seagate drives. I will never touch a WD again now that I've had two fail within 3 months of purchase and am looking at very high-priced data recovery options (it's real fun when your drive that was to back up the external fails and while you're waiting on a warranty claim your *external itself* fails). They used to be very good...I know a number of people in the IT world including some who run corporate server repair facilities. WD was their recommendation five years ago. Never again.

 

I need to move away from that brand, but I'm not impressed with some of the other options I'm seeing. I'm also getting tired of this "warranty coverage means you get a replacement, but we sure as heck ain't covering any kind of data recovery" line of BS in the warranties. Things wouldn't fail like mine did (it literally just sat on a desk and it was disconnected 50% of the time). No drops, no liquid, etc etc etc. It just randomly quit working. Being told I need to pay upwards of $1000 (more like $2700) for recovery on a *two month old* $89 external drive is not something I can afford as a college student.

 

What are you all using, and have had good luck with for reliability? Anyone have a warranty that is an actual warranty and not just a "Hey man, here's a new one of the thing that broke" type of thing? I don't need SSD tech either as I have a small SSD for samples and this is more for audio files/projects, video and photo libraries, documents, etc (in fact, my understanding is that those have their own set of issues with data recovery and limited read/write cycles).

 

Thanks,

 

Max

[KuruPrionz]

A redundant system is a reliable system.

2 is 1 and 1 is none.

 

The Glyph drives (Sweetwater sells them just for one) have a good reputation. As you've noted, so did WD.

I have a Glyph for backup, I transfer files from a LaCie portable (has Thunderbolt 2 so it's a fast recording drive).

I have 2 more drives for backup, they stay in a cupboard most of the time. They are slow and pretty full so it's time to get something else and transfer them over.

 

I've been known to burn a data DVD, pretty affordable if you do the thrift store tour. Not real fast or big but will usually hold everything from a single song project. I've also got some copies on SD drives.

 

Ideally, I want 3 backup drives, all HDD. One of these days. Nothing is ever in just one place and I will scramble if something dies to make sure I have more than one backup.

Stuff fails, it sucks but it's that simple.

 

I don't know of any drive maker that offers a warranty for recovering data off of a dead drive. I'll keep an eye on this thread in case somebody does know.

[Mighty Motif Max]

A redundant system is a reliable system.

2 is 1 and 1 is none.

 

...

Ideally, I want 3 backup drives, all HDD. One of these days. Nothing is ever in just one place and I will scramble if something dies to make sure I have more than one backup.

Stuff fails, it sucks but it's that simple.

 

Some years ago I set my family up with a system where there's a backup drive, a backup of that backup, then an external, and a backup of the external. That was supposed to be plenty per the IT people I knew. For me though this year I didn't have unlimited money and like I said the drive I was going to use to back up my external failed immediately and I was waiting on the replacement. It cost me $350 for the drives I did have and I couldn't really afford to buy a fourth $120 drive as I lost all my gig income thanks to the pandemic and am now paying college tuition and board etc. Which is of course when this kind of crap would happen. It's like WD's quality control has taken a nosedive in the last year and a half or so.

 

The Glyph drives (Sweetwater sells them just for one) have a good reputation. As you've noted, so did WD.

I have a Glyph for backup, I transfer files from a LaCie portable (has Thunderbolt 2 so it's a fast recording drive).

I have 2 more drives for backup, they stay in a cupboard most of the time. They are slow and pretty full so it's time to get something else and transfer them over.

 

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll take a look at those.

[MoodyBluesKeys]

My business is computer and network services. Never really liked W-D drives. I've had decent results from Seagate, Toshiba, and especially Hitachi (although they are now owned by W-D).

For what you describe, I'd try one of the high grade versions of SSD. I've replaced HD in all of my home and shop systems (2 Macs, a PC notebook, and 9 workstations) with Crucial's higher end line, the MX series (the BX series is a bit cheaper). The MX had the best long-term use specifications of all that I tested.

 

Backup drives for my systems: The Mac notebooks use external USB HD, The Pro has a 5TB desktop Seagate for Acronis, and a USB case with a Hitachi 1TB HD inside for SuperDuper; and the Air has a housing with a Seagate. I carry a Toshiba 1TB USB in the vehicle for use on job sites. The PC notebook is a 17" HP Zbook, which has three drives, 128GB NVMI SSD for OS, 1 TB Crucial SSD for data, and 1 TB Seagate HD for internal backup. The smallest (physical) desktop has a USB 500GB Seagate, the larger workstations have internal second HD for faster image backup, generally 1TB HGST (Hitachi), with the primary desktop which has almost 700GB of files on it having a 1TB Crucial MX500 SSD.

 

AND, any important data is also stored in two different clouds: Microsoft OneDrive (where I have 30GB for life back in the day when one could get that much without monthly payments) and in iCloud Files, where I pay Apple the magnificent sum of $0.99 (no added tax) monthly for 50 GB. One of my best investments, could get a whole TB from them, but don't need that much. My accounting records are kept there as well as locally, even if there was a total destruction of home and office, as long as I could obtain a PC and a copy of the older accounting software, I could recover the data. If one needs even more than a TB of storage, Major Cloud data storage providers have packages for both home and critical business versions, and storage available is virtually unlimited if one has the budget. Amazon in particular can provide huge amounts of storage, cost based somewhat on how frequently access is needed.

 

USUALLY, when an SSD fails, it fails to write, but can still be read. This is not absolutely guaranteed, but makes it ideal for backups that absolutely must be readable.

 

For the very best reliability, I have a NAS (network attached storage) unit which has 4 HD in a RAID-5 configuration (three drives striped with data, the fourth used for instant fail-over spare). Anything can fail, but a RAID array is typically used in corporate servers where highest reliable performance is needed with a single server (there are also server clusters, where the whole server system fails over to another machine, but that is overkill for your purpose, not to mention very expensive). I do have one client who puts their data on a NAS, with another NAS (also with RAID) being used to back up that one.

 

I do automatic data file backup from the two primary computers to the NAS on a real-time basis. I also make a monthly data backup to a 128GB flash drive, which is then removed and stored (just in case anyone ever manages to get to my systems with ransomware). I also setup clients with various degrees of redundancy and uptime based on their need and how much they are willing to spend to meet the need.

 

Glyph and LaCie both have good reputations, but they are really found mostly in the Mac sphere as opposed to the Windows sphere.

 

I've only had to use a data recovery service once, a number of years ago (in the Windows 95 time frame) for one client, a medical doctor, who had a drive failure and ALL his family photos made on their numerous vacations to Europe, South America, Middle East, Asia, and various islands were stored ONLY on that one computer. They recovered the data without having to go the clean room route, so the cost was about $500 for the restore, which was sent back on numerous CDs. The pictures were priceless to the family.

[Mighty Motif Max]

Updating this thread to say that I've gone with Glyph. Got two of their Blackbox Pro 2TB Rugged drives. Happy with them so far, going on three months. They have a nice warranty setup, including two years of free level-1 data recovery, three years repair/replace, and a one-year advance replacement process where they'll send you a replacement before they receive the unit if it goes bad within a year, so you don't have to wait weeks with downtime.

[KuruPrionz]

Thanks for the followup, Mighty Max!

[Dr Mike Metlay]

Yes, thanks a lot! Good to know about this stuff in the medium to long term...