external drive sizes

[MacInWin]

LaCie used to be good. Now, not so good. I avoid them. Some folks like WD but others will tell you they are rubbish. It's all in the personal experience of using the drive. IF you get a good one, you love it. If you get a lemon, you hate it.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

do you have a favourite external drive that you use other than WD?

I have a lot of recent experience with hard drives because this is a topic that comes up constantly in my (very large) user group. So I try to keep on top of this ever-changing area. There are a number of pitfalls recently in choosing a hard drive.

As far as *EXTERNAL* (not internal) rotating disk hard drives go, I recommend staying away from WD, Seagate and LaCie brands in general like the plague. The quality of their cases and supporting electronics is terrible and they have an abysmal failure rate.

I have three favorite brands/models of external hard drive, each for a different reason.

If you want the best *rotating disk* *external* hard drive you can buy:
Glyph Studio Drive

https://www.glyphtech.com/product/studio

They have huge power supplies, built-in fans for sure cooling, and a great warranty that includes data retrieval.

If you want something still excellent, but not quite as supremely well made and expensive:
Oyen Digital Novus Rugged Desktop Hard Drive

Novus External USB-C (3.1,Gen2) Rugged Desktop Hard Drive

Check out the deal on Novus External USB-C (3.1,Gen2) Rugged Desktop Hard Drive at Oyen Digital

oyendigital.com

If you want something that is good, and very reasonably priced:
Other World Computing Mercury Elite Pro

OWC Mercury Elite Pro

The Mercury Elite Pro is up to just about any data-storage task with its rugged, solid aluminum enclosure and high performance 3.5-inch 7200RPM hard drive.

eshop.macsales.com

All of the above companies make other models of external hard drive with different configurations, I don't necessarily recommend those. The models above seem to me to be the best deal from each company. And you may be able to find the best price for some of the above models on Amazon or B&H.

My recommendations for external SSD would be somewhat different. If you are going to be using your external hard drive as a clone backup, I very highly recommend using an SSD instead of a RDHD.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I just realized that you are in Canada, Lori. The above is for folks in the U.S. I have no idea what is and is not available in Canada, what can be shipped to Canada, pricing for Canadians, etc. Sorry.

 

[IWT]

I just realized that you are in Canada, Lori. The above is for folks in the U.S. I have no idea what is and is not available in Canada, what can be shipped to Canada, pricing for Canadians, etc. Sorry.

I can confirm that there is an agent in the UK that supplies Glyph Studio Drives and other Glyph products to us here. From order to getting the Drive is about 2-3 days.

OWC also has a UK centre.

From that, I would hope and indeed assume that a similar arrangement is available in Canada.

Sorry, I can't speak for the other product mentioned.

Ian

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I can confirm that there is an agent in the UK that supplies Glyph Studio Drives ...

Before you purchase a product that is made in another country, it's very important that you check and see what the warranty terms are in your country. It may not be worth the cost of shipping a failed hard drive back to the U.S. for repair, for example, if it fails.

 

[IWT]

Totally agree, Randy. One must be careful.

However, as far as OWC and Glyph products are concerned, they are stocked here in the UK because we have completely different power sockets from the US and all our electrics are at 50 Hz instead of 60 Hz. So there isn't a shipping issue.

To the best of my recollection, my Glyph Studio HD and my OWC Thunderbolt 3 powered Hub came with the same guarantees.

Nevertheless, your wise comments are worth noting.

Ian

 

[lori5060]

wow so many suggestions??. thankyou all so much... i learn more and more from members like you!

since I am in Canada many of the brands mentioned not available to me.
tho Randy mention to stay away from WD, seagate and LaCie and he may have more knowledge or experience these drives but so far and luckily, I personally have not had issues with my WD ext drives.

have only had One issue with wd drive became corrupted. I contacted WD and they replaced it at no charge. any other issues i have had with my external drives is of my own doing!
ive just got to be more careful with copying huge files and not waiting long enough for them to process!
tho in future when going to replace drives... will look into 7200rpm.

 

[krs]

I was following this thread because I'm in the market for a few additional external "spinner" hard drives for backup and for storage of files I rarely need.

To start with, today there are actually only three "spinner" hard drive manufacturers:
Seagate
Toshiba
Western Digital

All the others that ever existed were eventually bought out by one of those or ceased manufacturing.
These are manufacturers of the raw hard drive (or internal drive)

All of the external drives by other than those three manufacturers have one of these, Seagate, Toshiba or WD drive, inside the enclosure.
These other manufacturers of external drives often don't tell you which internal drive they use an it's also common that they change the manufacturer of the internal drive depending where they get the best deal.
Reliability of all three is roughly the same although every once in a while one of them ends up with a specific problem drive - one can usually find which one by doing a search on the net. Reliability also is pretty much the same between 5400 and 7200 drives.
This btw applies to consumer drives - enterprise drives are a different kettle of fish, both in reliability and price.

Years ago, I used to buy 3.5 inch internal drives and a separate enclosure and put the two together to make my own external drive.
With the Firewire interface that made some sense, but today most drives have a USB 3.0 interface and a pre-packaged external is often cheaper than the basic internal drive that is in the package. Because of that, people buy 2.5-inch externals, open the enclosure and use the drive as an internal drive for their laptop.
Word of caution, many of the WD 2.5-inch external drives no longer use a standard SATA internal drive with a USB to SATA bridge but have the USB interface built right into the drive, so one can't open a WD 2.5-inch external and expect to find a SATA internal drive like one can with Seagate for instance.
For practical reasons, size and no separate power supply required, I now buy only 2.5-inch portable drives, either 2TB or 4TB.
The largest size in a 2.5-inch USB powered external is a 5TB drive, if one wants to go to a higher capacity, one needs to go with a drive with external power.

 

[krs]

Gosh...lots of additional comments while I was typing.

Interestingly enough, all of the external hard drive failures I have had as far back as I can remember were the electronics, either the bridge in the enclosure or recently the drive controller itself. The mechanical parts of the "spinner" drives seem to be quite robust.

 

[lori5060]

thnx krs for your input.... helps when info from another canadian... as far as availability of products. obviously you do yr research and understand much more than I do about all the specifics of these external hard drives. for now, ill with my WD as I have so many of them. However I've read that Toshiba has a lower failure percentage then WD so I may look at those in the future tho things do change with all these electron it devices.

 

[krs]

Lori - You can't generalize that one hard drive manufacturer has better reliability than the next one for the same type of consumer spinner drive.
I also thought that Toshiba had better reliability than WD or Seagate and was going to order their 2TB portable, but then I came across this:
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B079D3D8NR/

The issues described may not even be the drive itself but the interface, or if the drive disconnects by itself, the cable and/or the ports.
But it was enough for me to again opt for a Seagate instead.
The important thing obviously is to have a back up....and if the files are really important - two back-ups.

BTW - I would be interested o find out which drives Glyph and OWC use in their externals, not just the manufacturer but also the type of drive.
Did a little bit of googling but nothing popped up righ away.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

BTW - I would be interested o find out which drives Glyph and OWC use in their externals, not just the manufacturer but also the type of drive.

It's irrelevant.

When you purchase an *external* hard drive you are putting your faith in the company that puts together the final product, not the company that makes the internal mechanism.

External hard drive manufactures don't usually use the same consumer-grade internal mechanisms as you and I can purchase at retail (even when their internal mechanisms have the same name as a model you can purchase via retail). They work with their supplier and request drives of a certain performance, and tested to a certain level of reliability. Then, if the company is really concentrating on reliability (e.g. Glyph), they test every single mechanism they receive and reject those that don't meet their standard.

Then they put the internal mechanism in a case that offers a particular compromise between keeping the internal mechanism reliable, performance and price. If you look at a Glyph external hard drive, you can instantly see and feel that it's built like a tank. It's heavy, it has a huge power supply, and it has a fan to make absolutely sure that the internal mechanism is always kept cool (heat is the natural enemy of magnetic media). Other manufacturers may go cheaper and use their external drive's metal case as a heatsink, and some offer almost no cooling at all.

You'll notice that, of the three brands/models of external hard drive that I recommended, there is a very obvious visual correlation between how robust the drive looks, and price. That's not an accident. Of the three external hard drive brands/models that I recommended, the more expensive you go, the better made and the more reliable they are.

So, the internal mechanism inside any external hard drive you purchase makes no difference. What's important is the manufacturer's dedication to quality and reliability. Even Toshiba, a company that generally makes very good internal hard drive mechanisms across the board, cheaps out on the cases for their external hard drives. Both Western Digital and Seagate make some superb rotating disk hard drive mechanisms, and some putrid ones. Sadly it doesn't matter how good the internal mechanisms are in WD's and Seagate's own branded external hard drives, both companies put their own mechanisms in putrid cases, and so their external hard drives are garbage.

To answer your question directly, both OWC and Glyph spec their internal hard drive mechanisms from Seagate...mostly. But as I said, that's irrelevant. What *is* important is that Glyph, Novus, and OWC are all known for quality and reliability within their respective price points. But the three are far from equal.