Samsung or WD Portable drive?

[JoshJ]

Hey guys. My Seagate portable hard drive likely has issues and I'm going to have to dump it. Which of the following drives is better (least prone to failure & shook damage) in your opinion:

Samsung M3 Slimline 2TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FZU9JYI/


WD My Passport Ultra 2TB USB 3.0 Portable Drive with Auto and Cloud Backup:
Buy WD My Passport Ultra 2TB USB 3.0 Portable Drive with Auto and Cloud Backup - Black at Amazon.co.uk.

 

[harryb2448]

Much of a muchness Josh, but I personally do prefer Western Digital and not a fan of anything Samsung, but that is just me. Regards longer life, you pays your buck and takes your chances alas. Had 'em dead brand new in box, including SSDs!

 

[bobtomay]

Customer service between WD and Samdung?

No question - get the WD.


Samsung no longer manufactures hard drives.
That part of the business was sold to Seagate.
Good luck getting any satisfaction out of Samsung if it dies during warranty period.

 

[RadDave]

Hi again Josh - from your links, I'm assuming that you live in the UK - correct? Might impact on one of my recommendations, just saying.

Harry is right, of course - not easy to recommend specific brands although the WD seem to be in high regard here; my current half dozen external HDs are Seagate (2), OWC (Other World Computing) (2), Western Digital (2), and a LaCie SSD. HDs seem to have three stages of survival: 1) Infant mortality, i.e. DOA or an early death; 2) Stable period for a few years if early mortality is avoided; and 3) Old age w/ gradual deterioration. There is a lot of web discussion on this topic - below is a graph from HERE showing these stages through 4 yrs where 20% of HDs failed; extrapolated out to 6 yrs projects a 50% mortality - I plan to replace my EHDs periodically and I guess that 4 yrs is a good choice?

So, the WD EHD can be easily recommended - in an article that I've quoted before in other threads, the Seagate HDs seem to have a higher failure rate; Hitachi drives did well - can't remember the Samsung devices, if even mentioned? The OWC HDs are reviewed highly on the website link (not sure 'who' makes them), but I have two 1 TB HDs from them, one w/ USB 3.0 connection and the other w/ a Thunderbolt connection (used on my iMac for TM). SO - a lot to think about! Dave
.

 

[bobtomay]

Just to mention, with OWC, if you look at the Specs on their enclosures - you can find all the info from the chipset being used to the brand and model of drive in the enclosure. The only Apple centric hardware company I ever found early on into the Intel migration that provides such info. I was very skeptical of the "made for Mac" companies early on into my switch over and one of the big reasons I grew to respect OWC from amongst all the Apple centric 3rd party companies. Not to mention their reasonable prices and not ripping people off because their "drive works with your Mac" by charging an extra 50-100% like a couple of other PPC days companies (cough Lacie cough).

Give me a company that puts out right up front the chipsets and everything else they are using and I'll gladly give them an extra 10% (and maybe more) over the companies that don't put out anything about the internals of their hardware.

 

[RadDave]

Just to mention, with OWC, if you look at the Specs on their enclosures - you can find all the info from the chipset being used to the brand and model of drive in the enclosure..............

Hi Bobtomay - as said above in my post, I'm using two 1 TB OWC EHDs - the one that is USB has HGST.com on the info label - looking up the URL shows the link below - seems to be a Western Digital company; on my other OWC Thunderbolt drive, WD.com is on the label; SO it seems that these are Western Digital drives - both have 3-year limited warranties (better than given w/ standard labeled WD drives, like two others that I own) - wondering if these are 'better' drives/electronics and/or just covered longer by OWC? Dave

.

 

[bobtomay]

HGST - aka Hitachi was bought by WD.

There are only 3 remaining hard drive manufacturers in the world - WD, Seagate and Toshiba.

That is likely the standard WD warranty on those drives.

 

[RadDave]

HGST - aka Hitachi was bought by WD.

There are only 3 remaining hard drive manufacturers in the world - WD, Seagate and Toshiba.

That is likely the standard WD warranty on those drives.

Thanks Bobtomay - almost becoming a monopoly! Knowing that there were so many others in the past (and owned a number of 'old' brands) - found this short Wiki Article on defunct hard drive producers - first paragraph quoted below - amazing! Last sentence in bold! Dave

It has been estimated that over 200 companies were hard disk drive manufacturers in the past. Besides competing on features such as hard disk drive (HDD) data density and latencies, many of those companies started to support new, smaller form factors that enabled the ever-reducing physical sizes of computing devices. Most of that industry has vanished through bankruptcy or mergers and acquisitions. Surviving manufacturers are Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital.

 

[pigoo3]

This is why when folks ask "What hard drive should I get?". With only three manufacturers…not a lot of choice. And with some of the reliability data some folks have been posting…it would suggest that Seagate HD's have a much higher failure rate. So then that may only leave two choices.

Forgot to add. This is why when someone asks this question…I just say…choose a capacity…then just shop for best price.

- Nick

 

[chscag]

Of the three surviving hard drive manufacturers, guess which one has the most failures according to statistics? And guess which one of the three Apple uses in their machines? If you answered Seagate, you got it right both times.

 

[RadDave]

Of the three surviving hard drive manufacturers, guess which one has the most failures according to statistics? And guess which one of the three Apple uses in their machines? If you answered Seagate, you got it right both times.

Yep - Seagate has had the highest failure rate vs. WD & Hitachi (now WD) - believe that I've posted the graph below before from HERE - one would think w/ such a 'mature' technology that these bars would be about equal - WELL, I have two Seagate BU externals and will replace each in the near future w/ WD or OWC HDs - Dave
.

 

[bobtomay]

I like to think one of the reasons WD went after HGST was to get hold of their tech, manufacturing process &/or parts manufacturers that was giving them the lead in failure rates. I don't think WD made many changes related to the hardware being put out by HGST.

Toshiba went into almost all of my custom built rigs from the lates 90s to around '04. They were consistently putting out the fastest drives among the crowd with the exception of WDs Velociraptor 10,000 rpm drives and at this point, haven't a clue why I never went with one of those.