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My first home computer had a Seagate H(June 1989)...
It lasted all of one month... Have not had one since..
Nice to see they have kept up their mediocre work...
My first home computer had a Seagate H(June 1989)...
It lasted all of one month... Have not had one since..
Nice to see they have kept up their mediocre work...
Means nothing, I've have Seagates that are years old, have had WD's, samsungs, etc. dead out of the box and also lasting years.
Well i think that LaCie Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt is really a good external hard drive.
Except that Lacie doesn't make hard drives, the make they enclosure. The hard drive inside it is made by one of the few manufacturers such as Western Digital, Seagate, etc.
For the last 17 years I have used Western Digital Caviar drives in every machine both Mac and Dell PCs and not one every failed in any way on me.
I typically buy a used machine for daily use, replace whatever drive it comes with, with a new WD caviar drive, and then that machine stays on 24/7. About every 2 years I try to upgrade by buying another used machine that has double the specs as the current one, then I retire the current machine, clone the drive to a NEW drive in the newly bought used machine and then the now retired computer becomes a backup archive.
I also use the same type WD caviar drives in an external drive enclosure with firewire/usb for weekly backups.
I usually have 4 of those that are clones of one another, in other words 4 complete copies of what is my daily user's drive, plus the retired machines have their drives with cloned contents on them up to the date of being retired.
As a result I've never lost any content to drive failures, virus, worms, accidents.
All drives WILL fail with use, WD warrantees their caviar drives for 5 years I believe, expect most drives in constant use will likely fail around 5 years, some more some less. The turning the computer OFF and ON is a big issue with drive wear, not only due to that but the temperature swings going from cold to hot to cold, that's another reason why I leave my daily user on 24/7- it keeps the internals at the same constant level temperature. Many drives fail during their start up process.
Retiring and replacing a drive about every 2 years of daily heavy use is very prudent, it's why I NEVER had any WD caviar drive fail in the 17 years I've been buying them, keeping to that schedule keeps me ahead and on top of that inevitable failure from use/age.
Storing the drives away as retired archives there is no wear and tear, starting one up on occasion to copy something for example even after that 5 year timeframe would not be an issue since it's the amount of use that eventually causes failing.
I have several Macally drive enclosures I really like, all aluminum and even shaped like a Mac tower, all have been totally reliable. I once tried a thermaltake with an internal fan and it failed right out of the box, so did it's replacement- total JUNK.
I would stay away from the SSD, the first and only solid state drive I bought a year ago made by Samsung failed quickly, I won't trust those now.
I would stay away from the SSD, the first and only solid state drive I bought a year ago made by Samsung failed quickly, I won't trust those now.
So what are you going to do when you have a hard drive failure? As you had a single SSD fail and you no longer trust them, once you have no trust in hard drives you'll be pretty much SOL
What brand has the best external hard drives? One that is reliable, won't get damaged, good quality, etc.. I am looking for one with at least 300 GB that works with Windows 7.
That depends on what you want to use the external drive for. I don't think you can find anything smaller than 700 GB these days.
I have a Buffalo external 2 TB network drive (spinning/mechanical drive), and it's okay even though it has a couple of quirks. I use it for backing up my 2 Windows 7 Ultimate computers on my home network, along with the files on all my home computers.
If you just want a basic SSD (Sold-Sate Storage Device) I have the Western Digital 1 TB USB device and I'm very happy with it. I use it to back up my 2 Windows 7 Home Premium computers, and the Windows 8.1 computer, since those versions of Windows do not have the capability to do back-ups on a network drive.
There is no "best". A lot of it depends on your personal experience with specific brands. Personally I have used Samsung, Seagate, Western Digital, Kingston, among many other brands over the years, and have had good experiences with pretty much all of them. Right now I run a Kingston 120GB SSD internal and a Seagate 2 TB external. If you don't have a brand preference just buy whatever is on sale at your local computer store. As long as it's a major brand, one isn't inherently better or worse than the other.
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