Can You Recommend a Good External Hard Drive?

☝️ Quality and features in external hard drives change over time. First, look at what you need.

☝️ External hard drives
When choosing an external hard drive, consider physical size (for portability, 2½-inch drives travel well), speed (5400 RPM is common for durability, 7200 for speed), and capacity (2TB minimum these days). Reliability varies, and manufacturers seem to cycle from good to bad and back again. Focus on your needs: size of backups, number of backups, additional uses, and, of course, your budget. Backing up is crucial regardless of drive specifics.

Chapters
0:00 Good External Hard Drive
1:00 Considering physical size
2:45 About speed
3:40 Capacity
4:00 Things to think about
6:00 Brands
7:45 SSDs?

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#askleo #harddrive #externaldrive

[AlexanderKnibbe]

I only bought an ext drive one time and it's a WD Element and it's working for years using it about 10 times per month for system images. The other external drives used for data backup are repurposed internal 2.5" drives. These are small and don't require a separate power supply. And by the way all these ext drives are unplugged and off during normal PC use. That prevents potential malware from infecting backups.

[craiglowen]

Excellent video Leo. I would like to add a few things:
1. If you're infected with ransomware it will probably encrypt any attached storage (such as your backup drive). You should therefore probably rotate backup drives and not use them for anything other than backup (i.e. don't have them mounted unless you're running a backup).
2. The shelf life of an SSD is much shorter than that of a hard drive. If there is any risk that your backup will be stored for a year or more, a hard drive is a better choice.
3. Two of my backup drives rotate between a fireproof safe in my basement and a security deposit box in my bank. The SD box is too small to hold a 3.5" drive, so that set has to be 2.5"

[richardhamilton]

I have about a dozen Western Digital Passports (4Tb & 5Tb) and they have never failed me.

[Nanook]

If you're traveling get ssd not hd, no heads to crash, no bearings to hurt, and available in capacities that exceed anything you can get in 2-1/2 inch.

[Soupie]

For travel pictures, I use a USB hub that has an SD card reader slot - and a built in SSD. Saves space, more rugged, and by keeping data on both SD card and SSD I have more cnfidence in backups.
I have also been known to copy SSD data to a USB stick, and mail it home on holidays. Just In Case.

[markallen]

WD. Concur with previous comments, they just keep working. Thanks Leo.

[vanwrinkle-]

My first computer had a 40 mg hard drive and the drive still works. It's just a drive that sits on a shelf to remind me where I first started with these computers. I actually started with a VIC 20. LOL That's a long way back.

Your advice is right on the money. Things are changing to fast to recommend a particular drive.. Excellent informative video. Thanks Leo.

[johngronkowski]

Thanks for making this video. I was curious if your opinion changed since the last time you talked about this years ago. I was thinking of sending in this question myself.

[verdedoodleduck]

Hi Leo - thank you for your videos!
I have my files backed up on a nas and almost all of my work is stored under Onedrive with pictures being replicated in Google and/or Amazon. None of this is an incremental backup though. I would like to combine the backup of my computer with the onedrive contents if not as one entity (the whole system at once as presented by file explorer) then at least as one job (and incremental for the pc and an incremental for the onedrive)?
I was thinking of a schedule a little more aggressive than yours like keeping a few dailies, a few weeklies, a couple of monthlies and all the yearly (is this overkill?) Do you have a video where you show how to set that up (probably :))?

[johnhpalmer]

At present, I have 3 externals. One is a Simpletech 3.5" I bought in 2008 that is still going strong. Thought it used a WD drive, but it appears it actually has a Hitachi drive in it. I don't access it much as it's all storage, divided into video, photos and music (or audio) partitions. It's full for the most part, though photos and video partitions are not.

Then I have 2 WD passports (2.5") mechanical external drives, one 500GB that WAS to be for backups, but the software from WD, I could not figure out if it actually saved, or backed up anything, or not, so abandoned things all together, however, did a clone of my HD using the then free Macrium Reflect and it did great in 2019, until I tried to restore my boot drive a couple of years later after a cleaning, not realizing initially I may have swapped SATA cables and the image got horked. That went that.

Now, I have 2, 3.5" mechanical drives at 500GB each, both used, and from 2013/14, but to start off, it'll do. I will get cases for them eventually, but have an adapter that has a power supply, good for IDE/SATA drives for now, and I have a dock that can accept 2 drives that is connected to the desktop, and can do an internal clone of one to the other. I also have two Dell computers, one a laptop, the other a desktop (both business workstations, bought used. So one drive for each. Software will be EaseUS for backups and cloning.

in 2008, I did tons of research on my first external, looking for defects, poor design etc, and one, a Hitachi had major issues on the 1TB and higher capacity due to poor ventilation cooling so the drives overheated, some had defective controllers, others bad USB cables (a bad batch at that time), and how frequently they were found defective, and if they had the capacity I was looking for (500GB), LaCie didn't go beyond 350GB being one example. In the end, the Simpletech (now owned by Hitachi) won out as it while not perfect, had the fewest issues overall than just about everyone else, and came in a 500GB capacity. As I said, it's been holding up, though in recent years, it stays powered up and connected, but I rarely access it unless I'm looking for something in particular going back several years that is on it.

[bobrobert]

As I found out to late make sure to test your backed up data is readable and performs as expected.

[OlettaLiano]

The external drives I use most are 2TB NVMe M.2 in an external caddy. Small, light, fast.

[stevenvanhulle]

I installed a couple dozen WD drives (on my own PC, and others'); internal, external, NAS. In all for over 500 000 drive-hours (POHs). Not one failed so far*. OTOH, got 2 Seagates which BOTH failed within three years. Never again.


YMMV.


*) At one time one of them (a 2.5" Elements) started to make a ticking sound, often the preamble of an imminent failure. That was 2 years ago, the ticking stopped, and the drive still works.

[gjoseph]

External hard drive at 500 GB, usb-connectable for about $40, found & bought about a decade ago. Other specification I not remember; but although seem a bit slow, is workable.

[robertbugglin]

Perhaps my setup is a bit complicated, but here it is. I have a NAS (Network Attached Storage) and I store most of my user data there on drive 1. I have an automated backup which copies changed working files files from NAS drive 1 to drive 2. I also collect lots of downloaded stuff on NAS drive 1, which is not automatically backed up. I occasionally do full drive backups of my computers to NAS drive 2. I periodically copy everything from the NAS to my portable drives. These are mostly refurbished name brand enterprise drives. Two are in drive enclosures, but I've found a SATA dock to be convenient for others.

[Robert-sljo]

I find that Toshiba tend to be very good. Seagate tends to have problems with the connections where it connects then disconnects. I had to transfer all the data onto another drive before it failed completely.

[Maltojo]

I use two 8TB hard drives for backup. I store them in a fireproof small safe box. I can keep four full monthly backups with weekly increments between them. I keep the drives in a cheap keep case inside the safe box and use a hot swap drive bay in my computer to back up. Been doing it for years. Sure beats those old tapes.

[danalynch]

I use 3 external hard drives for my AOMEI backups. 1 usb flash drive, 1 TB 2 1/2" usb powered and 1 TB 3 1/2" powered.

[songsan]

Lots of great advice. Truthfully I wish I consistently use a hard drive to back up my main PC. Actually might get another 8TB or 14TB external Seagate to do the backups. But have not seen them at Costco for a while. Usually they have discounts there and Seagate supposedly offer a 3 year warranty on the device and data recovery. I DO NOT get sponsor by them or affiliate with them.

I do image my main pc a few times a year. And just got a sturdy 10 hard drive container case so I can put a hard drive on an external enclosure, make the backups, remove the case and put the drive away for safety.

[IsabelleIsabelle]

I will be RV full time and I thing hard drives don't like it and the only way I know is to put my files on DVD, yes it will be long to save my files but at least it won't break. Do you have another suggestion ? I love your videos