mrq0604 wrote:
How about 3.5" Seagate drives? Are they any better in terms of quality?
Currently the promotional price for 3.0 TB Porsche Design "external drive" is $129 (normally $169). Is this a good deal? And the 3 TB "desktop drive" is $153. Why would they sell thr same product under 2 different names and with different prices? What does "external drive" offer for $16 more? As far I know, they look the same...
How about 3.5" Seagate drives?
Absolutely not, no.
All HD can and do crash and fail, its just statistical sampling in total (see graph above)
If you want the most reliable 3.5" HD, get a 2TB Toshiba, which is actually made by Hitachi (confused yet?) 😉
Hitachi sold their 3.5" division to Toshiba (forced to actually), so a Toshiba 3.5" is really a very well built reliable Hitachi 3.5"
On sale, 2TB Toshiba 3.5" (really Hitachi made) only $88
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Desktop-External-HDWC120XK3J1/dp/B008DW96NY /ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1393443687&sr=8-10&keywords=toshiba+2tb
There is actually a non-commercial HD more reliable than this, which is the WD "black" drives, the server grade drives, but theyre not consumer grade
theyre very expensive, and made for server farms.
here:
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Cache-Desktop-WD2003FZEX/dp/B00FJRS628/ref =sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1393443945&sr=8-2&keywords=wd+black
As said no such thing as Porsche, its Seagate . Porsche is just the name on the enclosure.
Why sell under 2 diff. names? Actually they do it under 5 DIFFERENT NAMES , Hitachi does the same, so does WD
As I said, there are only 4 HD makers on earth. The many names etc is to fill up shelf space with diff. names such as Porsche , LaCie etc etc.
Id avoid most of the 3TB and certainly the 4TB drives for at least maybe another half year or so.
Large external hard drives are great! Large external hard drives are horrible
It is a common premise that people are overjoyed at the dropping prices per terabyte on external hard drives, and the first thing that enters most peoples minds is "great, I can put all my stuff on one drive,... all of it!" However considerations need to be made in creating a giant single choke point for not mere data loss, but seriously large data loss. If there is at the very least yet another redundant copy, this is fine, otherwise do not consider it whatsoever. Some 3TB and 4TB drives of all mfg. have, at the time of this writing, reliability concerns currently and best recommendation is staying at 2TB drives or less.
Advantages and disadvantages of larger 3TB and 4TB external drives must be weighed
Hard Drive Warning (all makes and models)
Ironically but logical, new hard drives are far more fragile than one that has been working for several months or a couple years. So beware in your thinking that a new hard drive translates into “extremely reliable”!
⚠ Hard drives suffer from high rates of what has been termed "infant mortality". Essentially this means new drives have their highest likelihood of failing in the first few months of usage. This is because of very minor manufacturing defects or HD platter balancing, or head and armature geometry being less than perfect; and this is not immediately obvious and can quickly manifest itself once the drive is put to work.
Hard drives that survive the first few months of use without failing are likely to remain healthy for a number of years.
➕ Generally HD are highly prone to death or corruption for a few months, then work fine for a few years, then spike in mortality starting at 3-4 years and certainly should be considered end-of-life at 5-7+ years even if still working well. Drives written to once and stored away have the highest risk of data corruption due to not being read/written to on a regular basis. Rotate older working HD into low-risk use.
The implication of this is that you should not trust a new hard drive completely (really never completely!) until it has been working perfectly for several months.
Given the second law of thermodynamics, any and all current mfg. HD will, under perfect storage conditions tend themselves to depolarization and a point will be reached, even if the HD mechanism is perfect, that the ferromagnetic read/write surface of the platter inside the HD will entropy to the point of no viable return for data extraction. HD life varies, but barring mechanical failure, 3-8 years typically.
Hard drive failure and handling
The air cushion of air between the platter surface and the head is microscopic, as small as 3 nanometers, meaning bumps, jarring while in operation can cause head crash, scraping off magnetic particles causing internal havoc to the write surface and throwing particles thru the hard drive.
⚠ Hard drives are fragile in general, regardless, ... in specific while running hard drives are extremely fragile.
PDF: Bare hard drive handling generic instructions
hard drive moving parts
Some of the common reasons for hard drives to fail:
Infant mortality (due to mfg. defect / build tolerances)
Bad parking (head impact)
Sudden impact (hard drive jarred during operation, heads can bounce)
Electrical surge (fries the controller board, possibly also causing heads to write the wrong data)
Bearing / Motor failure (spindle bearings or motors wear during any and all use, eventually leading to HD failure)
Board failure (controller board failure on bottom of HD)
Bad Sectors (magnetic areas of the platter may become faulty)
General hard drive failure
