Porsche Design External Hard Drive for Time Machine back-up

Hello PV,

Yes, I can save both your excellent posts on hard drives but have you done a version in user tip form? If not, I think you should.

mrq0604 wrote:

So portable drives are better than desktop drives in terms of quality?

I'm not sure about spending money on Toshiba. It doesn't sound desirable, and the product itself is pretty ugly

Theyre all fragile and the same inside except a larger drive has a higher capacity for head crash with a bump

however a 3.5" isnt being moved like a 2.5" often is.

Quality is, as mentioned, Hitachi, and the 3.5" as mentioned in previous post.

If just a desktop only unit, get the 3.5" drive.

1. Thats a box, you can get the "Porsche" with the shiney aluminum box that contains an inferior low-grade consumer HD......

2. OR you can get the "ugly" black plastic one that contains the superior HD inside.

For most the choice between those two is clear. 😊

That aluminum enclosure serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever, nothing. Other than how it looks laying on the desk.

Doesnt matter what the enclosure looks like, ... what matters is what's inside, and I know what is inside all of them.

Protecting your data is vitally important.

But your original post asked about the "best" HD, ...... which I gave info on, ....not necessarily the most aesthetically pretty on the outside.

It doesn't sound desirable

Desirable in what sense? As for a conventional HD, the top 2 choices in quality are the Hitachi 3.5" (marked Toshiba) and the WD black (of which youd need an enclosure or HD dock for it.

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

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

The ideal way to use naked drives, if you were to use the WD black above, is how the pros use such naked HD, using a HD dock:

HD docks will fit both 2.5" HD and 3.5", perfect for either HD clones or data storage

Peace

seventy one Kent. U.K.

Yes, I can save both your excellent posts on hard drives but have you done a version in user tip form? If not, I think you should.

Making a user tip saying / recommending purchasing X over Y......or what brand to purchase as best is a bit less than kosher and not recommended

to be sure as a user tip.

mrq0604 wrote:

I dropped by at Future Shop (large electronics stores in Canada) and Best Buy, and I was told that Seagate and WD are top qualties by various employees there... But they did recommend this Toshiba: http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/toshiba-toshiba-canvio-basics-3-0-2tb-portab le-hard-drive-canviobasics3-0-2tb/10273461.aspx, saying they heard no horror stories about it. But yes, they did rank Seagate and WD ahead of Toshiba.. Now I'm really confused.

I was told that Seagate and WD are top qualties by various employees...

You were told nonsense by people that dont know what theyre talking about. Thats typical from retail electronics "folk"

However the recommendation they gave you on THAT specific drive, I know a lot about and own 10 or so of them.

thats the SAME HD I recommded to you, except the older case. 😉

Yes, get that HD, ...high recommendation.

You HD you link to is the SAME (but older case / design) as the one I recommended already to you:

1.

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Connect-Portable-HDTC720XK3C1/dp/B00CGUMS48 /ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1390020791&sr=8-3&keywords=toshiba+2tb

2.

same internal HD on THAT one, as yours, as found here:

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Basics-Portable-HDTB220XK3CA/dp/B00ARJD56K/ ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1393462417&sr=8-2&keywords=Toshiba+2tb

same exact HD inside both boxes ( yes I know) 😁

1. HDTC720XK3C1

2. HDTB220XK3CA

#1 and #2 both cotain the same thing :

Inside BOTH of those HD boxes are THESE:

TOSHIBA MQ01ABB200

http://www.ebay.com/itm/TOSHIBA-MQ01ABB200-2-TB-5400-RPM-8MB-Cache-2-5-SATA-3-0G b-s-Notebook-HDD-15mm-/370833662421?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item565768a1d5

I use Lacie for backup.

I had a WD external enclosure for backup once. The drive appeared to die but it was just the controller card scrambling drive data. I pulled out the drive and it still works as a non-critical disk.

billy_budd_ii wrote:

The drive appeared to die but it was just the controller card scrambling drive data.

Yes, the SATA bridge card is the #1 failure point of ALL external HD

see here about same:

Your dead external hard drive is likely fine! Great hope for your 'faulty' external HD

What exactly is the SATA bridge card in your external HD?

In the middle to late of 2009, most all external hard drives both in 2.5” and 3.5” reached the shelves in SATA III. These small SATA cards or "bridges" are used to translate between the hard drives’ interfaces and the enclosures' external ports (USB, Thunderbolt, Firewire). Additionally these small bridges not only transfer power but also of course the data. Unfortunately these SATA bridge cards have a very high failure rate as they are burdened with shuffle power and data.

Literally these little unreliable and fragile cards are the power conduits and the nervous system for all external HD data transfer.

SATA card as found inside a typical USB external hard drive

The assumption that the hard drive is bad when its not!

Countless 1000s of good external hard drives are thrown away each year because the owner thought the HD was bad when it fact it was the SATA bridge card which had failed. This card is removed in a matter of mere second once an external USB HD is cracked open from its plastic casing to reveal the bare HD and the attached SATA card which attaches between the HD and the USB cable.

To complicate this problem, even many computer professionals do not know that there is a very easy solution to the “failing or dead HD” issue since the hard drive itself is very likely just fine. Its astonishing that so many highly educated computer repair persons are unaware of this high-failure part, but this is mostly due to the fact that they do not juggle 100s of hard drives and know that of the iceberg that is a “external hard drive failure”, the mostly unseen majority are not a HD failure at all, but a bridge card failure.

To add to this great misunderstanding is the fact that people assume that "likewise symptoms seen on an external HD are the same as seen on an internal HD, therefore also the external HD must be bad". This is a compositional fallacy of logic. Since internal HD do not have a SATA bridge interface, to conclude similar symptoms "indicate the same failure" is misplaced and incorrect.

This is all not to say that HD do not fail, they do indeed, and I have seen many 100s of dead and failing hard drives. Hard drives even under ideal conditions have a life expectancy of around 4-8 years due to ferromagnetic depolarization from entropy. But of the mountain of symptoms that are seen as “hard drive failures” in comments, posts, and hearsay, half or more of these are not a HD failure at all.

Someone told me WD enclosures fail more than others so I do not buy them anymore.

billy_budd_ii wrote:

Someone told me WD enclosures fail more than others so I do not buy them anymore.

Not so, The SATA card is literally a 50 cent part, an enclosure is just a box, it doesnt fail, the USB cable almost never fails.

only thing left is the HD and the SATA card.

some SATA cards fail more than others (I have many many dead ones), but WD doesnt have SATA cards that fail more often than others do, that used to be the case, but not anymore.

However the SATA card is still the worst failure point of all ext. HD.

What makes up an external USB HD

While modern external HD boxes vary in shape and size somewhat, they're the same inside on almost 100% of them.

Four parts essentially:

1. Your 2.5” or 3.5” hard drive.

2. The plastic or metal box it rests in.

3. The USB cable and also (in the case of the 3.5” external) the power cable and block.

4. The SATA bridge card.

Clear USB HD in its case, with green SATA card at top,...not shown is the USB cable

mrq0604 wrote:

However, if I get the new external hard drive I will use this for my iMac back-up.

One serious mistake there in referring to AN (single) backup. Never let that happen, always 2 copies off computer, always.

See note below diagram on this extremely important point.

Samsung doesnt exist anymore as a HD maker, its now Seagate incorporated. 😉

Im sure yours have been reliable for a long time, however thats a "very small statistical sample" of genuine reliability, obviously.

They werent so hot when they were independent.

Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail (the very same is true of SSD). Hard drives dont die when aged, hard drives die at any age, and peak in death when young and slowly increase in risk as they age.

Never practice at any time for any reason the false premise and unreal sense of security in thinking your data is safe on any single external hard drive. This is never the case and has proven to be the single most common horrible tragedy of data loss that exists.

Many 100s of millions of hours of lost work and data are lost each year due to this single common false security. This is an unnatural disaster that can avoid by making all data redundant and then redundant again. If you let a $60 additional redundant hard drive and 3 hours of copying stand between you and years of work, then you've made a fundamental mistake countless 1000s of people each year have come to regret.

Many countless people think they're safe and doing well having a single external backup of their vital data they worked months, years, and sometimes decades on. Nothing could be further from the truth. Never let yourself be in situation of having a single external copy of your precious data.

Get #1 or #2, both are the same hard drive, I recommended #1 to you first off, they recommended #2 to you.

both are the same thing, except a diff. plastic enclosure and 'look'.

1.

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Connect-Portable-HDTC720XK3C1/dp/B00CGUMS48 /ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1390020791&sr=8-3&keywords=toshiba+2tb

2.

same internal HD on THAT one, as yours, as found here:

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Basics-Portable-HDTB220XK3CA/dp/B00ARJD56K/ ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1393462417&sr=8-2&keywords=Toshiba+2tb

I buy WD HD drives. I do not buy the already packaged enclosures.

Good plan.