[Craig_D]

My first thread in here. I have a question and I have trust in the combined knowledge of TSR's techies to help me out.

Basically, what I'm looking for is the absolute most reliable 1tb external hard drive that is available; my laptop is only 500gb and I'm beginning to run low on space. The reason for my concern is that a couple of years ago I owned a WD Passport 500gb which thought it would be really cool to burn out after just 6 months and make me lose all my important files. (Yes, WD seem to have notoriety for being crap, I won't be using them again.)

The external hard drive will be travelling with me to uni rather frequently. Not wanting to make the same mistake twice I'm planning to regularly back-up everything on a desktop PC, but this obviously could sometimes be inconvenient and I just want an external HD that I can trust to work for 2 or 3 years. Price is not as important. Of course, I'm careful never to drop them.

So, I've narrowed it down to:

Seagate Expansion 1tb 3.0 USB

Samsung S2 1tb 2.0 USB

I'm leaning towards the Seagate. However I'm also aware of desktop products like this being available. If the chance of them burning out or failing is less and they are generally more reliable then I'd probably opt for that, there's enough space in my bag still for carrying it. If however the chance of it failing is exactly the same then I'll obviously opt for the 'portable' one.

Thoughts?

[Iqbal007]

(Original post by Craig_D)
My first thread in here. I have a question and I have trust in the combined knowledge of TSR's techies to help me out.

Basically, what I'm looking for is the absolute most reliable 1tb external hard drive that is available; my laptop is only 500gb and I'm beginning to run low on space. The reason for my concern is that a couple of years ago I owned a WD Passport 500gb which thought it would be really cool to burn out after just 6 months and make me lose all my important files. (Yes, WD seem to have notoriety for being crap, I won't be using them again.)

The external hard drive will be travelling with me to uni rather frequently. Not wanting to make the same mistake twice I'm planning to regularly back-up everything on a desktop PC, but this obviously could sometimes be inconvenient and I just want an external HD that I can trust to work for 2 or 3 years. Price is not as important. Of course, I'm careful never to drop them.

So, I've narrowed it down to:

Seagate Expansion 1tb 3.0 USB

Samsung S2 1tb 2.0 USB

I'm leaning towards the Seagate. However I'm also aware of desktop products like this being available. If the chance of them burning out or failing is less and they are generally more reliable then I'd probably opt for that, there's enough space in my bag still for carrying it. If however the chance of it failing is exactly the same then I'll obviously opt for the 'portable' one.

Thoughts?

That seagate expansion one is about £79 including delivery its on a link on the same page as the other Seagate.

You should read the description for the size, they all are pretty portable.

Read the reviews and make a judgement based on that, as the Samsung reviews especially the low star ones as saying that it seems to have failed after some time.

Seagate seem like the best option based on review.....I borrowed one of those from mate, though back than a 1tb cost him around £40, and to be honest you got to be careful how you take it off from your current system and turn it off for travel otherwise it could lead to all the memory being lost, which happened to me :/, though used a recovery program to get it back.

The other thing I would look up is compatibility of the hard drive and it's software, USB 3.0 is also a good investment, due to the faster transfer rate though it's only worth while if your computer supports it.

[Craig_D]

(Original post by Iqbal007)
That seagate expansion one is about £79 including delivery its on a link on the same page as the other Seagate.

You should read the description for the size, they all are pretty portable.

Read the reviews and make a judgement based on that, as the Samsung reviews especially the low star ones as saying that it seems to have failed after some time.

Seagate seem like the best option based on review.....I borrowed one of those from mate, though back than a 1tb cost him around £40, and to be honest you got to be careful how you take it off from your current system and turn it off for travel otherwise it could lead to all the memory being lost, which happened to me :/, though used a recovery program to get it back.

The other thing I would look up is compatibility of the hard drive and it's software, USB 3.0 is also a good investment, due to the faster transfer rate though it's only worth while if your computer supports it.

Thanks for your thoughts. I've become rather obsessed with reviews lately. While Amazon's reviews for the Seagate are good, and many online are great, I've found a lot of complaints on Seagate's site about them breaking. They seem to have a good replacement record, but that's no good when the files are gone.

The Samsung's reviews seem mostly good, no major complaints, but a slightly lower standard than the Seagate on Amazon. I know that no product is perfect, but I'd go for whatever product I can find has the best record.

My laptop sadly is USB 2.0, but it's good to be covered for the future I guess. That and the fact that the 3.0 version has much better reviews than the 2.0 version, which appeared to have a higher chance of burning out.

[doggyfizzel]

Hmm, I have 2 external drives one is a WD My Book I've had that for years now, its my TimeMachines drive so just backs up all my stuff. Its pretty chunky, not portable, and has two wires, one for the power and one for the USB. Its a good drive, although its a little noisy. The other is a Buffalo Ministation, which actually just has WD drive in the Buffalo enclosure. This is far smaller, iPhone size, USB 2/3.0 and runs off the USB power alone. This is the newer one, really quiet and super portable (I put all my movies and TV shows on there). Both are 500gb.

I guess I have been pretty luck with the WD drives then, as the first one must be 3+ years old, has done the multiple uni moves and is accessed daily. The other has taken a bit of a battering in my bag and such although its not very old, 1 year.