Long life External Hard Drive

I'm searching for a new EHD to replace my WD HDD (WDBACW0030HBK-01)

So here some EHD that I had eye on

1. Western Digital My Passport Essential 2TB USB 3.0 [WDBY8L0020BBK-PESN]
2. WESTERN DIGITAL My Book Studio USB 3.0 3TB [WDBCPZ0030HAL-SESN]
3. WESTERN DIGITAL My Book Studio Edition 2TB [WDBC3G0020HAL-SESN]
4. SEAGATE Wireless Plus USB 3.0 1TB [STCK1000300]
5. SEAGATE Expansion External Desktop USB 3.0 3TB [STBV3000300]

Some spec that need:

1. Storage Capacity : 2TB- 3TB
2. Reading Speed : 5400 rpm (min) < (max)
3. USB : 3.0
4. Warranty : >= 2 Years
5. Price : <= $1200
6. Other :
- Compatible with Windows and Mac
- The product easily found in South East Asia Region
- Silent


If there any suggestion for a better EHD please just post it here.

(Possibility for some editing on specification )

 

it really looks like the EHD will be staying on the desk, permanently, why not invest in the naked adapters/ enclosures and get drives of your choice at similar prices? Some desktop builder's drives might exhibit a longer life span than drives designed for external use

 

The only number that matters is warranty. If you want the longest-lasting drive, then buy whatever drive has the longest warranty.

Every hard drive you ever buy WILL eventually fail and die. It is just a matter of time before it does.

There is nothing you can do before you buy a drive to predict when the drive will fail. Any drive you buy has a chance of failing once you plug it in; or has a chance of lasting for the next 10+ years without problems. Any stories you hear otherwise are useless to you, because they are all anecdotal stories (not actual data). You will hear stories about:
* Never buy brand XYZ. My friend bought one, and it died once he plugged it in.
* Always buy brand ABC. I've always bought brand ABC, and never had any problems.

Again, those are all anecdotal stories, not actual data. That is useless to you.

The only data you have around hard drive longevity is knowing: (A) Any hard drive you buy will eventually fail; (B) The only thing that matters when that drive fails is if the drive is still covered under warranty.

 

If you plan to use the drive for long periods of sustained activity, you may want to also look into a drive with an aluminum enclosure on top of a good warranty, the drive will run cooler which will reduce the likelihood of failure. That doesn't mean that it won't eventually fail, but let's just say that if you're going to write TBs to the drive, it getting hot won't help. If you just plan to use the drive to store files and not "abuse" it, a plastic enclosure will do just fine.

On that part, just format the drive in exFAT and you'll be able to read/write to it from a mac or windows computer. I suppose GPT would also work, technically, every drive is compatible with both as long as it's properly formatted.

 

As an addendum to this point, when using exFAT, it is best to format the drive in a Windows environment, setting the cluster size to 1024. OS X is known to have issues of data corruption when writing to exFAT partitions with the cluster size set larger or if OS X itself is used to format the drive to exFAT.