Reliable Portable External Hard Drives

I was wondering if anyone could recommend a portable external hard drive. I've searched these forums and haven't found any threads related to this issue.

I'm also posting this question on these forums as to hopefully avoid company representatives coming in and causing "noise" .

The first one I have been looking at is Amazon.com: Western Digital My Passport 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - WDBBEP0010BBK-NESN (Black): Computers & Accessories though obviously I can't decide anything from the reviews. I think this hdd is recent?

The second one is Amazon.com: Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB USB 3.0 Ultra-Portable External Hard Drive in Black STAA1000101: Electronics where there are many reviews but it's hard to separate the fake/real ones.

I've looked at many others but keep running into the same problem of everyone saying the hdd breaks down fast, or the USB connection is a bad design, heat problems, etc. Seems this new batch of USB3 generation hdds are bad in general?

 

both are pretty good and reliable brands! the thing is most users are dumb enough to move the HDD while it's spinning and that's a bad thing for all HDD's regardless of anything else!

 

Right, I forgot to mention that this will be mainly for storage. I'm going to backup files, then place the drive in a safe location. It will rarely be used, except for backing up files.

My concern is the two piece adapter for the Seagate drive. Many reviews claim that the adapter causes connection problems or something like that and you need to jiggle it a little to get the connection back.

 

and they're right about that, mini usb to dual usb adapter can be problematic, my first HDD died because of that adapter! best HDD's that the one comes with single cable to connect!

 

ioSafe if you want security overkill

 

build your own. go to newegg and buy an enclosure and put your own hardrive into it. Those are the most reliable. Many premade external hardrives have hardrives that are soldered on and can't be removed easily. So if the enclosure breaks your screwed. A large portion of the time its the enclosure that breaks not the hardrive.

 

Could not agree more! Just build your own. This is assuming you don't need water/fire/bullet proof drives. Yes?

 

That's exactly what I did 5 years ago. i just got a 320 GB 3.5 " seagate and placed it in a nexstar enclosure. It's been stable since then.

When I compare prices though, it's actually more expensive building my own 1 TB drive than buying the enclosure and drive as a whole.

 

I ended up getting Amazon.com: Western Digital My Passport 1 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - WDBBEP0010BBK-NESN (Black): Computers & Accessories

So far no issues. I backed up ~500 GB of data pretty quickly.

Will update this thread if it ever breaks down or I run into issues. The drive was released last month. I got it mainly cause it doesn't have the two piece adapter like all the other drives and uses a direct cable.

I will say that the connection to it is a little "loose". You can wiggle it around but that didn't disconnect me or anything.

 

They are cheap because they use 5400rpm drives...when we build them we use 7200rpm drives