Help me choose between these 2 external drives for backup

I currently have a Toshiba, 1TB, 2.5 inch external HDD.

Was looking to upgrade to 3 or 4 TB.
Since I'm in UK, my choices come down to this Toshiba Canvio II (3TB) :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-HDT...=1444597910&sr=8-3&keywords=Toshiba+canvio+II

And this Samsung M3 :
http://www.ebuyer.com/716960-samsung-m3-4tb-portable-external-hard-drive-hx-m401tcb-g

Some people on Amazon complained about early failure rates for the M3 (after 6 months or so) and various reviews stated that the random write speeds were really low - meaning abysmal speeds with transfer of small files.

Now, 4TB is hardly what I would call deal breaking, though it would be nice to have for storage, but I also require stability and durability (considering that my current Toshiba 1TB external drive is several years old and still works great).

Any recommendations in terms of external portable HDD's that are reliable and relatively fast, but also won't cost an arm and a leg?
The Toshiba Canvio II seems very appealing, and in my price range - and 3TB should be enough for some time.
Anyone used this drive yet?

 

Buying one external HDD for a single copy of some/most of your data is kind of pointless if the data is important.

I would recommend an NAS (QNAP TS-231 or above) instead.

Portability or dependability. To me, it is an easy choice.

 

Or a microserver like my Hp Gen8... Get that and then build it up into a monster like I'm doing WIll cost around £110 for microsever after cashback...

http://www.serversplus.com/servers/tower_servers/hp_tower_servers/819185-421

 

No, an NAS vs. a microserver is not the same thing, dependability-wise.

Hope you don't learn that the hard way.

 

I dunno. I've been using some form of home built servers for the better part of ten years now and with proper backups and redundancy hasn't been an issue at all.

 

Deks, I suggest 4TB Seagate-Samsung without any doubts.

 

Samsung M3 however has a problem with random read-write speeds... which makes transfers of small files very slow, plus the potential failure rate of these drives very early on is something of a concern since some people complained about this very problem.

The Toshiba Canvio II doesn't seem to have those issues (yet).

Other 4TB drives are in the range of £200 or £260, which is a bit much for me to spend at the moment.

Are there any other 4TB external portable drives coming out soon that might be cheaper and reliable in terms that they won't just fail after several months for no apparent reason?

NAS and microservers aren't an option.
I want a portable hdd for a reason, so I can take it wherever I want in a pocket and that it doesn't take up a lot of space, or cost an arm and a leg.

 

Deks, failure rates of a drive which just appeared on the market month or so ago, really? Could you please provide stats link, because I was going to buy the very same drive. =/

 

I found a chart of hdd manufacturers whose drives apparently have a higer chance of failing. Toshiba had the lowest rate of incidence. I'll post the chart later today when I'm off work

 

Deks, this data is irrelevant; some models are good, and some are bad.

 

And yet, I find it hard to imagine that you'd risk getting yourself a bad one, which could take all your backups with it.

These are charts I was referring to:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/
http://www.extremetech.com/computin...clear-winners-and-losers-but-is-the-data-good

It seems to support Toshiba's drives more than other vendors (and in the past, when I replaced my friends laptop HDD with a WD higher capacity and faster one, it broke down, twice - out of the blue after several months - and once I replaced it with a Toshiba, then it worked fine - granted, that was several years ago).

Though, it would appear that buyers of portable HDD's seem to not be experiencing problems with HDD's themselves failing, but rather to the cheap SATA to USB3 interface failing, resulting in what appears to be a broken HDD - even though the HDD when connected via new/proper SATA to USB3 interface seemed to have been working fine.

This might be useful to read:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6121

If that is the case, and if the cheap interface is often the problem, we'd need a proper replacement (obviously) - but how do you re-integrate it into the casing the HDD came with?

 

Deks, it depends on the case. Probably easier to replace the case with cheapest USB 2.0 from eBay/Amazon. Costs $3.5.

 

I've always used an 2.5 Sata SSD inside a USB 3 enclosure for my backups. I don't have masses of crucial data to backup so a 250GB SSD works fine for me. The rest goes on a massive mechanical HDD in another USB enclosure. I travel a lot and luggage tends to be thrown around by airport staff so SSD seemed like a good idea - the mechanical HDD often travels the same way and so far no problems.