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external HDDs

chenks76
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external HDDs

what's the recommendations for external HDDs brands these days?
i currently have a Seagate 2TB USB3, but Seagate in their wisdom decided not to support Windows 8 or 10 with the config application that comes with it.

looked at WD, but they still seem to have a bad rep for drives failing early.

I need a 4TB drive.

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Darkfire
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Re: external HDDs

I don't have too many externals but I swear by HGST/Western Digital for internal drives,had too many reliability issues with Seagate.

 

 

PeeGee
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Re: external HDDs

Seagate seem to have improved according to this , though that may not have been difficult Smiley

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chenks76
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Re: external HDDs


@Darkfire wrote:

I don't have too many externals but I swear by HGST/Western Digital for internal drives,had too many reliability issues with Seagate.

 


WD external HDDs seem to have a pretty bad rep for premature failures.

who are HGST?

twocvbloke
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Re: external HDDs


@chenks76 wrote:

who are HGST?


 

Hitachi, aka the "Deathstar" drives that like to shed their magnetic media from the platters...

chenks76
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Re: external HDDs

wonder if it would be better to just get a NAS and stick some HDDs in that.
but then a NAS might be louder than an external HDD due to it having fans etc.
FreddieFlint
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Re: external HDDs

go for the NAS solution, I have 2x3tb WD MyClouds plugged into my router. One is a couple of years old, on 24/7 and not a prob with it at all, the other one I bought from WD's outlet site, refurbished as new and around £50 cheaper than a new one.

chenks76
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Re: external HDDs

when i said a NAS, i meant a real NAS and not one of those WD pseudo-NASs Grin
as in a NAS where i can put my own HDDs in it and hot-swap them out.

Darkfire
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Re: external HDDs

HP Gen8 microserver, a few 3TB WD reds, freenas and you're golden Tongue

chenks76
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Re: external HDDs

the HPs are not cheap though.

and probably loud too with the fans keeping it cool.

VileReynard
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Re: external HDDs

I can't understand why NAS's are sold for £200+ (without disks), small CPU's & little memory.

e.g. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-Station-DS216-Network-Attached/dp/B0185ZU0O2/ref=sr_1_16?s=compute...

You could use an old PC - such as a laptop with a broken screen - but with a Gigabit ethernet card for virtually zero cost.

I've got a 2TB Seagate USB external drive with its own power supply which I use for backups and also

I have an (old) 750GB Seagate drive in a box with ethernet and a low-powered CPU with built in web server, FTP server & NFS server - bought via Ebay. It calls itself a NAS. But it's terribly slow - perhaps 1+ Mbyte/sec.
BTW I reformatted my disks (to a non-Windows format) as you never need any of manufacturers stuff.

BTW I always get Seagate disks.

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7up
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Re: external HDDs


chenks76 wrote:

i currently have a Seagate 2TB USB3, but Seagate in their wisdom decided not to support Windows 8 or 10 with the config application that comes with it.


I suppose it depends what you need to do with the config utility.

The only time I needed one was to turn off the pesky power saving mode that they all come with and enabled by default... which then takes 30 seconds to realise you want to access the drive and spin back up.

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7up
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Re: external HDDs


@chenks76 wrote:

@Darkfire wrote:

I don't have too many externals but I swear by HGST/Western Digital for internal drives,had too many reliability issues with Seagate.

 


WD external HDDs seem to have a pretty bad rep for premature failures.

who are HGST?


 

I've only ever had one WD drive (second hand) and from memory it didn't live that long. I've never been overly keen on seagate either but they're cheaper and I have quite a few of them in various places that still seem to be functional. Yes I do have some dead ones but most still work.

Maxtor... theres one you've probably not heard of for a while. I have an 80Gb sat on my desk that did start to fail on me. It's been sat around for yonks waiting for me to try and pull some data off it... too scared to plug it in though in case it actually fails completely lol. I will try at some point...

As for Hitachi drives, I bought one reduced from Tesco years ago, got it home and it was making unhealthy noises straight out of the box. Tesco clearly knew they were dodgy or they wouldn't have been trying to sell them off cheap. There's a lesson there, never trust the too good to be true reductions in the supermarkets.

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7up
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Re: external HDDs


@chenks76 wrote:
wonder if it would be better to just get a NAS and stick some HDDs in that.
but then a NAS might be louder than an external HDD due to it having fans etc.

Dunno chenks... I got an old emachines (used to be my main PC) that has a single core processor and HDD so quiet you'd struggle to realise it's actually running. I read somewhere that the quiet HDDs are the ones also used in PVR / TV recording digital thingies so you might want to look at those. It may be a full blown PC (thus with more ability for custom software etc) but it would do the job of a NAS server without a glitch if I installed another drive into it. If you can find a cheap one (or perhaps a thin fanless terminal) then you might be better looking at that option.

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chenks76
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Re: external HDDs


@7up wrote:


I suppose it depends what you need to do with the config utility.

The only time I needed one was to turn off the pesky power saving mode that they all come with and enabled by default... which then takes 30 seconds to realise you want to access the drive and spin back up.



that is exactly the reason. all the power tools and the light settings are done via the tool, which doesn't work on anything above Windows 7.

and if you have an external HDD that takes 30 seconds to wake and spin up then you have a faulty external HDD!