Suggestions for external USB hard disks

OldMainframeGuy · Nov 23, 2024

Greetings all. Does anyone have any suggestions for USB external hard disks? I picked one up yesterday at BestBuy - WD Easystore 20T - for about $250 (Black Friday deal). The drive was extremely noisy (made sounds a dying drive would make); the LED flashed continuously even though nothing was trying to access it and WD's Drive Utilities "quick drive scan" hung at 90%. BestBuy is very good about returns so I returned the drive to the store. Many of the reviewers on BestBuy's website had the same complaints. Seagate doesn't fare any better review-wise so I decided to check out a more expensive options - LaCie. LaCie is now owned by Seagate and the reviews were mediocre. I'm trying to consolidate 3 4TB WD MyBook drives into one drive (lots of video editing and backups). Is anyone deliriously happy with an external USB hard disk they're using? It's disheartening to think you can't buy something like this any more that's not going to crap out on you.

MisterEd · Nov 23, 2024

I have purchased the following external HDDs the last five years:

2024-11-23 11_45_36-Document1 - Word.webp

Hopefully, the 20TB Easystore will be OK. Otherwise, I will be returning it like you did.

Looking at the reviews I see that 90% of the reviews are positive. The negative ones either seemed to complain about the drive being noisy or the drive failed within the first few months.

Note when I ordered a 20TB WD Easystore from Best Buy last night my options were to pick it up next Friday or have it delivered next Tuesday. I chose to have it delivered next Tuesday. Strangely, I just checked and see that now I can pick it up in one hour or have it delivered Tomorrow. They must have gotten a shipment in.

If the WD Easystore doesn't work out I will be back in the same place as you wanting advice on a large external HDD. I will be following this thread to see if you get any good advice.

BTW, the plans were for the 20TB Easystore were for it to provide additional storage not necessarily replace existing backup storage. That way if one of the backup drives failed I would still have the data on another drive. Maybe I would be better off building a RAID array. It would initially cost more but would simplify my data backups.

Berton · Nov 23, 2024

I have a couple WD My Book 4TB drives, not very noisy for HDDs. Also have 2 Seagate IronWolf 4TB HDDs in my Buffalo NAS unit, fairly quiet. There does seem to a difference between 5400RPM and 7200RPM drives.

Mark Phelps · Nov 23, 2024

I've used a couple of different WD 2TB external HDDs over the years and had poor results with them. Both only lasted a couple of years before the failure rates made them unusable.

I regularly used them to copy system backup images of 25GB or so from my primary desktop and other desktop to another desktop I had configured with a server case to hold several large HDDs, I thought that was all working well because I did image verification checks using Macrium Reflect (MR) on the files before copying them to the HDDs. But later, when I went to do a restore from one of the backups, it failed verification. So, I tried it on other backups and they all failed!

I then bought a 1TB USB external SSD (all that I could afford), copied the same backups to it, and then copied them to the server HDDs, and when I did image verifications on them, they ALL passed.

So, I quit using the external HDDs.

I was able later, to afford a 2TB external SSD and found it to be completely reliable, as well.

Berton · Nov 23, 2024

Mark Phelps said:
I've used a couple of different WD 2TB external HDDs over the years and had poor results with them. Both only lasted a couple of years before the failure rates made them unusable.

I used a couple WD Elements which ended up being the only external drives that failed. A My Book failed but the drive was still usable, the interface in the case was what failed. The drive was good but had to reformat to use in a computer as the interface had its own system.

Marcus Vinicus · Nov 23, 2024

Re LaCie external drives, I have a d2 Professional 6TB and have owned it for a while now. It is very good and probably the best external drive I've used over the years.

FrancoDT · Nov 23, 2024

I've been using this little 2TB Samsung SSD USB drive as a backup drive since August and have no complaints thus far. Over 33,000 5 star reviews so far. Amazon.com

pparks1 · Nov 24, 2024

I've almost never had a problem with a WD external drive. I have a small 4TB 2.5 drive in my laptop bag, and got an 8TB WD Essentials drive that I use for my Macrium backups. I've also got 2-3 other WD drives that I use for Apple Time Machine backups, and have a couple of Seagates' connected to some Xbox One's in the house. All of these drives have been fine for my use.

OldMainframeGuy · Nov 24, 2024

Berton said:
I have a couple WD My Book 4TB drives, not very noisy for HDDs. Also have 2 Seagate IronWolf 4TB HDDs in my Buffalo NAS unit, fairly quiet. There does seem to a difference between 5400RPM and 7200RPM drives.

I have 3 WD MyBook 4TB and one 3TB which have run quietly without issues for years. It seems that the newer higher-capacity drives are generating complaints.

I just feel like having 4 USB disks hanging off my machine is a bit much; I want to consolidate the 3 4TB drives into one and the remaining drive will be used for system backups. I do a lot of video editing and that consumes large amounts of space.

Berton · Nov 24, 2024

OldMainframeGuy said:
I just feel like having 4 USB disks hanging off my machine is a bit much;

To that issue, I added a 4-port USB 3 Self-powered Hub for the 2 x 4TB drives, a 1TB portable drive and a self-powered dual bay drive dock, the only load on the Desktop is the cable from a USB 3 port to the Hub. The Hub has switches for each port, don't have to keep unplugging things and helps with the drive dock as it cannot be connected to a computer during hardware cloning of drives.

jimbo45 · Nov 24, 2024

If you get an enclosure or a powered USB->SATA adapter then with Black Friday deals there are incredible bargains for external HDD's == ensure you buy those with 7200 RPM and a decent cache though -- excellent for holding huge amounts of data at very little cost per byte.

You can even use these on MiniPC's vis the USB connectors.

Running Linux on one of these minipc's (Windows works fine too) and just look at what I've got connected HDD wise :

Keeo OS and things like photoshop /video editing scratch areas etc on an SSD / Nvme device bit for large data volumes e.g music and video storage, backups etc you can't beat these now.

Cheers
jimbo

RD Mercer · Nov 24, 2024

Purchased a WD Passport around 20 years ago, it's still going great. I keep all my movies on it, to take with me if I want to go to someone's home to watch a movie.

colinp · Nov 26, 2024

Very interesting thread. I can probably count on a half a hand, all the HDD's that have failed on me over the years, but I really can't say that I wasn't the real cause of any of the failures.

However, I have a USB 2TB Seagate 2.5" drive (5 or more years old) that has always been quite cranky about working properly, either in windows or linux. I always suspected that it was the external case itself that was finicky and not the USB cable (verified by using another known to work cable), but since I am fixed on redundancy, I have several backups of backups anyway and just put up with it. Then about a month ago, when I went to use it to backup this Windows computer, the blasted thing wouldn't show itself in windows at all (I never bothered to plug it into a linux box to verify). I then took the thing out of the external HDD case and plugged it into a SATA-USB cable (that I usually use to connect and set up SSD's) and now all is right with the universe. Both windows as well as linux work just fine with the drive.

bikemanI7 · Nov 26, 2024

Have Western Digital Externals, a Western Digital Flash drive, 6-7 Sandisk flash drives, all perform well still

Oldest External is WD Elements Desktop 500GB, (Christmas 2003 Gift)

All seem to work fine to this day

WD My Passport x2
WD My Book 8TB (Backup Drive)
WD 4TB Black in external enclosure nowadays
WD 1TB Black in external enclosure
2 Seagate External drives, 1 in Sabrent Enclosure (8TB)

So plenty of drives indeed

OldMainframeGuy · Nov 26, 2024

bikemanI7 said:
Have Western Digital Externals, a Western Digital Flash drive, 6-7 Sandisk flash drives, all perform well still

Oldest External is WD Elements Desktop 500GB, (Christmas 2003 Gift)

All seem to work fine to this day

WD My Passport x2
WD My Book 8TB (Backup Drive)
WD 4TB Black in external enclosure nowadays
WD 1TB Black in external enclosure
2 Seagate External drives, 1 in Sabrent Enclosure (8TB)

So plenty of drives indeed

I have 3 WD 4TB and 1 WD 3TB MyBooks that are running fine. Does your 8TB drive run quietly?

bikemanI7 · Nov 26, 2024

OldMainframeGuy said:
I have 3 WD 4TB and 1 WD 3TB MyBooks that are running fine. Does your 8TB drive run quietly?

Yes the My Book 8TB is Pretty quiet, sometimes a little noise, but isn't bad to me at all. Now when i had my old WD Black 4TB internal--that drive was louder than the 8TB Drive

Suggestions for external USB hard disks

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