Looking for new external HDD, what and where to buy?

Post by **Keiko1981** » Jan 22nd, '11, 16:29

I'm looking for one new 2TB external HDD, but I'm not sure of which one I should buy or which Swedish online store that is best to buy from:
I have bought things from Webhallen before, without problems, but never any electronic things.

I'm thinking of this one:
Western Digital Extern HDD Elements Desktop 2.0 2TB (USB 2.0)

Edit Forgot to add this link. A list of several external HDDs.

I would be happy if you got some feedback/suggestions.

Zero2 · Post by **Zero2** » Jan 24th, '11, 15:29

I can't vouch for that model specifically, but WD is usually reliable, I have three old 1TB drives that have been working flawlessly for 2-3 years. Another good alternative would be buying a regular internal HD like this (cheaper) & a frame like this one (not cheaper, but better... and with RAID).

Webhallen is fine, netonnet.se & komplett.se are other great alternatives. If you've settled for a product look it up on prisjakt.nu though, the price varies a lot between shops.

Post by **Keiko1981** » Jan 24th, '11, 15:51

Zero2 wrote:I can't vouch for that model specifically, but WD is usually reliable, I have three old 1TB drives that have been working flawlessly for 2-3 years. Another good alternative would be buying a regular internal HD like this (cheaper) & a frame like this one (not cheaper, but better... and with RAID).

Webhallen is fine, netonnet.se & komplett.se are other great alternatives. If you've settled for a product look it up on prisjakt.nu though, the price varies a lot between shops.

Thank you for the feedback.
I think I will go for the external driver, I already got one internal 1TB (for dramas mostly) and another one about 350GB (partitioned) one part having WIndows on it and the other part music, pictures, documents and a few dramas.

theuncontactable · Post by **theuncontactable** » Jan 24th, '11, 16:34

I have the 1TB version of that drive and I have no problems with it.
I actually used a lot of different models of WD external hard drives over the years now and they still work.

I had a problem with one of them but that was my fault.

Don't get Memorex Hard Drives. I had two and the electronics failed on them really quickly.

Post by **k361** » Jan 24th, '11, 17:06

I have an External WD Elements 1.5T and it act strange unter Linux. I set the partition type for linux (ext3) and after the next power on it was reset back to a windows partiton. So i did not use it.
There is no official information about the meaning of the blinking LED. After an unknown time the device goes to power-safe and indicated it with blinking several times with the LED.

I have some external Chiligreen HD (1T, 1,5T, 2T - using Samsung and WD HD) for backup and daily use.

I austria start a new copyright fee for all hardrives (about 30 euro for 1,5T). *grr*

Post by **Keiko1981** » Jan 24th, '11, 17:48

theuncontactable wrote:Don't get Memorex Hard Drives. I had two and the electronics failed on them really quickly.

Thank you for the warning, I'll make sure to avoid that brand.

yuzurose · Post by **yuzurose** » Jun 11th, '11, 03:40

Hi i stumbled upon this thread when i was researching for my next Harddrive to buy, not sure if you've purchased your external yet.

Just thought i would share my experience

I WAS a firm believer of Western Digital, but their latest products have been completely shoddy.

The WD My Book Essential 2T and 500G Elements both had a reading and utilization issue, i lost all my data, after using it for 5 and 6 months respectively.

Their my passport series seems fairly reliable, i've had a 320G for 3 over years and a recent 1T which (crossing fingers) works well

I would say, despite their attractive pricing perhaps WD's drive should be bought with caution.

Should anyone have any recommendations on reliable drives, do let me know, or are using cloud service for storage, wondering how that's working for video content.

XrayMind · Post by **XrayMind** » Jun 11th, '11, 05:14

As long time computer user and hard drive buyer, going back to 16-bit age, different brands goes from good to bad and bad to good in different hard drive generation.

Current gen(Perpendicular recording), I actually like Hitachi. The 3 Hitachi, a one terabytes(7200rpm), two terabytes(5400rpm), and 300gigabyte notebook drives been working pretty well for the last couple months. Hitachi emerge it's hard drive business with IBM(remember Deskstar nicknamed the Deathstar by their customers), now Hitachi is selling this unit to WD, so Hitachi brand will disappear from hard drive market just as Maxtor had when Seagate bought them.

Seagate had some firmware issue when the current gen first came out. I got couple of current gen Seagate ranging from 750giga to 2tera, both 5400 and 7200 rpm. One 1.5tera is slowly dying, one time when I copy file from it, it just stop working.Wait an hour for the drive to cool and I was able to use it again. Hope that is under warranty. I have 2 refurbished one and the lesson I learned is NEVER to buy refurbished again. You see the drives will work fine for couple of months and they start having issues, like just stop working at all and I can heard the head clicking away. After it cools down, they started to work again. I think when these were new, they have the same issues and they were send back to Seagate under warranty. Seagate only ran these drives for couple hours and it seem fine to them, so they resold them as refurbished.

As for WD, a USB 300gb note size external drive been going flaky on me. Where it not spin up when I plug it in or suddenly stop when in use. The other 1.5tbytes WD green drive that been in use for couple months has no issues.

I haven't had personal experience with Samsung, but I did help friend fix his computer and the Samsung drive that came with his Dell computer completely fail and Dell was great in replacing it. But friend lost all of his data on the hard drive.

ImL0st · Post by **ImL0st** » Jun 11th, '11, 06:36

WD 2T @89.00 USD right now

Post by **Keiko1981** » Jun 11th, '11, 12:52

Bought a Western Digital Extern HDD My Book Essential Edition 3.0 3TB (USB 3.0 / USB 2.0) in October last year and it still works fine. Running it under Windows XP.

wobblywalker · Post by **wobblywalker** » Jun 11th, '11, 13:30

Had two La Cie drives completely blow out, couldn't rescue anything, but I am also not computer savvy. Currently using a WD essential NB but it's flaking out on me, not sure if it's the drive or the old laptop (which admittedly has been dropped a couple of times), EXHD keeps disconnecting, don't know why. Got a Seagate because I heard they're good, maybe I'll switch everything over. Really, it can make you cry when you lose everything on a big EXHD, which has made me vow never to buy a La Cie again.

theuncontactable · Post by **theuncontactable** » Jun 11th, '11, 14:13

Just bought a 2.5TB WD Elements on Friday for $AU169.00.

I have 8 WD external hard drives of various models so far since 2007 and never had any problems with them.

Post by **Keiko1981** » Jan 13th, '14, 11:42

Thinking of buying another external drive, when I've got the money for it.
I'm wondering if you can any driver above 4TB which you simply plug in (and install drivers, if needed).
It looks like the external drives above 4TB is usually NAT/RAID. I have no experience of using them, so I'm hesitant to buying one, even though the space is nice.
What I've read there is several different kind of RAID.
The hard drive is visiable as one large drive, but split into parts. Also if have a certain RAID (can't remember which one), parts of one file will be split between these "drives".
Meaning if one "drive" dies, you lose all your data.
As wobblywalker mentioned above, having had a La Cie, which is a RAID.
Also read that with RAID it you can keep an backup your drive.
Sorry about the random rant.
Any suggestions is welcome.

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Looking for new external HDD, what and where to buy?

Looking for new external HDD, what and where to buy?

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