Reliable External Hard Drive > 1TB - What Drive and where to buy?

r3nu4l

I've recently had not one but two Western Digital Elements 1TB 3.5" External Hard Drives fail on me. My 1TB Western Digital Elements Portable Hard Drive is still going strong but is now rapidly filling up.

Can someone recommend to me either portable or regular external hard drives that they have been using for longer than 1 year and are > 1TB in storage capacity?

Also, where should I buy online? I've looking at Dabs and Elara and they are certainly better than PC World but where else should I be looking or buying from?

I really need reliability as these drives will be used to store files of sentimental value.

ED E

Are you moving these drives moved around? Thats a pretty unlucky streak.

If the files are important, PAY FOR OFFSITE BACKUP. Really. Do it. Dont be the guy posting on here in a couple years with the "Oh **** how do I recover files" thread.

r3nu4l

No, not moving drives around and they were purchased one, six months after the other! Unlucky is right

Anyway, I didn't lose any data thanks to my portable hard drive and my current laptop drive.

As for offsite, I'm not sure, are you talking Cloud storage? I really don't trust the Cloud and wouldn't use Dropbox for example if they paid me

I also don't trust another human being with my data and don't want anyone but me accessing it.

If you could explain the mechanics of off-site storage I might consider it but I'm very doubtful.

I should have said that while most of the files are sentimental there are a few hundred gigs of files related to my business when I was a freelance writer. Those files are extremely confidential.

So, any recommendations for drives?

EDIT: Ironically, my portable drive has been dropped and chucked into bags travelling on planes, trains and buses and is ticking along perfectly.

oppenheimer1

r3nu4l wrote: »

I've recently had not one but two Western Digital Elements 1TB 3.5" External Hard Drives fail on me. My 1TB Western Digital Elements Portable Hard Drive is still going strong but is now rapidly filling up.

Can someone recommend to me either portable or regular external hard drives that they have been using for longer than 1 year and are > 1TB in storage capacity?

Also, where should I buy online? I've looking at Dabs and Elara and they are certainly better than PC World but where else should I be looking or buying from?

I really need reliability as these drives will be used to store files of sentimental value.

Western digital black or blue drives have decent reliability. Get yourself a NAS and set up a RAID array to protect yourself from failures (which are inevitable)

ressem

There aren't really any guarantees with hard drives.

And as Microsoft demonstrated a few years back, sometimes these cloud providers can irrecoverably wipe data in error.
(http://www.networkworld.com/article/2251162/smartphones/microsoft-red-faced-after-massive-sidekick-data-loss.html 2009)

Though the drives sold as part of external commodity drives tend not to be from the premium range, not rated for heavy usage.

Getting two from maybe the western digital RE range [no, I don't mean Red], and installing within an external enclosure that allows airflow.

A good quality NAS from Synology or QNAP that supports cloud and local syncing. The cheap Seagate NAS are not good, the Buffalo not much better.

Additional buying options,
Amazon (using curiua.com), Eurieka.ie (next day delivery for most of the country.)

ED E

Any important(irreplaceable) data should really be in 3 places to be considered backed up. As such mine is: On workstation - Replicated to NAS - Sync'd from NAS to Crashplan.

I like you dont want anyone else poking around my files, even if they are mostly just an archive of family photos. Thats why I, and I alone, hold the encryption key and just upload a blob of gibberish to Crashplan. They store that blob for me, I give them 5USD a month and if some scumbag ever breaks in and robs all my electronics my files will still be safe. Great value for peace of mind in my eyes.