- My Forums
- Tiger Rant
- LSU Recruiting
- SEC Rant
- Saints Talk
- Pelicans Talk
- More Sports Board
- Fantasy Sports
- Golf Board
- Soccer Board
- O-T Lounge
- Tech Board
- Home/Garden Board
- Outdoor Board
- Health/Fitness Board
- Movie/TV Board
- Book Board
- Music Board
- Political Talk
- Money Talk
- Fark Board
- Gaming Board
- Travel Board
- Food/Drink Board
- Ticket Exchange
- TD Help Board
Customize My Forums- View All Forums
- Show Left Links
- Topic Sort Options
- Trending Topics
- Recent Topics
- Active Topics
Started By
Message
re: Who makes the best external hard drives?
Posted on 1/7/21 at 9:59 pm to Joshjrn
Posted on 1/7/21 at 9:59 pm to Joshjrn
quote:Maybe I don't know how to shop for hard drives, but I'm looking in the 1-4TB range and seeing a ~4X price diff. If you can find a 4TB SSD for less than $400 (a 4TB WD Red is ~$100), I'd love a link. Or the same $100 buys you only 1TB SSD.
You're only seeing that level of price increase if you compare the barest of bones HDD and a high end SSD. And I agree with you as long as you include "functionally never fails" as part of its capabilities.
But again, if you actually need like 10TB+, sure, have at it.
OP didn't specify so maybe I'm wrong, but for an external drive I'm typically looking for capacity rather than speed.
2
Posted on 1/7/21 at 10:17 pm to Joshjrn
quote:in the past year I've filled up an 8TB, 4TB and making a pretty good dent in the 14TB I bought a few weeks before Christmas.
again, if you actually need like 10TB+, sure, have at it
Then again my hobbies include having a media server and building retropie images for arcade cabinets. You buildb up a few ROM collections including video thumbnails and a few Linux images and you'll fly through that storage.
This post was edited on 1/7/21 at 10:19 pm
Posted on 1/8/21 at 3:08 am to Korkstand
I just got a 2TB SSD NVME for my new laptop. I got a cheapie Silicon Power and it was like 190. I could get 14TB for that same price at times.
Posted on 1/8/21 at 7:52 am to Korkstand
As a general response to all three:
Yes, if you need more than about 2TB, spinning rust starts to get significantly cheaper per TB. For the average home user, I would call that a ton of storage. I appreciate that, in the enthusiast space, that’s a boot drive.
OP asked who makes the best external hard drives. I could be wrong, but that sounds more like “backup drive” than “media server” to me. And if that is the case, I would never put any data I cared about on an HDD for long term safe keeping.
Now, if you want to get exotic with RAID enabled NAS, sure. But the guy asked for help buying an external hard drive
Yes, if you need more than about 2TB, spinning rust starts to get significantly cheaper per TB. For the average home user, I would call that a ton of storage. I appreciate that, in the enthusiast space, that’s a boot drive.
OP asked who makes the best external hard drives. I could be wrong, but that sounds more like “backup drive” than “media server” to me. And if that is the case, I would never put any data I cared about on an HDD for long term safe keeping.
Now, if you want to get exotic with RAID enabled NAS, sure. But the guy asked for help buying an external hard drive
This post was edited on 1/8/21 at 7:55 am
Posted on 1/8/21 at 8:34 am to Joshjrn
quote:
And if that is the case, I would never put any data I cared about on an HDD for long term safe keeping.
Anything you really care about should be stored redundantly, no matter if it is on an HDD, SSD, CD, Jaz Drive, etc, otherwise, you risk losing it forever.
This post was edited on 1/8/21 at 8:36 am
Posted on 1/8/21 at 10:13 am to Joshjrn
quote:I agree, it sounds like a backup drive, which IMO is a great use case for HDDs. You are free to disagree, which I guess you do, but I think you've got a false sense of security about SSDs. They lose data, too.
OP asked who makes the best external hard drives. I could be wrong, but that sounds more like “backup drive” than “media server” to me. And if that is the case, I would never put any data I cared about on an HDD for long term safe keeping.
If I have data that is not replaceable, I typically have 2 copies on-site and at least 1 copy off-site. So while SSDs might be more trustworthy than HDDs, I don't trust any medium completely, especially not a portable (easily misplaced) one.
Posted on 1/8/21 at 10:19 am to Fat Batman
Joslyn wrote:
quote:
And I agree with you as long as you include "functionally never fails" as part of its capabilities.
quote:
Bad blocks: Just like hard drives can develop bad sectors, SSDs can develop something similar: bad blocks. Some signs of an SSD developing a bad block is that files cannot be read or written, the file system needs to be repaired (Windows will usually warn you of this), errors are experienced while changing a file’s location, and finally, the computer is suddenly running sluggish and nothing seems to fix it.
Read/Write Errors: This goes hand-in-hand with the bad block warning we mentioned above. If you read or write a file to the SSD, and the SSD attempts the operation, but ends up not doing it and results in an error, this can be another warning that there’s something wrong, usually a bad block as mentioned above.
Frequent crashes: If you experience frequent crashing during the boot-up sequence, but it’s seemingly fine after a few attempts, this can be a sign your SSD is on its way out.
This post was edited on 1/8/21 at 10:21 am
Posted on 1/8/21 at 11:00 am to CAD703X
quote:
CAD703X
Bad blocks simply reduce the available size of the drive. As long a you aren't filling the drive to capacity, it's not a data integrity issue, as far as I know.
Posted on 1/9/21 at 7:41 am to prplhze2000
I have WD, Seagate and Toshiba externals ranging from +3 to 5 Gb and have not had any problems with any of them.
They were provided by my employer and I can't say one is better than the other. I use them for temp storage and transfer of data.
They were provided by my employer and I can't say one is better than the other. I use them for temp storage and transfer of data.
Page 2 of 2
Popular
Back to top
Follow TigerDroppings for LSU Football News