External Hard Drive Purchase

Well after receiving multiple messages on my MacBook Pro that the drive is full, and almost filling up my portable hard drive, I'm in need of a new external hard drive. I'm probably going to go with a desktop one since I don't really need a second portable.

My question, does brand really make THAT much of a difference? Western Digital seems like a pretty cheap option with a lot of storage space and overall good reviews, but I don't want to risk all my stored media if it's going to crap out on me.

Any input/suggestions?

-Nick

buy whatever, pay a few bucks for an extended three year warranty, turn it in at the end, get another

G-Technology drives are pretty standard. I also have a western digital both of which work fine.

I had trouble with Seagate but WD's have been fine. I'll buy WD again when I need one.

Seagate customer service is not good about helping with there products.

Don't whatever you do, rely on one drive to store everything - that's a cast iron way to guarantee that when the drive dies, you lose everything....

Russo09 wrote in post #16730250
My question, does brand really make THAT much of a difference?

No.

First, there are only three companies making drives today: Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba. All other brands are using one of their drives.

Second, failures affect all makes. Everyone has their duds and you'll find negative reviews for all of them. Don't get hung up on this.

Get something that meets your budget, and get at least two of them to maintain duplicate copies.

ten31 wrote in post #16730305
buy whatever, pay a few bucks for an extended three year warranty, turn it in at the end, get another

You're better off buying something with a decent manufacturer warranty. Western Digital seems to be pretty good in this regard, and are usually my first choice for that reason.

I have settled on WD having had a lot of trouble with Seagates including two copy backups of the same data failing simultaneously. I'm quite a fan of OWC external technology but as above, there are limited numbers of actual drive manufacturers.

Thank goodness they came down in price again after that post factory fire (?) period when they all got very expensive.

As an aside, I've just installed a hybrid 1Tb drive in my laptop and I rather like it so far.

I use WD for HDD's these days, had two new seagates fail in the past year as I used to be a fan of their drives. Now I'm sticking to WD and have no issues for the past few years.
I use Samsung SSD's though.

I've been kinda looking for 2Tb Thunderbolt drives but haven't found any yet.