Reliable External Hard Drive

Is the Western Digital 2TB My Book Essential external hard drive (USB) a good choice or should I look at something else?

http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …k_Essential.htm​l#features

If you have esata capability, esata version is better. but should be fine, I have half a dozen WD drives and they work fine.

EDIT: Just reformatted my 2tb WD esata drive and started putting files back on. About 50gb of large video files. Transferring to the disk at 70mb/s.

Western Digital, Seagate and Maxtor are all well respected hard drive lines. The maxtor brand is owned by Seagate FYI and generally is used for lower capacity drives.

Thanks basroil and mrfixit.

Update, now onto 500gb of cr2 and xmp files (95110 files total), transferring at 68.5mb/s... got to love eSATA drives. If you can, go with eSATA.

If you really care about your data you need off-site storage with redundancy.

The best solution (IMO) is two bare drives (1TB are about $70 now) of the same capacity that connect to your computer(s) using an eSATA dock and that back up the same files (so you have the same stuff on both the HDD) using something like SyncToy. And when you are done copying, you put the hard drives in a box and store one of them off site (in my case it's in locked drawer at work). Only keep one of the HDD at home, always keep one off site. So you get the benefits of a de-facto RAID with off site storage. A real RAID solution will still be stuck to your computer, unless you plan to lug it off site or store stuff online (which means you need to have an internet connection to recover the data). Here you eject the HDD and take it with you.

If you only have one computer you just need one eSATA dock, I back up relevant data from three computers, so each of them have an eSATA dock/port.....that back up to one drive at SATA speeds which then can be stored off site.

Even the fancy SSD drives use a SATA interface. When I can get a reliable 1TB SSD for $70, this set up will still be the same, only it will back up faster, lighter and can be handled a bit more recklessly.

gjman wrote in post #9467026
Even the fancy SSD drives use a SATA interface. When I can get a reliable 1TB SSD for $70, this set up will still be the same, only it will back up faster, lighter and can be handled a bit more recklessly.

Tell me where in the future you buy your stuff

basroil wrote in post #9467220
Tell me where in the future you buy your stuff

Oh I am pretty sure that $70 1TB SSD will certainly happen.....the only thing I am not sure about is if SATA would be the interface.

At it would be cheaper than this:

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gjman wrote in post #9468655
Oh I am pretty sure that $70 1TB SSD will certainly happen.....the only thing I am not sure about is if SATA would be the interface.

At it would be cheaper than this:

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Well... IDE was with us for almost 20 years, and my new motherboard for my HTPC had one (and I had to use it to install windows, since the power supply was molex and bluray was sata only). And yes, it'll be around in the future, I just want to know when

I have had 2 WD MyBooks fail... but come to find out, the HD's didn't fail the MyBook electronics failed. I removed them from the case and discarded the "stuff" and reformatted them to NTFS.. They work fine.
They were 500GB drives and one is in a new case the other is in my desktop.

I had one fail, not the drive, but the box.

Anything else.

Western Digital Drives are very reliable, I would recommend them!

I have a 500G La Cie. I just bought a 2TB La Cie because I can't believe after 6 years the 500G hasn't crashed yet...but it hasn't.

mckinleypics wrote in post #9470479
I have a 500G La Cie. I just bought a 2TB La Cie because I can't believe after 6 years the 500G hasn't crashed yet...but it hasn't.

Do you know what drives are used inside a LaCie? I am pretty sure they just make enclosures, not hard drives.

themadman wrote in post #9470913
Do you know what drives are used inside a LaCie? I am pretty sure they just make enclosures, not hard drives.

I think Quantum. They hold themselves out as a hard drive manufacturer though.