Most Reliable external HD?

I am looking to pick up a 1TB external HD to back up all my photos (and some other media). I have heard a few horror stories about external HD's failing, which I would hate to have happen.

Can anyone recommend me a reliable brand of external hard drive? Thanks!

TWO of any top brands, i.e., there's no single most reliable brand, so as far as I'm concerned having a duplicate HD is the way to go.

I really like Western Digital, used them for the past 10 years and been very good. But I also backup my data and use Mozy.

Coppatop85 wrote in post #9959082
I am looking to pick up a 1TB external HD to back up all my photos (and some other media). I have heard a few horror stories about external HD's failing, which I would hate to have happen.

Can anyone recommend me a reliable brand of external hard drive? Thanks!

More important than the brand of drive is the type of enclosure. Heat is the greatest enemy and the greatest failing of many enclosures--an enclosure that forces a drive to run hot will kill any brand quickly.

I prefer enclosures that are designed to have very large air spaces around the drive body that are designed for effective convection cooling--the Western Digital "book" enclosures are like that (and Western Digital is probably the best consumer drive you can get right now).

Second, imo, are fan-cooled enclosures, but they have the problem of noise and the possibility of failure--once the fan fails, the drive will overheat and fail quickly.

The worst enclosures are those that depend on conducting heat from the drive through a smooth-bodied metal enclosure.

Tons of threads about this...but, I've had a Western Digital for about 3 years and it's been flawless

I've had really good luck (knocking on wood as I type this) with both Western Digital and LaCie drives.

Have been using Seagate FreeAgent USB drives for years - no problems yet, but then I only use them to back up photos. Have 160GB, 500GB, 1TB and 1.5TB - something like that. I do not keep them on all the time.

Recently got a WD 1.5TB which have worked well, but it's only been couple months.

These are the brand that I hear are one of the most reliable solutions for an external hard drive

http://www.lacie.com/c​a/index.htm
http://www.g-technology.com/
http://www.wdc.com/en/
http://www.seagate.com​/www/en-us/

If you have a grand to spend, you could get a Drobo unit, and max it out with hard drives. It lets your run standard hard drives, up to 10+ TB of data. http://www.drobo.com/r​esources/vm_photograph​y.php

Have you considered getting a NAS? (Network Attached Storage). If you get one with two bays, you could set it up with RAID, which is great for redundancy. The pro is if any one of the hard drive dies, you could still recover you data. The con is that your two drives essentially becomes one (since one is your real data and the other is a mirror copy). An added benefit of NAS drives is that it is connected to the internet, so you can upload your photos when you're away.

I would buy an enterprise level drive and put it in your own enclosure. Manufacturers do not put the best drives in their externals.

I have:

Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 2.5 Inch, 8 MB Cache, 5400 RPM SATA II WD5000BEVT

enclosed in a

Acomdata Tango 2.5-Inch USB 2.0 eSATA Portable Enclosure for SATA Hard Drive TNGXXXUSE-BLK (Black)

Easy installation, all metal enclosure that conducts heat away from the drive. Small enough to fit in my shirt pocket. All my stuff is backed up on it monthly, and the drive is stored in a physically separate location from my residence.

Almost all drives are about the same nowadays. Each mfg has issues with their drives and reliability is not something that can be accounted for anymore, unfortunately.

Generally, the larger the drive, the more possibilities of having issues, and also losing the most data, obviously.

As has been suggested, RAID is the way to go, along with off-site back up in addition to that.

Like others I have a bunch of enclosures and "safety nets". I use a WD Studio 1TB alongside my 1TB Time Capsule that has another 1TB hanging off of it. I've been lingering on ordering a Drobo or a DroboPro (video work sucks too many gigs of space doing post effects) but am waiting for a nice price point on the Drobo FS or DroboPro.

I also backup all my stuff off-site and have an external drive at my office as well.

I'm a fan of the Lacies. FW 800, and made of aluminum so they dissipate heat. I've been looking at the Drobos but they are expensive.

You might want to consider QNAP or Synology. Both are not bad compared to Drobo.