Are External Hard Drives Safe?

MrAlaweey98 · Oct 15, 2014

I am thinking of buying the Samsung M3 1TB USB 3.0 slimline portable hard drive. Are external hard drives safe. Do they have moving parts from the inside. Also do they have a limit to the number of times they can write and read data. I am just going to be using this hard drive to backup my files in my computer.

plaintuts · Oct 15, 2014

Its practically the same as a normal hard drive...

Just dont drop it
Or
Shake it during usage

Brunostako · Oct 15, 2014

External HDDs are exactly the same a internal ones. Yes, they have moving parts.

The only bottleneck you could encounter is the USB port, but you're using 3.0 so there's not really a problem.

All HDDs can get damaged when shaking then WHILE THEY ARE WORKING. When a HDD is turned off or enters sleep state, the reader needles retract and the platters stop sniping. That reduces the risk of scratching the platters.

On an external HDD you must be careful, even more if it's a 3.5" drive, or it could get damaged quickly.

Eximo · Oct 15, 2014

For bulk storage and backups I purchased an external hard drive dock that accepts standard 3.5 and 2.5 inch drives. Save a little money by being able to buy large barebones drives later on. When off, most drives are rated between 200 and 300G impact, which means throwing it across a room for a sudden stop against something hard (And it might still work)

I use several WD and Seagate external drives at work (Some performing semi-critical tasks hooked up to data servers, yay cheap bosses who won't spring for expanding the SAS bus and replacing drives in older servers)

If you are worried about physical integrity, you can look at external SSD drives which have no moving parts. There are also SSD's available in USB thumb drive format up to 256GB (expect to pay a lot for either)

MrAlaweey98 · Oct 15, 2014

Eximo :

For bulk storage and backups I purchased an external hard drive dock that accepts standard 3.5 and 2.5 inch drives. Save a little money by being able to buy large barebones drives later on. When off, most drives are rated between 200 and 300G impact, which means throwing it across a room for a sudden stop against something hard (And it might still work)

I use several WD and Seagate external drives at work (Some performing semi-critical tasks hooked up to data servers, yay cheap bosses who won't spring for expanding the SAS bus and replacing drives in older servers)

If you are worried about physical integrity, you can look at external SSD drives which have no moving parts. There are also SSD's available in USB thumb drive format up to 256GB (expect to pay a lot for either)

But are they limited to the amount of data they can read and write?

Eximo · Oct 16, 2014

Not quite sure which one you are asking about. Storage capacity is variable on the device. SSDs generally have a MTBF of 7-10 years of use, Hard drives are usually a lot less.

That is no guarantee that a drive won't fail on the first day, week, month, or year. That is what backing up is all about. Warranties will replace your drive, not usually your data.

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Are External Hard Drives Safe?

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