Most reliable External HDD?

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iqbal-ahmed

Commendable
Sep 2, 2017
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Hi,

What is the most reliable External Hard Disk Drive available at the moment?

I bought a 500GB Western Digital external drive that lasted 3 years. Albeit with slow transfer of information rate. All of a sudden the light started flashing and computer no longer recognises it. So I think I lost all my data.

My budget is up to £150, ($200).

Many thanks.
 
Solution
Solandri
The variability of reliability among individual HDDs within each model HDD is larger than the variability between different brands and models. In other words, while the odds are of a drive failure are slightly lower if you buy a known reliable model, it's a small improvement compared to the overall failure rate. Like trying to improve your car's gas mileage by emptying the ashtray of coins.

Compound this with it taking several years to generate enough reliability data to statistically determine if a model is reliable, and you might as well ask a fortune teller to peer into a crystal ball and recommend a HDD.

The best way to proceed is to assume the HDD will fail. Buy whatever drive suits your needs for the lowest price, then make...
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Kasper Jorgensen

Estimable
Jun 10, 2017
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Try to break open the external enclosure, then take out the sata drive inside and mount it as an internal drive in your computer. That way you can see if it is the drive itself that has failed or if it is just the sata to usb converter or maybe just the cable or connector.

For your question i would actually say that Western Digital is one of the more reliable hdd brands you can get.

Shouldn't this be in the storage category btw?
 
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Solandri

Solandri

Illustrious
Jan 4, 2012
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The variability of reliability among individual HDDs within each model HDD is larger than the variability between different brands and models. In other words, while the odds are of a drive failure are slightly lower if you buy a known reliable model, it's a small improvement compared to the overall failure rate. Like trying to improve your car's gas mileage by emptying the ashtray of coins.

Compound this with it taking several years to generate enough reliability data to statistically determine if a model is reliable, and you might as well ask a fortune teller to peer into a crystal ball and recommend a HDD.

The best way to proceed is to assume the HDD will fail. Buy whatever drive suits your needs for the lowest price, then make sure you keep backups of any important data you put on the drive. This could mean buying a second HDD, or burning important data to optical discs, or backing up stuff on cloud services. The absolute worst thing you can do is become complacent and think you're safe because you bought a "known reliable" HDD model.
 
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Solution
USAFRet

USAFRet

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Moderator
Mar 16, 2013
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All drives die eventually.
All of them.

This is what backups are for.
 
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