Which drive type is most likely to fail ?

[Bacterius]

Hello,
I use laptops everyday and I was wondering which drive was most likely to fail over time : the internal hard drive located within the laptop or the USB-connected external (large) HDD ? I ask this question to know in which direction I should backup my drives (I do not use online storage for bandwidth reasons).

Thanks.

 

[dokk2]

That's not that easy of a question to answer as there are too many variables, but off hand I would guess that the the external drive would be your best bet as it should stay put whereas we sometimes move laptops around and maybe even drop them..

 

[sturm]

Any drive can fail, yes even SSDs, so it's always best to make 2 backups if you can.
An external drive that is only used for backups should last a long time, but even then you never know.

 

[Bacterius]

Hmm, just assuming the laptop is not to be moved around (it stays where the power plug is ), I would gather from your replies that the external hard drive is most likely to fail as it is more vulnerable than the one inside the laptop case. So I guess I'll just backup my external HDD to the internal one, then backup the internal one to the external HDD if time and storage space is not an issue (shouldn't be with 2TB x 2, right ?). Thanks again for the replies !

PS : I would also select dokk2's reply as a best answer but I can only choose one

 

[Bacterius]

Best answer selected by Bacterius.