Ask HN: Recommended external Hard Drive

3 points by nkh 12 years ago | 4 comments

I have had a couple of external dives fail on me over the years. Before I purchase the next, I was wondering if there are any units that you would highly recommend.

valarauca1 12 years ago |

Generally speaking don't buy a packaged external hard drive. Getting an enclosure is your best bet. This means you'll actually be able to select the class of the hard drive, its size, and specs via consumer research. Not buying some black box.

The second thing to look into is an external power supply. While this seems bulky, extra cords, etc. It will help extend the life of your drive since you'll be less prone to rapid plug/unplug/plug cycles that are better left for USB drives, not spinning hard drivers, and keep its power up allowing for it to end writes, park heads, close file system, etc. On actual power. Not power derived from the disk slowly spinning down.

adventured 12 years ago |

I've had a really great experience with the WD Elements line. It seems like WD is phasing them out in favor of the Passport slim / ultra line though. And before moving to the Elements product, I had purchased numerous of their my book line without any failures across several years and being on 24/7.

ericcumbee 12 years ago |

are you wanting external or portable? if your looking for an external that is just going to sit on a desk. I'd just buy internal drives and a usb/sata "toaster" dock.

fsk 12 years ago |

Seagate