Are All External Hard Drives Created Equal?

[mikeleblanc413]

I have two WD external hard drives...dinosaur's by today's standards...they're large...like a big book...I notice that many of the newer ones are not much larger than a pack of cigarettes and run strictly from a USB port. My dinosaur's have to be plugged in electrically. I'm looking for a 500G device. Are they all created equal? What is working best for you? THANKS!

[RV_CONUS]

I use a passport 1TB and a Sony 1TB external 3.5 hard drives.

I plug them into a Blu ray DVD player through USB ports. No external electric plug. The Blu ray powers both.

They both have worked great since December.

The drives have about 300 standard movies I own to save room in the MH, with plenty of room for more. The Blu rays have their own shelf.

[ScottMack]

Mike,

I have been using two Western Digital 3TB MY BOOK STUDIO EXTERNAL HD's (firewire 800/usb 2.0) for a little over a year. They do require external power. They aren't "dinky", but are not huge either. I am a Mac user, so I use the Firewire connection. I take one of the drives with us when we are on the road and it has worked out great so far.

I shoot RAW and my final archived images are either 8 or 16-bit TIFF, which, at 36 megapixels, gives me between a 100-200 mb file per photo. Plus, I archive my RAW masters, which are 50 mb's each.

You don't specify whether you are a PC or Mac user - the WD drives are now available with USB 3.0. I also do not know if you have a specific storage need in mind. I have been happy with the WD's and, so far, they have performed flawlessly.

[wa8yxm]

Are they all created equal: Short answer: NO

Long answer.. I am not qualified to give specifics (Have not done the research)

But: Some compaines make drives optimized for different use, I think it's Western that makes one optimized for video storage for example, and others for data other than video.

Some are faster to store and/or retrieve data

Some companies have better reputations.

I bought my last half Terabyte drive for 250 bucks at Staples last December.. It came with a Toshiba Sattlite C-55d wrapped around it and Windows 8.1 already installed. Best price on a 500 Gig drive I have found.

[fj12ryder]

It could be that the smaller USB drives are using 2.5 inch notebook drives instead of the larger 3.5 inch standard hard drives. It also might be that they discovered they don't need to cool the drives as much as they used to think.

I have a couple that use the 3.5 inch drives and one is about twice the size of the other one.

Didn't mean to repeat but was slow on the keyboard.

I wouldn't own a Seagate drive because of personal experience with failure rate.

[spadoctor]

The new drives are small because they use laptop drives not full size drives....that's why they can use USB power and no separate power cord. I bought my own case for a laptop drive ( for 8 bucks) and used a drive I already had. Works great. Many of the cases come setup for either PATA or SATA drives

[bob_nestor]

No, not all external drives are the same. There are 3.5" typically used in desktops and 2.5" typically used in notebooks and small form factor computers (like the Mac Mini). The 2.5" drives are further divided by drive height measured in MM. They can be 9MM or 12MM if I remember correctly. When replacing a laptop drive you need to get the one that fits.

Also the interfaces are different. The really old 3.5" drives were most likely PATA (parallel) interfaced; the newer ones are most likely SATA (serial) or eSATA. They're not interchangable. And if you're looking at drives used in old Sun and Mac systems they were most likely SCSI.

Then there are factors like drive speed, usually measured by spindle RPM. Cheaper ones will turn at 5,400 RPM; most will turn at 7,200 RPM and high end will go at about 10,000 RPM.

There are also buffer size differences in the drives.

For home use the RPM and buffer size are not really all that important, just pick a drive that fits in the space available at a price you're comfortable with. When adding an external just find one that has the right interface - USB (2 or 3), 1394 (Firewire), SATA or eSATA. It's usually best to just pick up a drive with an enclosure but that will cost a bit more. If you know what you're doing and have an old external enclosure you can find a drive that matches your enclosure.

[REWahoo]

Although I have one and it hasn't given me any problems, Seagate external drives have a reputation for a substantially higher failure rate than other brands.

http://www.neowin.net/news/seagate-hard-drives-exhibit-surprisingly-high-failures-rates-in-reliabili...

[rk911]

I used both the smaller "passport" drives and the 'MyBook' desktop drives from WD. the 'passport' serves as a travel drive with our laptop as well as our emergency backup drive that is stored in our safe deposit box. I use the 'MyBook' drives for home use.

words of caution. the 'passport' drives work well with the supplied USB cord. if you try to use it with a longer cord it may not work at all. and be sure you select a drive to match your USB port. many/most but not all USB drives are backwards compatible. that is a drive that is advertised as USB3 compliant likely will work on a USB2 port...just be sure before you buy.