I need an external Hard Drive

[Irving]

I'm looking for an external hard drive. I don't know anything about hard drives, but I'll try my best to give you an idea of what I want. Mostly, I'm just looking to be steered away from garbage. I can't imagine I'll need more than 1T, but I'll take as much as I can get for the price. I've never owned anything made by Apple, and probably never will. I'm looking to spend $100 or less, and ease of use is a big plus. Here is the kicker, it MUST be available at Office Depot.

This is the hard drive page for what Office Depot sells: http://www.officedepot.com/a/browse/hard-drives/N=5+648899/

This is the one I was looking at (because it was the first one I saw): http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/248674/WD-My-Passport-Ultra-Metal-Edition/

Again, I'm mostly looking to be steered away from garbage and toward something user friendly as I've got no idea what I'm even looking at.

Thanks for the help.

[kwando]

Why only Home Depot? Do you have a gift card?

PM sent

[Irving]

I'm using Office Depot for another project that I'm working on, which I'll post about in a few months. If anyone in the know is aware of a similar vendor that will extend credit on a Net 30 basis AND reports to Experian, Dun & Bradstreet, or Equifax, then I'm open to suggestions. I'm waiting to hear back from Office Depot right now and thought I'd get some pointers from you guys in the mean time.

While we're discussing hard drives, it looks like some of them will also back up to the cloud if you have an account with the proper cloud storage place. I'm interested in info on that as well.

[theGinsue]

Office Depot prices suck for external hard drives.

I have 2 2Tb and 1 3Tb Toshiba Canvio external HDD. They are awesome and came with backup software (which I haven't used). These drives use USB3.0 cables (as most ext. HDD's today do) and if your computer has a 3.0 jack you'll get better speed/performance than using a 2.0 jack. I paid the same for the 2Tb drives that Office Depot charges for the 1Tb Canvio.

For Christmas my SIL wanted the exact same WD My Passport Ultra Metal Edition drive that you're looking at, which we got him but paid about $20 less. I don't know much about the drive other than my SIL likes it and is happy he chose that one.

ETA: I bought good carry cases for the Toshiba drives and they've travelled well all over the world; very durable. While the HDD's themselves are durable as well, if you plan to transport yours, you should consider getting a transport case for it.

[brutal]

I got this one (5TB) on a special that came with 2 years for 100GB Onedrive space November 28, 2015.

It's been reliable since. I do not use the Seagate Dashboard software, it's sucks donkey farts.

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Backup-Desktop-External-STDT5000100/dp/B00J0O5R2I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1489046174&sr=8-1&keywords=seagate+5tb+backup+plus

After I run a backup, I unplug it from the computer, but it always sits powered on.

I also have an older 500GB Seagate FreeAgent drive - one of the slim portable ones that sits in a dock, that I carried in my laptop bag fo a time, and it's probably going on 10+ years old, but doesn't get worked over.

All our laptops have Toshiba drives and I think in 20 years I've only ever had one fail.

I have a pair of (mirrored) Toshiba drives in my desktop now. I think they're also very reliable on the whole.

[Brian]

I go through a lot of hard drives, internal and/or external. Commercial and enterprise. You didn't really mention whether anything else was important to you (physical size, speed, etc.) but in general that drive is probably going to be just fine for any general purpose stuff, and since it's on sale it's not marked up too badly. Hopefully you have USB 3.0 already so it will seem a bit faster for you.

Delete whatever software comes with it or don't install it. Most of the time, it's more trouble than it's worth.

You always have the chance of getting a lemon, and the manufacturers seem to go through phases with reliability, but in general that drive looks like it'll work.

You should have a plan to back up whatever you have on it though, if the data is at all important. Because external hard drives are often tossed around more than something that's sitting under your desk, there's a higher chance you're going to bump it, knock it off the desk, whatever and that may mean you lose whatever's installed on it.

[cstone]

Do you have any old hard drives? I'm sure I do as I almost never actually throw them away unless they have mechanical problems.

I recommend something like this: StarTech.com USB 3.0 to 2.5" SATA III Hard Drive Adapter Cable w/ UASP - SATA to USB 3.0 Converter for SSD / HDD Item # 861670 from Office Depot. The price listed on their web site is $19.99

With the adapter you can easily connect any SATA drive to your computer. Once the drive is mounted and formated you can use it like any external drive. When you don't need it, just disconnect and put it away.

[DFBrews]

Micro center offers business accounts don't know if they report and hey have a sata to USB cable and case for 8.99 along with lots of hard drives

[Irving]

Thank you everyone. I'll give Microcenter a call to find out if they report as I'd probably prefer them over Office Depot.

Cstone, I like your idea. The only HDD I still have are probably not something I'd want to use, but that is a great idea for the future.

Brian, I didn't specify anything because I don't really know. I'll have to check if my lap top has 3.0 USB or not, cool if it does, no biggie if it doesn't.

The plan in my head is to download the years of photos I've built up on Google to free up space there, then download new photos once a year or so. I've never backed anything up in my life, so I'd like to figure out a simple routine to do so, then do it every 3 months or so. Once I free up space from Google, I'll have plenty of room in their free cloud storage for what I need, but why not have a physical back up as well?

Besides the photos, I don't have more data to store than a few text documents, so speed shouldn't be terribly important.

[cstone]

Microcenter sells inexpensive thumb drives. Everyone in my family is given one every year. They have been told to ke p a copy of their data on this drive as their personal backup. This year they all got 64GB drives. Next year will probably be 128GB drives. Labeling and not losing the drives is their responsibility as it is their data.

Hard drives are good longish term storage if the drives spend most of their lives not spinning. Solid state memory, and while more expensive is better for long term and comes with the easy to use USB interface.

[Brian]

Just a thought - if you're already using the cloud, it doesn't cost much to upgrade if you need more space. $20 a year gives you 100GB on Google for example, up from the 15(?) GB free you normally get.

That's a lot cheaper and probably less prone to failure issues.

[TFOGGER]

I'll have to check if my lap top has 3.0 USB or not, cool if it does, no biggie if it doesn't.

Easy way to tell: 3.0 ports are usually blue on the inside. 2.0 ports are black.

[Brian]

Microcenter sells inexpensive thumb drives. Everyone in my family is given one every year. They have been told to ke p a copy of their data on this drive as their personal backup. This year they all got 64GB drives. Next year will probably be 128GB drives. Labeling and not losing the drives is their responsibility as it is their data.
Hard drives are good longish term storage if the drives spend most of their lives not spinning. Solid state memory, and while more expensive is better for long term and comes with the easy to use USB interface.

This is also a great idea, especially when paired with a cloud solution. Use Google Drive for day-to-day use, and then grab a microcenter or amazon flash drive when they're on sale (usually for $10 or less) once a year, copy everything, and store the flash drive in your safe or something. Heck I think Microcenter gives away a free 32GB drive at least once a year as a promo to get your in the door.

[Delfuego]

Stay away from Western Digital, I have seen far too many fail. I usually buy Seagate brand, they seem to last longer.

[Irving]

I've definitely always heard that Seagate was the better brand.

[brutal]

Thank you everyone. I'll give Microcenter a call to find out if they report as I'd probably prefer them over Office Depot.

Cstone, I like your idea. The only HDD I still have are probably not something I'd want to use, but that is a great idea for the future.

Brian, I didn't specify anything because I don't really know. I'll have to check if my lap top has 3.0 USB or not, cool if it does, no biggie if it doesn't.

The plan in my head is to download the years of photos I've built up on Google to free up space there, then download new photos once a year or so. I've never backed anything up in my life, so I'd like to figure out a simple routine to do so, then do it every 3 months or so. Once I free up space from Google, I'll have plenty of room in their free cloud storage for what I need, but why not have a physical back up as well?

Besides the photos, I don't have more data to store than a few text documents, so speed shouldn't be terribly important.

Google photos is unlimited storage if you allow it to shrink your image resolution. You can also use Google Takeout to save all your photos (or any other google data) into compressed files for which you can specify the max size. Then download them to local storage. While the files are likely to exist on the local machine, I've run into cases where the G drive space is full yet there was more space used for photo storage (from mobile devices) that wasn't syncing back to the user's computer. Since there's no simple way to "select all" and download photos, Takeout solved the problem. Never hurts to have all that data stuffed away somewhere safe - offline.

As to just storing everything in the cloud. Been discussed here before. Unless you're getting offline versioning, the files are still susceptible to a ransomware infection.

[DenverGP]

For a cloud backup solution, I'm using idrive.com. $50 a year for 1tb storage, usable from multiple machines, and includes file versioning.

They even have the option once a year for personal accounts where they will mail you a 3TB hard drive, you load your data onto it, and then ship it back to them, and that data will be loaded into your cloud account.

[hatidua]

Nothing in the cloud ever gets hacked, all the naked celebrities told me so...

[thedave1164]

I'm looking for an external hard drive. I don't know anything about hard drives, but I'll try my best to give you an idea of what I want. Mostly, I'm just looking to be steered away from garbage. I can't imagine I'll need more than 1T, but I'll take as much as I can get for the price. I've never owned anything made by Apple, and probably never will. I'm looking to spend $100 or less, and ease of use is a big plus. Here is the kicker, it MUST be available at Office Depot.

This is the hard drive page for what Office Depot sells: http://www.officedepot.com/a/browse/hard-drives/N=5+648899/

This is the one I was looking at (because it was the first one I saw): http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/248674/WD-My-Passport-Ultra-Metal-Edition/

Again, I'm mostly looking to be steered away from garbage and toward something user friendly as I've got no idea what I'm even looking at.

Thanks for the help.


Without any further info as to your actual use, the one you have linked is as good as any, only do not rely on it as your sole backup, any data on one of those is just a copy. ALL drives fail, and they may or may not give you a warning, and it sucks when it fails and you have to pay someone $150-3000 to get your data recovered

[thedave1164]

I have lots of advice and opinions, but will keep them to myself unless asked a direct question

[Irving]

I appreciate advice and opinions. Buying an external hard drive is incidental to what I'm actually doing, but since I want one, I thought it'd be a good thread to start so I can be educated on the matter at the same time. With that said, have at it. Opinions welcome.

[Madeinhb]

If all you're looking for is back up pictures and what not - don't really need a HDD. Get a flash drive from amazon. I was able to pick up a 128gb one for 50 bucks on sale.

I do have a HDD to hold all my digital movies/ TV shows, etc as well as pictures. However I was a raid system for those.

[Irving]

I'm sure once I have one, I'll find all kinds of things to fill it with.

[thedave1164]

If you just want an external drive, and the one you linked is in your price range at the store you want to buy from, then it is not a bad choice.

The only drives I really tell people to stay away from are toshiba's, had a client that insisted on using them for "backups" 3 times they had to pay $1500 for data recovery when they failed, they kept using the same drive since when it failed toshiba sent them a replacement.

Just remember, it is not if it will fail, but when it will fail