Well, my external media drives appear to be on the way out. They are retrieved for the moment but I want to get something to replace them PDQ. I plan to get a WD MyBook Duo at some point (I dont need a full NAS) but I need something to tide me over in the meantime. …
Deleted the rest of the original… got a 4TB WD Elements, and will get something larger and more flexible in a few weeks
Once upon a time I seem to recall having written a guide to Hard Drives… Probably rather out of date these days however.
To some large extent, hard drive choices often come down purely to personal experiences. Had a bad experience with SeaGate - no more Seagates. WD was a pain - no more WD. (Of course, those 2 examples rules out most of the domestic easy to buy market…)
Yeah I had issues with Western Digital and only really use Seagate now. Haven’t had a bad run with hitachi though.
Seems to be a lot less issues with SSD, I’d go with an SSD solution if the price isn’t too much.
$2k for SSD 4TB… $200 for a mechanical HDD of same capacity…
I guess it’s just cos I don’t know the evolution of the design, but - to me, solid state means - destined to die… limited re-writes…
I think the ideal compromise at this point in the evolution of storage is a fast SSD for files that require regular access and a slower, larger and cheaper per unit of storage size mechanical HDD for those files that only require occasional access.
Ideally an automatic system but working across drives analogous to the SSD caching of a hybrid drive.
But… arent all drives like this?
That might have been true a few years ago, but I’m pretty sure solid-state tech has evolved to the point where limited writes don’t matter for the purposes of drive longevity.
By the same token, having your bits spinning around on rusting metal seems like a heaps better alternative.
First cab off the rank on the search to get my head out of the fear of SSDs…
Maybe I’ll look into this further! 
Just a word on Trimforce.
This should be enabled on any Mac that does not ship with an SSD.
Enabling TF will benefit the longevity of the SSD/s.
Al
Personally, I would NEVER buy a pre-assembled external HD. They usually use the cheapest drives and will fail. That has long been my experience. The best thing to do is buy a good quality external case and something like a WD Black HDD. installation is all of plugging a couple of cables in and putting in a bunch of screws. That will be a heck of a lot more reliable.
More emphasis required on this.
The best hard drives I’ve ever used are Hitachi/HGST and the best enclosures from macsales.com (OWC)
I’ve been planning to get WD Red in an enclosure. Its probably cheaper not to get a WD enclosure with the drives already in< but macsales will require an exchange rate and shipping I can’t afford. I think the enclosure will be sourced locally :-/
Given my experience with WD Reds I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole ever again. I’ve had 3 out of 4 I bought fail on me, and they had light duties.
What size drive are you after?
People will swear for/against the brand that has worked for them/failed them. The reality is that pretty much all makers will have a bad batch from time to time and if you’re unlucky you get those ones. If I was asked by my mother which external drive to buy I’d simply tell her to buy which ever Seagate/Western Digital was on special on the local Officeworks. For most (normal) people that about covers it.
I’ve had 8 x Seagate 2TB Green drives running in a NAS (against all recommendations) for over 40,000 hours and only had a single failure (and even that was only a SMART warning). These days that particular NAS and drives have been semi retired and only powers up once a week for an incremental backup from the main NAS.
The ‘new’ NAS is running 8 x HGST 4TB drives which would have roughly 22,000 hours on them and I’ve already had two throw up SMART errors and get replaced (at about 4,000 - 5,000 hours). I bought this model after doing a little research including this great resource from Backblaze who publish this regularily.
Personally I’ve got a drawer full of random $20 enclosures and HDD’s pulled form old laptops I was upgrading at one time or another, mostly under 500GB. Usually I would give the old drive to the person I was fixing the machine for, but these are the ones no body wanted 
Yes a few of them have failed over the years but I wouldn’t say any more than any of the branded units I’ve been around (lots of other people I play tech support for).
I’ve also got the old SSD from my Wifes MBA that was upgraded in an eclosure from OWC although it’s only 256GB so isn’t used all that much… but it is quick! Last time I needed a decent amount of storage (for a backup before a clean install of a new OS) and a drawer drive wasn’t enough I grabbed a 2TB WD Passport Ultra form Officeworks because it was on special and was cheaper (and much quicker at the time) than rolling my own.
I’ve had Seagate, Maxtor andf WD. The last batch of WD Elements have lasted for 6 years. (More, probably, I cant quite remember exactly when I got them) and it turns out only one has actually croaked. The others are still going OK. And yes, I have them backed up. I’ll have to buy based on finances at the time. Would be nice ti have you beaut superduper drives but the prices are excluding me from that market.
I’ve had 4 of them running in a Synology 4 bay for a few years now at the family business.
They’ve been running 24/7 without an issue.
I guess it just shows that any drive can have good and bad examples…
I wrote a post last night - but then chose to delete it - about the WD 1TB MyBook (or Expansions?) drive that I purchased many years ago… which after just over 12 months suffered from a failed enclosure. WD replaced it for me. The new one lasted under 12 months before the enclosure died. The 2 x WD Green 1TB drives are now in a Raid box I picked up off eBay - both still going strong, despite their age. They’ve not had any problems - just the cases.
As Hawk notes, at the end of the day, you can only go on your own personal experience - though in reality, that means nothing. You could just have really bad luck…
Yeah I get the feeling that the enclosure with the WD MyBook is probably the cause of many of the problems. I think it was the start of my problems with it.
That said I had a WD drive in my Power Mac G5 quad - which had 3 things fail early on, one was the WD drive. When I got a replacement machine it had a hitachi drive that lived until I retired the machine a few years ago. I always thought hitachi was a bit dodgy. I’ve never had any major problems with Hitachi or Seagate so I just never went back to WD.
The new WD MyBook I bought the other day… I suspect will not last as well as the old Elements drives did. Its noisy!! You’d think there was a fan inside. I’ve become very used to the quiet of the mini and the other drives.