“When considering a portable drive, there are a few things to keep in mind,” Albert Filice writes for Macworld.
“First portable drives rarely ever have data redundancy, so don’t use them to store sensitive or irreplacable information, or at least make sure the data on the portable drive is backed up,” Filice writes. “Consider your use: if you’re backing up your Mac on the go you don’t need super speed, but if you’re going to be working directly off the drive you might want to sacrafice speed for capacity. And, of course, there’s also price to consider.”
Much more, including why Macworld’s top choice is the Seagate Backup Plus Fast (4TB), in the full article here.
Even with the failure rate triple other manufacturers?
Good idea to back up your claim with data:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089464/three-year-27-000-drive-study-reveals-the-most-reliable-hard-drive-makers.html
Looks like you are right. Seagate is not so good.
This article covers hard drives – installed. Not portables. Some very good information. Confirms my feelings and experience with Seagate and Western Digital. I’ll use more Hitachi when I look for internal drives. Lately though, I’ve been looking more to fusion drives and SSD. I do like the speed of thunderbolt drives. they make USB3 look like a little old lady walking with a cane.
The Backblaze Blog really spells it out. Worth the read.
http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/
cheers…
That Backblaze blog is somewhat flawed if you’re using their results for consumer usage that doesn’t mirror their usage.
I have a bunch of drives from different vendors, but not enough to provide anything more than anecdotal evidence, that being said, I have some drives that are kept stationary and others that are constantly being transported.
Seagates seem to have a higher failure rate just sitting on a shelf undisturbed as compared to Western Digital drives. On the other hand, Western Digital drives (excluding portables) can’t seem to withstand a shock/drop nearly as well as Seagate drives do.
Again, that’s just my experience with a much smaller bunch of drives. I’m just pointing out that your conditions (including temperature, usage, etc…) may yield different results from Backblaze, as did mine.
The link doesn’t work. Plus, when I went to their site, it comes up but nothing works. Hey Macworld, your site is down!
I’ve been working in Mac IT for over two decades. I’ve never had a Western Digital drive that failed. I’ve never had a Seagate that didn’t fail. Yep, I mean every single one. Hundreds.
I had a Western Digital die 3 days after the warranty expired. They were friendly and gave me a replacement at no cost…
My girl had horrible luck with hard-drives.
They ALL failed every time she put a new one in!
That got fixed after we met and now she actually IN-JOYS backing it up every chance she gets…..
TowerTone…
Hey, it ain’t true if it’s braggin’….or something like that.
It doesn’t count if you have to blow her up!
🙂 kiddin
I like OWC. They have a lot of options from buying an empty case with a variety of interfaces up to bus powered slim line drives with an SSD. Prices are reasonable and they make it easy to configure a drive to your exact specks.
have anybody took a look of the Touro Mobile Pro 1TB USB 3.0?