Recommendation for a good External HDD brand?

External hdd WILL breakdown, usually between the first and second year. SDD will last depending on your use, the less you use it in time, the less data (particulary small files) you transfer TO the disk the more it will last.
The best option in price/durability is using a normal 3.5 hdd and an external bay/usb converter cables. Durability wise it will last longer first because it will be completely stationary (most people move the disk when in use) when in use and has better protection than a normal external hdd. For speed you should go for any sdd (samsung evo 850 line works incredibly well). If you really need something small to carry you should look for pendrives, LaCie and a few others have pendrives specially made to handle everything and has several options to choose.
EDIT: dont play with the files while they are on an sdd, that will make them last a lot less.

 

I recommend Hybrid type, just sayin'....
Beside, outside then you better use SDD

 

... the use of the word "install" makes me nervous.
it is in fact an external drive, yeah? not your computer hard drive?

it's kind of important because there is a big difference between getting an SSD internal drive and external one... i mean they're the same, but if you're replacing an internal drive you need to fix your computer settings so it doesn't write as often.

an SSD is like a giant flashdrive... and flashdrives have like 100k rewrites before they go bad or something... which isn't that big a deal externally, but you need to keep your computer from resaving over and over if you install an internal ssd.

 

That's not a sale. You can get that for 120$ on a deal.

Looking at prices now a Team Group L5 LITE 480gb going for 100$ (Warning: I don't know much about the brand and no info on who makes their controller). But it's not uncommon to get a 500 gb ssd for a decent brand for 100$.

external HDD will not break down in 1 or 2 years. I've had some for 3-5 years and still working. It's all a matter of how you treat them. I use mine to carry data between multiple computers so they don't leave the house and I've never dropped them. But obviously if you are going to drop them they will die. external hdds just have normal hdds inside.

 

I use 2 toshiba 1TB external HDDs (one for anime and stuff, the other for spare copies and other random stuff). I havent had any problems with them since i got them 2-3 years ago. plus the interchangeable cables mean i dont have to worry about a borked cable.

Plus they're very compact.

 

Simply asking for HDD is well...
Nvm...cant recall.

What's your budget?
What's its main purpose?
Storage Size?
Port? Etc.

And if these things aren't a concern...
A good old Samsung 1 TB ssd.
It's fast.
It's durable.
It's good
And it's a ssd.

 

My recommendation is NAS ,buy a 4-6 slots NAS device and a few 4TB or 6TB hdd. Set 'em up and a little config then volla. And for storage mainly you should look for 5400/5900rpm gold/enterprise/NAS ...hdd

 

Not really no. First of all, you only get about 1,000 writes on TLC based SSDs and 10,000 writes on a MLC based one. 100,000 is on enterprise grade SLC ones.

That said, it's 1000 writes per block. So if your drive is 1tb in size, you'd have to go over 1,000tb writes.

To put it into perspective, if you use the drive for 30 years. You would have to write 91gb per day to run out of writes.

 

If someone goes this route, I would take a look at 3.5 external HDDs. WD often times put WD Red NAS drives inside their external HDDs and they go for half the price. (but you should pay attention to what people say the HDD inside is, which a quick google can find)

 

You are right, they may last longer depending on the usage, using an external hdd in your house will make them last longer (a NAS should work better but that depends on the circumstances) but is not the “normal” usage for an external hdd.
Working 2/3 days a week, traveling everyday will make your drive die sooner. That is the expected usage for them, traveling and using them outside your own house even without being dropped will take a toll on the disk. If you use a normal 3.5 hdd for the same job, it will last longer and have better performance for about the same price but it will be more cumbersome.

 

Just giving examples,
my 2.5 500gb Seagate from 2010 still working fine while the 3.5 1tb WD element from 2014 got bad sector after 2yr n ded few months later.
Both go with me daily home to work n back

 

yeah, but see, while it's not a problem for an external, it is for internal.
the problem is, the operating system needs to know that you have a SSD. it needs to know to rotate which blocks to use, because if it's configured to an HHD it will write the same blocks for internal things over and over until it fails.
I'm not saying don't do it, I'm saying if you're replacing an internal drive that has your OS on it you have to set it up properly. so it's important if it's internal vs external.

 

One of my external hdd is already 8 years old and still works fine the thing that is not working fine would be the usb cable due to abuse and stuff

 

My go-to choice would be Toshiba, but that's because I've had good experiences with it. My current one is almost 5 years old now. Only wonky part is the USB.

 

Congratulations either you took care of it like it was your baby or you have the best external hdd that i ever heard.
Can you tell me the brand and model please?

 

First question: What's your budget? You can get an external enclosure for $30 and put whatever HDD or SSD you want in that. What matters is how much storage you need and how much you're willing to spend. You can get a 2 TB SSD for $700 and toss it in an enclosure. OTOH, you can grab a 4 TB HDD for less than $200 and use the same enclosure.

Second Question: Does it need to be portable? And do you have any size constraints?

The lifetime of your drive depends on how much and how you use it. You can easily get years out of a HDD with light-to-moderate use. However, if you do a lot of torrenting or do stuff that just thrashes your HDD, you can see very limited use out of one. The same applies to SSDs, as well.

P.S: I have a 4 TB WD Black and a 6 TB WD Blue that are both pushing 4 years without any bad sectors. Both are in systems that are on 24/7.

 

Welp... 8 years ago there was no shops selling computer related items in the province that i lived in or those shops that offers data recovering for drives so yeah i guess i took some extra measures to care for it.

It's called Imation Apollo 500GB 2.5 i mainly used it for backing-up game installers, movies and documents (.word, pdf etc.) if I'm not using it I'll just simply store it in a cool & dry place.