Looking for help buying an external hard drive

December 12, 2018 7:35 AM

I'm planning to purchase an external hard drive for my parents to back up their photos. I don't know a lot about which brands are more reliable than others. I've had hard drives die in the past and I want to make sure the one I buy my parents is not likely to die since they will be backing up important files on there. Is there a site that provides reviews of which brands or models are the most reliable? I've checked Consumer Reports, but there wasn't anything there. Thanks!
posted by NoneOfTheAbove to Computers & Internet (23 answers total)

I've used several different brands and over the past 8+ years of fairly high-volume photo backups I've been happiest (no hard drive crash, etc) with La Cie. I chose it in part based on Amazon customer reviews.
posted by mcbeth at 7:40 AM on December 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

Here's a link to the Wire Cutter's 2018 recommendations.

I hope it helps!
posted by Draccy at 7:43 AM on December 12, 2018 [2 favorites]

Not quite what you asked, but highly recommend an off-site backup service in addition to a local back-up for redundancy and resilience. Yes, they have reoccurring costs, but you're making someone else responsible for maintaining the hardware and storing it somewhere that won't be impacted by fire, theft, or other loss.
posted by Alterscape at 7:52 AM on December 12, 2018 [5 favorites]

An external SSD may be the way to go unless you're talking many TB. They are more expensive but solid state will be generally more reliable than a spinning device. Do find a way to back up also to a remote location (either in the cloud, with you, or a neighbor).
posted by sammyo at 7:58 AM on December 12, 2018

Could you share a rough scale of how many photos we're talking about? I would alter my recommendations based on if you're backing up, say, 1,000 or 1,000,000 photos.
posted by matrixclown at 8:17 AM on December 12, 2018

Response by poster: I don't know the exact number, but it's closer to 5,000 - 10,000. Also, thank you for the suggestions for an off-site backup service. I'm definitely planning to look into that, too.
posted by NoneOfTheAbove at 8:25 AM on December 12, 2018

Backblaze does regular reports on their massive set of hard drives. I think that a second remote backup (most likely with you) is a very good idea - even if it's not updated super frequently.
Note that an unpowered ssd will not reliability hold data for longer terms (ie over a year).
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 8:31 AM on December 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

I had a WD MyPassport for years now, 1TB, and it works like a champ. I assume that they are going to leave it plugged in 24/7; if not, make sure you teach them how to eject the drive before disconnecting it.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 8:46 AM on December 12, 2018 [2 favorites]

You can buy 100GB of space with Google One for $2/month, or splurge and get 200GB for $3/month (or $30/yr). The Google Drive app can keep the data in sync with Google automatically, so your parents won't have to worry about it. This is by far the easiest solution and is as close to 100% safe as a single solution can be. It's not 100% (you could be locked out of your Google account, for instance!) but it's pretty good and very easy.

10,000 photos is at most 40 GB. That's not a lot. For something like a big ol' dump of old photos, buy a pair of small hard drives that are USB powered (so you don't need a wall wart to use them- losing a specific wall wart for an external hard drive is a nightmare). Copy all the photos to both of them. They keep one, you keep the other.
posted by BungaDunga at 8:46 AM on December 12, 2018

Personally, I just buy on price, though I think it's reasonable to at least take a look at some of those reliability statistics.

But there's *nothing* you can do that will prevent the possibility of a drive failure. Well-cared-for drives from reputable brands still fail all the time. (And that goes for SSDs too.) So, do make sure they have some kind of backup plan.
posted by bfields at 9:00 AM on December 12, 2018 [5 favorites]

10K photos would fit on a 64GB jump drive or SD card and those are pretty cheap. Also, Google Photos will store that many for free as long as they aren't over 12 megapixels.
posted by soelo at 10:26 AM on December 12, 2018

Chiming in to note that yes, all drives will fail at some point (even SSDs, the memory cells don't last forever, especially if it's being written to often) and to note that, of the externals I've had, the ones that have "died" have really just had the crap controller card go bad; I was able to grab the drive out of it and plug it in elsewhere just fine. That said, I've had a 4TB WD Passport for the past 3-4 years that's still good now.
posted by mrg at 10:37 AM on December 12, 2018

Small USB flash drives like jump drives are cheap, but unreliable over time, plus they're easy to lose, and have connectors that're to break. I like them for all kinds of things, but never ever for sole backups. They're made for convenience, portability, and wide compatibility, but not reliability.

Western Digital and Seagate are my go-to brands for external drives, though I have no particular reason to think that LaCie might be bad. I've got a large Seagate that acts as an offline backup (I connect it once/week for a complete mirror of my drives) for my Desktop as insurance against a difficult recovery from ransomware; I've got a WD drive that acts as backup and some archival storage for my work-at-home PC.
posted by Sunburnt at 10:58 AM on December 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

Last time I was purchasing a backup hard drive, I did extensive research on reliability rates for the major brands -- as I had experienced two major hard drive crashes over the years.

I can't point to specific pages/sites right at this moment, but my research at the time had definitely shown that Western Digital were rated the highest on reliability and non-crash-worthiness.

I purchased a 2TB WD Elements Portable external hard drive on sale, and haven't looked back since. I do weekly back-ups with Time Machine, I don't keep it plugged in all the time.

I do find it's always worth getting a slightly larger size than you think you'll need, as you can always grown into that space quite easily, especially since hard drives are so much more affordable nowadays -- especially if you keep an eye out for sales.
posted by Jade Dragon at 11:42 AM on December 12, 2018

Don't use an external drive for backup on someone else's computer. Someone will unplug it to use that USB port, or they'll need to plug something in and unplug it from the wall, or it will be bumped off the desk onto the floor, or, or, or....

Install one of the online backup clients like BackBlaze on your parent's computer. Once a month log into the BackBlaze website and make sure that BackBlaze is still running.
posted by gregr at 12:07 PM on December 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

Seconding the link to the BackBlaze site referenced by Homeboy Trouble. Based on their info I bought an internal Hitachi 4tb drive plus a powered case with a USB 3.0 cable. That was 2 years ago and no trouble so far, but as other people have stated drives do fail so I also bought the BackBlaze backup service and I let it back up both my internal and external drives. Onsite plus offsite backup is a vital practice.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:00 PM on December 12, 2018

Note that for conventional drives ("spinning rust"), there are now only three manufacturers of the actual drives: Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital. Other brands will simply have a drive from one of these manufacturers paired with some USB-to-SATA controller inside a case they may or may not have designed themselves, either bus-powered if it's a 2.5" drive, or fed by a wall-wart of unknown provenance. Also, some drive models are better suited for 24/7 running, others are tuned for low power consumption and (thus) run cooler, etcetera. Brands that tell you what's inside are, IMO, a step ahead as you can check the reliability of the parts, plus they are likely to have put more effort into case design. Not that you have to check and compare those details yourself, Wirecutter does that for you, but the fact that some brands publish all those details where others don't is in itself a sign of, at least, a more thought-out design.
posted by Stoneshop at 1:26 PM on December 12, 2018

Just get two drives of whatever brand (or even two different brands), back up to both, and replace one when it fails. Two backups are better than one.
posted by fedward at 5:59 PM on December 12, 2018 [2 favorites]

But if, heaven forfend, there's a fire or a tornado or a flood or something, both local backups are destroyed. Hence the usual recommendation of an off-site backup.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:14 PM on December 12, 2018

If there is a concern that your parents are not technically proficient, might have a problem using an external drive with a wired USB connection, etc., consider for the local solution a low-profile SanDisk flash drive which can be plugged into an out-of-the-way USB port if there is one and just left in place. They might not even notice it is there. Just tell them to save their files to "drive E."
posted by megatherium at 5:02 AM on December 13, 2018

Keeping an external drive connected to a computer all the time can be risky. If your parents are victimized by ransomware (and it's happened to me), and the external drive is connected to the computer at the time, the files on the external drive will be encrypted, too. Your parents won't have ANY backup, if that's the case. I make a habit of only connecting the external drive when I'm backing up. However, since it's more effort to back up, I back up less often--which defeats the purpose. That's why I've also subscribed to Backblaze.
posted by Transl3y at 11:16 AM on December 13, 2018

I’m still using spinning disks for backup drives because unpowered solid-state drives will lose data over time. This should not be a problem for SSDs used on a regular basis, but if an old backup drive is stored for years, a disk is much more likely to retain the data intact.
posted by D.C. at 3:58 PM on December 13, 2018

If drive is going to be connected all the time, make sure you have a reasonable surge protector on there as well. Lots of other good advice in this thread too.
posted by el io at 12:29 AM on December 22, 2018