Best brand name for external hard drive

I've purchased six WD My Book externals over the years, ranging from 500GB to 2 TB.  One of the older ones (#3) has crapped out completely.  The other two (#'s 1 & 2) 500GB run hot so I only turn them on intermittently.  The other three run cool but one of them isn't recognized by my computer using USB 3.0 (is recognized by USB 2.0).

I'm looking for another brand for a 4TB external given all the issues I've had with WD.  Is there a "Best Brand" for external hard drives out there or is my track record with WD about par for the course?

Thanks in advance.

That's a tough one because I've had failures with 2 Western Digitals and went to Seagates.  I loaded all my photos onto a Seagate FreeAgent Goflex 1TB portable hard drive and stored it in my safe.  Hooked it up a few months later to retrieve some images and it wouldn't open, indicating I had to format the disk before I could use it.  After numerous attempts (thankfully I had all the images on a 2nd hard-drive in my computer) I decided to reformat the disk but it indicated Windows could not format it...just clicked for hours.  So it's in the trash with the Western Digitals.  Since I have 2 other Seagates I use to transfer images onto when traveling, I'm now very worried about their reliability.  

There's no "best" brand. All brands have their good and bad. All hard-drives fail eventually with some of them prematurely.

Your seeing typical issues that standard external drive have, regardless of brand. Do not purchase a stand alone external drive. It is highly recommended to purchase a standard barebones internal drive and an external fan cooled case to house it in. This can and more than likely will increase the life of the drive substantially.
As far as brands I would recommend HGST. Here an article on Backblaze with some Hard Drive Reliability Stats as of Q2 2015.

A note on your 3tb drive being recognized as only 2tb. You will need to format it selecting "GPT" in the format options to be able to recognize it as larger than 2tb.

As far as brands I would recommend HGST.

HGST is owned by Western Digital, so I'm not convinced there is any basis to the suggestion that their drives will be any more reliable than WDs (or Seagate).

John

John Guastella wrote:

As far as brands I would recommend HGST.

HGST is owned by Western Digital, so I'm not convinced there is any basis to the suggestion that their drives will be any more reliable than WDs (or Seagate).

John

The article at Backblaze clearly indicates the basis for this suggestion. 

47,000 hard drives is a pretty statistically significant sample size.  Says to me I don't want a 3TB Seagate drive.  Even if WD did buy HGST it doesn't mean the drives are made in the same facility.  HDD plants are hugely expensive and its unlikely they shut down the HGST plant when they bought it out..  In any case the stats are for 2015 , 3 years after the buyout.

The fundamental problem with the high volume consumer oriented external HD's is that none of them cool the disks as well as they should which generally can lead to an earlier failure than a proper actively or even a well designed passive cooling. you are generally better off by buying a desktop drive and putting it in a fanned or really good passively closed enclosure.

The article at Backblaze clearly indicates the basis for this suggestion.

Well, here's an article that critiques the Backblaze article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/17/backblaze_how_not_to_evaluate_disk_reliability/

IMO, the bottom line -- as already stated in this thread -- is that all hard drives will fail at some point, and rather than expending time and energy trying to figure out which make/model has a slightly lower probability of failure, computer users should simply make sure they have a solid backup strategy.

John

John Guastella wrote:

The article at Backblaze clearly indicates the basis for this suggestion.

Well, here's an article that critiques the Backblaze article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/17/backblaze_how_not_to_evaluate_disk_reliability/

IMO, the bottom line -- as already stated in this thread -- is that all hard drives will fail at some point, and rather than expending time and energy trying to figure out which make/model has a slightly lower probability of failure, computer users should simply make sure they have a solid backup strategy.

John

That's all fine a good John, but the initial question that started this was for recommendations "for" not against. I don't need to demean brands I do not like or use or the comments made about them. As with any helpful conversations it is always best to give possibly helpful and positive opinions based on experience but additional information in which you made them on as well. I'm not sure what your position would be since you have not provided such information. 

Curious as to whether folks buy consumer rated drives or enterprise?
mike

Brad if your going to use the HD in an enclosure as an external drive that is connected to the computer all the time, than you want to make sure that the enclosure is FAN cooled. The reason many HD's fail is that they don't get cooled properly. This may be the reason that 3 of your HD's run hot. In addition to having a good cooling fan in the enclosure you also want to make sure that the USB 3 connection really works as spec'd. Many USB ports say they are USB 3 but really run much slower. So how do you find out these questions. Buy the drive from someplace like Newegg and thoroughly check the reviews and ONLY buy one that does what it says it will and has a lot of 4 and 5 star (egg) reviews. Having brought many HD's over the years the major brands all have their good models/years and bad models/years. I don't think anyone can say with any accuracy which brand is more reliable because only time will. As a practice I stay away from the very latest, largest size HD's as in many cases it takes a while to work out the bugs before maximum reliability is achieved in a new design.


My own recommendation would be to go to Newegg and buy the HD and enclosure separately.  
Putting the HD in the enclosure is very easy no special skill or higher knowledge required.
This way you can buy the highest rated HD and the highest rated enclosure and know you've got the best of each.   

Yep, I mentioned that in my initial comment.

Thanks all for your comments and opinions. I think I will end up going with a desktop HD and placing it in a fan cooled enclosure even though that will cost quite a bit more initially. My experience with externals hasn't been great so I feel that will be the best long term decision.