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EclipX

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 7, 2006
36
0
Belgium
Hello,

I have a 1TB and a 320GB external drive, they are almost 90% full.

So, i gonna buy a new drive, but i'm hesitating about 1TB or 2TB.

Are 2TB external drives safe nowadays?

If i back up my internal 80Gb and external 1TB and 320GB to a 2TB drive... can i be sure it's safe for years?

And are Verbatim drives good quality? I'm thinking about buying this one, it's only 122€
http://www.verbatim.com/products/de...-1143-3415-5FC347F5645B6AE1#fragment-features

I want bang for buck or something :p
 
The likely hood of them failing is higher than smaller drives because they have more platters. More platters = greater chance to fail. However, I do not own one so I can't speak from experience. I plan on buying one because I think they are safe. Just have to wait to hear from other members who own them.
 
You can't be sure any hard drive is safe for years, as they will all eventually fail if used long enough. However, it is in fact safer than two separate disks
 
Hard Drives are mechanical devices, and like every other mechanical device, it will fail eventually. I recently bought a samsung F4 ecogreen 2tb drive to store my movies and music. It's a 5400RPM drive (I think) so not really suitable for a boot drive but so far it has been great for what I use it for. It spins up very fast and virtually makes no sound...
 
I have a friend with a 2TB drive, he has had it for about a year now. To my knowledge he has not had any problems with it. If I remember correctly it was made by Western Digital.
 
So with other words, you just need some luck with your drive?

My 60GB(Seagate), 80GB(Toshiba) 2.5", 320GB(WD) 3.5" ATA drives are working without any problems for about 4 years now. My 6 month old purchased 1TB (Packard Bell) S-ATA 3.5" is working fine also (for now)
I also never had problems with Seagate, Maxtor drives

But my 320GB(Medion) 2.5" and 500GB(Freecom) 3.5" ATA usb-drives crashed after +- 1 year of usage :(, it's because these crashes, i really find it difficult to buy/find a decent hard drive


Btw, can you add 2 external drives into your TimeMachine backup? Including internal drive? Without any performance loss?

Thanks for answering
 
I put a 2TB WD GreenPower inside a time capsule in February and it's been accepting hourly backups, 24x7, from my Mac since then.

So far so good.
 
It was my understanding that maximum capacity drives demand a premium cost and are more likely to fail. Maybe this is incorrect, I don't really know for sure.
 
So with other words, you just need some luck with your drive?

My 6 month old purchased 1TB (Packard Bell) S-ATA 3.5" is working fine also (for now)
I also never had problems with Seagate, Maxtor drives

But my 320GB(Medion) 2.5" and 500GB(Freecom) 3.5" ATA usb-drives crashed after +- 1 year of usage :(, it's because these crashes, i really find it difficult to buy/find a decent hard drive

Packard Bell doesn’t make Hard drives, the others look like just names for enclosures. There is only a handful of brands.
 
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