recommend hard drive brands/models?

dcslacker said:

Even though HDD prices are not as cheap as they used to be, I will probably have to suck it up and buy one to archive video projects. I know it'll be better to buy two and have two copies of the same drive but the prices now won't make that realistic right now.

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If the HDD crashes, or something corrupts on it, will you just shrug about losing everything and move on or will you kick yourself for being cheap?

The greens should be fine but if you are willing to spend $215 for a single Black drive why aren't you willing to spend $280 for two Greens?


Lethal

for archiving I would totally get greens .. quieter and use less power .. but if speed is an issue then get the black .. but you can almost get double the space for the price of a single black

All platter-based hard drives are the same. Pick one based on the capacity and your budget, not overblown concerns about brands or models.

I use Seagate Barracuda XT 7,200RPM as my expansion drives, one 2TB and one 3TB both work great! No problems yet

When I was researching my HD swap for my old macbook pro a year ago, most everyone pointed towards Western Digital blacks or greens. I put a black in the laptop and a green in my back up enclosure. I am not sure i agree with "all HDs are created equal." I do think some brands are better than others and when the price difference between the "best" and the "worst" is as negligible as it is, why not go with the one that seems to have the most favorable reviews? At the end of the day, all HDs will eventually fail either way though.

I agree with your approach - WD black/speed on your working disk and WD green/low power consumption/low heat (and still not "slow") for your backup.

Personal experience .... just don't buy seagate.

I've always been a seagate fan up until about 3 years ago. I had a 1.5TB hard drive that I purchased from them, and it was always spotty about working or not working (right after I moved everything to it, of course) .. and it seemed as if it was overheating. I went through several different enclosures thinking that they must be the issue, but alas, no. I wrote to seagate and I was told that because I didn't install the hard drive into a desktop, I wasn't using it properly and had no warranty complaint. I guess I'm crazy to think that a hard drive should work mounted in a desktop OR mounted properly into an enclosure.

I'll skip details on the rest, but I've had a 1tb portable drive fail within a few months of use and again, seagate is giving me trouble to replace, and finally I bought a desktop 3TB seagate drive for backups, and it's spotty. 99% of the time it works fine, but occasionally it starts to act like my little 1tb did right before it died.

I'll attest to WD though... I've got a WD Green drive (3.5") that hasn't failed but it was spotty, and they're replacing it, basically no questions asked. My older 320gb 2.5" (WD Black) and 500gb 2.5" (WD Black) also run great years into use.