Which External HDD?

[trustyone]

Hey guys new mac user first post,

I recently purchased rmbp15 with 500GB SSD,
I have recently returned 15 months travelling with a GoPro and Im now beginning the gruelling task of processing my clips to produce a video of my trip.

I have converted all my clips with Go Pro studio and now have 800+ GB of footage to import to iMovie.

I plan on purchasing 2-4TB Ex HDD to house my iMovie Library while editing however i'm having difficulty choosing one.
Of course budget plays the controlling role so I'm expecting around 100 pounds?

Choices seem to be Seagate-WD-Lacie-Verbatim etc

However reading loads of reviews regarding case failure i'm put off purchasing any - what do you guys use/suggest?

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Oh and Im in the UK so if anyone has any recommendations on where t buy that'd be great also!
Cheers peeps!

 

[RedCroissant]

Hey guys new mac user first post,

I recently purchased rmbp15 with 500GB SSD,
I have recently returned 15 months travelling with a GoPro and Im now beginning the gruelling task of processing my clips to produce a video of my trip.

I have converted all my clips with Go Pro studio and now have 800+ GB of footage to import to iMovie.

I plan on purchasing 2-4TB Ex HDD to house my iMovie Library while editing however i'm having difficulty choosing one.
Of course budget plays the controlling role so I'm expecting around 100 pounds?

Choices seem to be Seagate-WD-Lacie-Verbatim etc

However reading loads of reviews regarding case failure i'm put off purchasing any - what do you guys use/suggest?

----------

Oh and Im in the UK so if anyone has any recommendations on where t buy that'd be great also!
Cheers peeps!

Well I have no idea where to buy them because I'm in the US, but I can tell you that I would ALWAYS recommend WD drives. I have had them in every single one of my Macs, used them as desktop externals, and have also owned 2 of their portable externals (the slim 250GB versions from 2003. The only HDD that "failed" was the stock 320GB HDD that was in my 2009 20" iMac. I say "failed" because the only issue was that I was bothered by was progressively slower boot times and slowly decreasing HDD size. So there were some bad sectors of course, but none of my data was ever lost.

 

[Weaselboy]

Good study here showing hard drive reliability. It is the only study I have ever seen with hard data. Everything else seems to be "I owned two brand XX" and they sucked.

The study shows Hitachi at the top, then WD, then Seagate in descending order of reliability. Those are also pretty much the only companies making hard drives today. All these fancy aluminum housings and all you see are just one of those three brand drives anyway inside a fancy case.

My personal preference is buying an external drive enclosure made by the same company that made the drive.

If I was buying a large external like you want, I would get a Hitachi or WD. Amazon UK has both. Hitachi here and WD here.

 

[hallux]

Keep in mind that you may be seeing a disproportionate number of negative reviews. Just like we-based automotive forums, people will use reviews to express displeasure about a failure. I'd say for every negative there are probably at least 3 positive that aren't reported.

That said, like RedCrossiant EVERY spinning drive I've had control over the purchase decision on is a WD. That's 3 in my Windows desktop computer and 3 external (2 desktop size and a portable) and have generally good luck with them.

 

[RedCroissant]

Good study here showing hard drive reliability. It is the only study I have ever seen with hard data. Everything else seems to be "I owned two brand XX" and they sucked.

The study shows Hitachi at the top, then WD, then Seagate in descending order of reliability. Those are also pretty much the only companies making hard drives today. All these fancy aluminum housings and all you see are just one of those three brand drives anyway inside a fancy case.

My personal preference is buying an external drive enclosure made by the same company that made the drive.

If I was buying a large external like you want, I would get a Hitachi or WD. Amazon UK has both. Hitachi here and WD here.

Didn't Hitachi recently purchase Seagate? I know that Seagate and Maxtor joined forces a few years ago.

I almost agree with an enclosure. My preference is to go with an external HDD docking station that connects via whiter I/O the OP prefers and then just buy bare HDDs.

 

[Weaselboy]

Didn't Hitachi recently purchase Seagate? I know that Seagate and Maxtor joined forces a few years ago.

I believe it was WD that purchased Hitachi, but they continue to sell Hitachi's under their own brand name.

 

[RedCroissant]

I believe it was WD that purchased Hitachi, but they continue to sell Hitachi's under their own brand name.

Oh, ok then. So now buying WD is an even better option! I think.

 

[gnasher729]

Oh, ok then. So now buying WD is an even better option! I think.

Just make sure to buy a plain old hard drive with no fancy software on it. Quite a few WD users had data losses when some software on WD drives didn't play well with Mavericks. We had people posting with huge problems caused by backup software on all kinds of drives.

3TB external cost about £80. Times two because you _do_ want a backup.

 

[aicul]

Drives are ever cheaper, (and shortly cloud storage also).

Buy a serious drive and update it regularly so that you never reach its end of lifecyle.

 

[Weaselboy]

Just make sure to buy a plain old hard drive with no fancy software on it. Quite a few WD users had data losses when some software on WD drives didn't play well with Mavericks. We had people posting with huge problems caused by backup software on all kinds of drives.



3TB external cost about £80. Times two because you _do_ want a backup.

Yes good point. First thing anybody should do with any of these drives is use Disk util to erase the entire drive to get rid if any of that third party software.