External Hard Drives

[slofox]

In January last year (2020) I bought a Seagate solid state external hard drive ($147.00). I don't have a lot to store outside of the computer but there are few things that I need to keep track of and cannot afford to lose.

Yesterday I set about updating said data. The drive was plugged in and failed to start. It did give me a few flickers of the indicator light and then totally died.
I took it into the source (PB Tech)and asked them about it. They just fobbed me off with a series of "we have no record of that purchase" statements and provided no help at all. (I think I have a bank record of the purchase...hahaha!)

So. I probably will need to replace the dud. Despite Seagate's supposed high quality, I am a little reluctant to buy another.

Any advice on something not too expensive that won't fall over at less than 2 years old? Given that I don't use it for a lot of stuff, 1Tb seems like plenty of space

[TheDemonLord]

In January last year (2020) I bought a Seagate solid state external hard drive ($147.00). I don't have a lot to store outside of the computer but there are few things that I need to keep track of and cannot afford to lose.

Yesterday I set about updating said data. The drive was plugged in and failed to start. It did give me a few flickers of the indicator light and then totally died.
I took it into the source (PB Tech)and asked them about it. They just fobbed me off with a series of "we have no record of that purchase" statements and provided no help at all. (I think I have a bank record of the purchase...hahaha!)

So. I probably will need to replace the dud. Despite Seagate's supposed high quality, I am a little reluctant to buy another.

Any advice on something not too expensive that won't fall over at less than 2 years old? Given that I don't use it for a lot of stuff, 1Tb seems like plenty of space

Ironically, Seagate are the only HDD company I trust (I've had really bad experiences with Western Digital)

Just as a question, if you are worried about Drive Failure, have you considered a Cloud based option? Either a dedicated Backup provider (like Acronis) or something like an Azure Blob or AWS Bucket account?

[slofox]

Ironically, Seagate are the only HDD company I trust (I've had really bad experiences with Western Digital)

Just as a question, if you are worried about Drive Failure, have you considered a Cloud based option? Either a dedicated Backup provider (like Acronis) or something like an Azure Blob or AWS Bucket account?



I have always trusted Seagate too. Their last product lasted over 20 years.

Anyway, throughout the day, I managed to find the original till receipt for the purchase. Took it all to PB Tech and waved it about. The unit is now being examined since they could hardly deny they sold the unit.

Re cloud options? I guess I just don't trust anything that stores itself outside of my control and is dealt with by persons unknown. I'd rather hide the HD somewhere I can go and look at from time to time (actually I never do that...). Mind you, I doubt there would be anything at all valuable or usable in the garbage I have to store. Hardly worth it I reckon.

[Gremlin]

The biggest thing is to keep more than one copy of your data. I've had more luck with WD than Seagate actually.

Google gives you 15GB, including email storage (plus Google Backup and Sync, or whatever they call that now) and of course free.
Dropbox gives you a free 2GB from memory (but I do not like them) and a free Microsoft outlook.com account includes a 5GB OneDrive.

That's assuming you don't have a Personal or Family 365 plan, which gives you a 1TB OneDrive.

Keep your local copies if you want, you can get SSD external drives now (like these: https://www.pbtech.co.nz/category/peripherals/hdd-external/portable-ssd?o=lowest_price) which will be a little more rugged and lighter than a regular drive.

[SaferRides]

It was a SSD.

I keep everything in the cloud but also have all of the files on my desktop PC as well. There are other advantages to cloud storage - you can access your data from any device, and also recover previous versions of files.

My one piece of advice would be to check where your data is stored. In Microsoft's case it is Sydney but I don't know about the others. Not every country has solid data protection legislation.

Sent from my SM-G980F using Tapatalk

[sugilite]

I'm with Gremlin, key is keep more than one copy.
I have been backing up data for more than 30 years, and I have had about an equal amount of failures between Western Digital and Seagate drives.
My current set up is two seperate 8tb drives, 1 nas running raid 5 and cloud storage for really critical data.
Reading the OP posts, I feel you got unlucky with the drive, happens with both brands.
I feel the best solution would be a 4 tb drive with cloud storage back up for at least the most critical data. Google has super reasonable rates if you need more than their standard 15 gb.
God forbid anyone having to experience a house fire, but cloud backup will at least protect that precious data.

[slofox]

Thanks for your replies.

I have nothing of world shattering importance to store and not much else at that. What I do try to keep safe is mostly family stuff and old financial records. Just now I do have a few things to add to my will that involve a couple of other people. These items I have in the desktop where they were created. They also go into the external drive (when it's working of course...:angry:). They have also been printed and are stored with my brother who will be executor in due course. I also have hard copies for myself that mostly live in the chaos of the "filing cabinet"...

So I'm not too worried.