4 TB External Hard Drive Recommendations
- Thread starter BigToe
- Start date
I'very been running an external Samsung (think its got a Seagate drive inside) 4Tb drive for around 9 months and it works perfectly.
Soldato
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I got WD Green 4TB hard drive on Inateck FD1003 USB 3.0 Hard Drives Docking Station, the hard drive is incredible silent and did not get hot.
I would definitely recommend you to get WD Green 4TB and Inateck FD1003 USB 3.0 Hard Drives Docking Station if you want to run it as file server silently.
I would definitely recommend you to get WD Green 4TB and Inateck FD1003 USB 3.0 Hard Drives Docking Station if you want to run it as file server silently.
Thanks for the replies. The Seagate Expansion and Backup Plus look pretty good and get good reviews, but I'm not reading good things about Seagate reliability. Thinking back, the only drives I ever had die on me were Seagate and Maxtor units. Oh, and that infamous Deskstar of course.
AthlonXP1800: the Inateck option is an interesting one, and certainly something I'll consider. I'm surprised at the prices of 4 TB internal drives compared to external models; it seems that external models are generally cheaper.
Ignoring the notorious Deskstar from the early '00s, it seems that HGST have a good reputation for reliability. Are they worth the premium though? ...Is the question I'm asking myself.
AthlonXP1800: the Inateck option is an interesting one, and certainly something I'll consider. I'm surprised at the prices of 4 TB internal drives compared to external models; it seems that external models are generally cheaper.
Ignoring the notorious Deskstar from the early '00s, it seems that HGST have a good reputation for reliability. Are they worth the premium though? ...Is the question I'm asking myself.
It will depend on how much value you put on the data stored on that hard drive. I've learned from this forum is to:
A: have 2 backups, one can fail just like your main data storage.
B: buy 2 of the same hard drive from different vendors (in case of a bad batch)
C: never buy Seagate.
A: have 2 backups, one can fail just like your main data storage.
B: buy 2 of the same hard drive from different vendors (in case of a bad batch)
C: never buy Seagate.
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I'd hold off on the HGST drives if i were you, i've already had one (a TOURO 3.0) die on me last year, and had no auxiliary backups.
Currently being forced to do a ceckdisk on the one i'm using now after unplugging the drive from my tower yesterday (once everything was switched off), and now as soon as i plug it back in, says i should check it for errors....which at this rate could take days....while i do have secondary backups this time, it's still annoying.
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EDIT
Ok....never mind, Windows Explorer just decided to restart on me, which seems to have interupted the Checkdisk process, and now, the drive shows up as it normally should in file explorer...where as before, while i was running checkdisk (and before i ran it), it just showed the Drive letter, name and Format, no capacity information, but now, it is.
Though Crystal Disk keeps giving me temperature warnings (50-53 degrees), but i'm assuming that's normal operating temps for it, since i'm not getting any other warnings....apart from HD Tune Pro showing a C7 Interface CRC Error message (Current: 200 Worst: 200 Threshold: 0 Data: 9 Status: attention" showing that there seems to be a problem with the data cable. It's a USB 3 cable plugged into a USB 2 port, there are two USB 3 ports on the front of my tower, but they're not connected to anything, as my board doesn't support USB 3.
Then again, the errors could have been caused by the drive being starved for power, since i had USB Power Suspension turned ON in power management, until a couple of weeks ago, when i found out that can damage external USB drives. (and freaking out because the drive was being recognized as RAW format, and the two USB pen drives i have as extra backup weren't being detected at all)
Ok....never mind, Windows Explorer just decided to restart on me, which seems to have interupted the Checkdisk process, and now, the drive shows up as it normally should in file explorer...where as before, while i was running checkdisk (and before i ran it), it just showed the Drive letter, name and Format, no capacity information, but now, it is.
Though Crystal Disk keeps giving me temperature warnings (50-53 degrees), but i'm assuming that's normal operating temps for it, since i'm not getting any other warnings....apart from HD Tune Pro showing a C7 Interface CRC Error message (Current: 200 Worst: 200 Threshold: 0 Data: 9 Status: attention" showing that there seems to be a problem with the data cable. It's a USB 3 cable plugged into a USB 2 port, there are two USB 3 ports on the front of my tower, but they're not connected to anything, as my board doesn't support USB 3.
Then again, the errors could have been caused by the drive being starved for power, since i had USB Power Suspension turned ON in power management, until a couple of weeks ago, when i found out that can damage external USB drives. (and freaking out because the drive was being recognized as RAW format, and the two USB pen drives i have as extra backup weren't being detected at all)
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Well, I got the Toshiba 4TB Canvio in the end. Some key factors in my decision were:
- Horizontal positioning (the thought of knocking one over in tower configuration scared me)
- 7200 rpm
- USB 3.0
- Price
- It's not Seagate