What external hard drive do you use to back up data?

[kokio]

The risk of data loss is always scary
What company's products do you mainly use? What is the data capacity of that product?

 

[pingtoryan]

Lots of WD Externals. These days I try to get the USB-C Ultra ones but that means upping the price. A few external SSDs also, most WD with some Samsung sprinkled in. While I have doubt about the SSDs long-term storage capability, the transfer speed cannot be denied. 2TBs HDDs and 1TB SSDs are of affordable value and price to size ratio. One WD had failed on me after all these years, an old 1TB unit. Never tried Seagate, and I can't seem to find any more Toshiba. I have some Toshiba HDDs and they seems viable.

One SanDisk SSD was dead on arrival so I avoided it despite it being the cheaper option. I think it's something you gotta diversify and find your own opinion if you can, because everyone will give different answers, and what is available to your locale may be different. If you are truly scared about such thing then don't cheap out.

 

[Timurama]

i dont lol, for 15 years i have been a pc user a hdd or ssd never died on me for a reason that wasn't explicitly my own, just treat your drives good, make sure they're ventilated not dusty etc, oh and don't buy toshiba

 

[sonicstream]

Can I count NAS as external storage? Synology DS218J with 10TB + 8TB WD Red Pro.

 

[Jelly-filled Donut]

Seagate's quality had decreased these days. I primarily used it only if I want to access some files quickly. Keep in mind that like all things, HDDs decay faster the more it saw action. Deleting files in it, copy / pasting files, executing a program in it, etc. will decrease its overall life expectancy.

Though what killed it the most is constantly plugging / unplugging your HDD from your PC. I highly recommend that you use a USB hub multiport distributor, to minimize the damage done to your HDD. That way you can just replace the port distributor, instead of letting the plug/unplugging action damage your HDD. Just the ones with 2 or three ports is fine. Your average laptop wouldn't be able to handle the simultaneous workload anyway (unless you're on a beefy gaming PC).

I've heard that some people said that "simple wear and tear" wouldn't damage your HDD, but I call BS on that. Those words usually came from the educated developers who knows how to care for their computers, and not your average civilian users who plug and unplug their HDDs, more than horny rats on breeding session.

Like all products, HDD is a lottery. Once in a blue moon, you'll get a defective product that somehow passed their quality control. They might reimburse you for a new HDD, but who's gonna reimburse all your data? Certainly not them. In the past (when I still didn't know better), I've damaged plenty of my HDDs and suffer devastating loss of datas. Even after I eject them, unplug them carefully, and handled them like a literal baby. I would not risk another data loss again. If you want to experience it too, then be my guest.

For long-term storage that saw minimal action, I recommend a few WD externals. Go make multiple backups over several external HDDs and you're good to go. Just buy several 1TB ones or a couple of 3TB tops. I don't recommend anything more than 3TB for financial reasons. Rotate between them every few years, if you're that paranoid.

Can't confirm whether planned obsolescence in HDDs is a thing or not, but it wouldn't surprise me. The HDD market is practically a giant monopoly by now, and they monopolizes the professional data retrieval market and its retrieval technology. If you don't want your data be "taken hostage" for exorbitant amount of price, you might want to have a backup or two.

This information is true as of today. Alas, I dunno how it will all change in the future. Some even say that external HDDs will become obsolete in near future.

 

[LazyMuffin]

For me I'd have a mixture of offline & online backups so a couple of WD HDDs and rent a few Kimsufi servers