Greetz All, We just wanted to extend a FYI 2 All that Toshiba External Hardrives should B a LAST CHOICE when planning 2 purchase External Hardrives. The reason being is that after We copied quite a bit of our Audio loops over to a Just Purchased Toshiba External, We accidently knocked it over (We Know, We Know, Clumsy Us). When We set it back upright it started clicking and the drive disappeared from Windows Explorer. We have not been able to access it since (Happened just before Xmas last year). We also have Western Digital (WD) and Seagate Externals in our collection and have knocked them over as well (Yep, Yep, Clumsy US *yes* ). Yet They R Still Workin' fine. Frankly We were a bit hesitant about buying the Toshiba Brand Externals (Saw some Bad Reviews), But We thought What The Hell (Found one 4 a good price), let's give it a try.) and bought it. We wish we'd stayed with WD and Seagate. Now Quite a bit of the Wonderful Giftz We got from Audioz That We Put On It R Gone . Be careful if U should decide to purchase an Toshiba External (Maybe put it between two bookendz just 2 B safe), they Are E X T R E M E L Y Fragile. *yes*
hi i got a toshiba external hardrive 3tb last year and it the worst thing i ever did, i look after my stuff so well and it still just freezes my pc when it wants to, im getting my money back this week for it and getting a Seagate, the toshiba hd is 11 mts old and i ive used it at most 10 times to back-up stuff like my pc ect it was only after i got it i read the bad reviews and it happents alot with there hardrives, the bigger they are the harder they fall,
Another hard drive brand to avoid From my personal experience I avoid Lacie at all costs. I'd rather get hard drive with ebola than a Lacie. I can't put into words how much I hate that f*** brand. I've had issues with literally every single Lacie hard drive I've had. One simply died for no reason. The other is unusable because it disconnects every 12 seconds so I use it as a decoration for my christmas tree. My multimedia Lacie works but I have to regularly reformat it when it stops working ( and we all know copying and pasting back and forth 2tb of data at 60mb/sec is SO FUN GUYS, FUNNNN !!) Anyways, that was my little rant on Lacie. They'll never get another nickel from me. I'll make sure to avoid toshiba external HDD's as well
Interesting. To show you how external HDs quality that you buy pre-assembled [usually in a 1.99$ plastic box] varies, one of my clients [who almost never heeds my advices and often gets burned for that ;)] has 2 Toshiba external 2.5" HDs. One 500GB and one 1TB. Never any problems with them whatsoever. However, he also has, or rather *had* 2 Western Digital My Passport 2.5" external HDs, one 1TB and the other 2TB that both went titsup and I only managed to save the data from the 2TB one. This 2TB one was rather new so he got it replaced, but I couldn't save all the data from it. But OK, I saved about 99%. *yes* Luckily, the HD was only 1/3 full. Personally, I will never, ever, buy a pre-assembled external HD of any size, especially not in a cheap plastic case and I would extend your warning to *all* such hard drives, unless they're SSDs. I think that the problem with such drives is mainly the high temperature they can reach in such closed plastic cases if you use them too much. Such drives are actually meant to be used as a backup, so you use them like a few times per week for a few hours, if that much. What I recommend is to buy a decent metal external case, or an open hot-swapping case, and a decent HD if you care about your data. I actually have two Toshiba 2.5" drives [amongst others: 1 Seagate 3.5", Seagate and WD 2.5"... I like 2.5" drives] that I use for different projects and backups, and they work flawlessly, too. But I use all of my backup hard disks bare with an IcyBox docking bay for HDs which has hot-swapping. You just insert it in it... simple and it never failed me. http://www.raidsonic.de/en/products/external-cases.php?we_objectID=6834 and this one is great ,too: http://www.raidsonic.de/en/home.php?we_objectID=7908 Cheers!
Your alarmism aside, Seagate has a bad reliability record and here's a study to actually substantiate this claim. The thing that makes this significant is that it's based on 34,881 consumer-grade drives over the course of three years, all operated by one business - meaning, no alarmists making the reports.
Thanks for the info krameri looks like i was going from the frying pan into the fire i also use dvd disc to back up everything, if it comes to the worst its still better than trying to download from the web
This graph reminded me that I failed to mention that smaller hard drives are always more durable since they usually have less platters. I always buy hard disks with only 1 platter or 2 platters at the most. Nowadays they make 1TB platters and up, so it's best to buy 1TB hard disks, 2TB at the most. Anything bigger is a no-no. Not to mention that hard disks with only 1 platter are more quiet, and consume less power therefore they heat less.
This brings me back to the question: Why are those drives made to sit upright in the first place? Its an accident waiting to happen.
weird... i have 2 500gb Toshibas that i pull in and out of my drawers all the time, to either put stuff on my mac from pc, or to copy from my mac... and haven't had any issues... plus, I always lay em flat.
I don't take the reliability of any hard drive (HDD) for granted, and I certainly don't expect much from a drive I have knocked off a table or dropped on the floor, and especially while drawing power (and spinning) or reading/writing. They're electro-mechanical devices with moving parts; they'll eventually break-down with or without the assistance of human clumsiness. As for data which I don't have residing on at least two separate drives (in different geographic locations, optimally) or on a HDD and in cloud storage, I don't expect not to lose them. Not that I can afford to have hard drives to back everyfrickinthing up, I just know that data on only one drive are going to be irrecuperably lost along with that drive. I also expect to get a bad apple from a bunch, every once in a while. I've owned Lacie, Seagate, Oyen, and Toshiba drives, and I can't generalistically claim which brand rules or sucks. Taking good care of the drives - not subjecting them to impact, not moving them while they're spinning, not spilling drinks on them, powering them on and off carefully, keeping 10-20% of their space free (empty), periodically running surface scans (and repairs when necessary), fully unmounting them before disconnecting or powering-off, and so forth - will leave only the variables of faulty manufacturing and inevitable wearing-out.
Hard Drives are very delicate they are built to very small tolerances (at least 1000th of an inch. They should not be knocked around, moved, or even touched when the platters are spinning as it can throw off the balance and send it into gyroscopic-ish motion. I have a 5 year old 3.5" Toshiba, a 3 year old 2.5" Verbatim, and two 1 year old 2.5" WD, all nearly full, all constantly in use. They sit tucked away on a corner of my desk. I have a clone of one drive that travels with me, I pack it in a case and then in between clothes. Because I treat them better than I would a vintage ribbon mic, I have never had a hard drive crash on me. Some hard drives are built better than others but in general its a competition between who makes a more durable cookie. 99.9% of HD crashes are end-user fault, and .1% bad product. I have zero sympathy for anyone who accidentally drops their infant child or "accidentally knocks over" a drive. If a hard drive has been treated well, when it finally decides to die naturally, it will show symptoms at least a month in advance. Don't currently buy any HDs above 2TB because they use TWO platters, if one gets messed up the whole thing dies (Think RAID 0)
If you take the time and check some of the many different hard drive product ratings on Amazon, for example, you'll see that every manufacturer has some failing drives, and yes, some even fail without any mechanical interaction. Every manufacturer designs its process to end up with products at a certain, usually low enough failure rate. However, some specific products (no matter what manufaturer) do have enough problems to better avoid them: Failing USB interfaces, failing USB 3.0 mini connectors, bad thermal design etc. Amazon user opinions can be a good indicator of above-average problems, given that there are enough of them to make them statistically relevant.
Just Saying: NASA uses triple backup, which, of course, is expensive. But every device with moving parts will fail eventually. I am poverty stricken; and yet, I use triple backup. I could never replace the data that took me 15 years to create and collect. I own 48 terabytes of backup (Paranoid?), but never have I lost one byte of data. If you cannot live with data loss, maybe double or triple backup is the way to go?
I purchased a 2TB Toshiba drive last year and it was a piece of garbage as well. I used it for about 2 months and one day upon completing some file transfers, it removed itself from the selection list on Windows and wouldn't work anymore, no matter what. I tested on Linux, Mac and multiple Windows machines and it wouldn't show... I only purchase Seagate and WD drives now.
I'm using 5 seagates here. No problems with any of them. I DO limit my max hdd size to 1tb--which likely increases the reliability due to smaller drive size. I keep multiple drives in my PC. I keep a single drive solely for backing up a full system image and backups of all installer files for all the software that I have installed on my machine. If you want to keep it, back it up. I burn anything I can't live without to dvd (as well as keep at least one copy on a hard drive). Back up your data, people!
I have two 1TB Toshiba's in Fantom enclosures (dirt cheap, but they work) and a Toshiba laptop with a Toshiba inside, they've all been working fine for ~2 years now. During the same time one WD Blue EZEX I bought showed up DOA, and the replacement just started getting sector errors three weeks ago, which is less than 2 years. WD Black drives tend to last longer. The good thing about WD is most of the time when they start failing they give you plenty of warning. I heard Seagate is more prone to sudden death with no chance of copying your data in time. Smaller drives, with single platters are the most reliable. I don't buy drives bigger than 1TB. 3.5" drives are also more reliable than 2.5" drives. I don't buy any "slim" external drives. It seems that SSD drives have become reliable and affordable now as well. SSD might be a good choice for an OS drive because you don't need more than ~250GB for Windows (you do install your apps and data on separate drives, right?). As for external drives, if those fail suddenly, other than from being dropped, it might be that the enclosure failed and the drive is ok. If it's a SATA drive inside you can take it out of the enclosure and see if it works internally, or in another enclosure.
okay, so more than one person has stated that smaller drives are more reliable than larger drives. this chart does not back up that claim.
We bought the Toshiba External 4 BackUp/Storage Only. Now We Have A DEAD DRIVE With LOTS & LOTS of GREAT!! Audio Loops on it (Gonna B Fun Tryin' 2 Locate Them Again That's 4 Sure. And We hear Ya on the WD PassPort Ultra PORTABLE HD's. They Aren't What We'd Expect From WD, Slow acces Timez, Constantly Needing Defrag, Etc, Etc, Etc. But they've held up well during our many travels around the world. And Those Externalz Are Nothin' More Than 3.5 HD Housed in a Plastic Case Connected 2 The USB Interface. LilSis's "Geek" Buddiez Have Also Talked About Hot Swap Drive Bay's. That's Not @ Difficult 2 Accomplish, So We're Probably Headin' In That Direction. Thankz.
We Have Geeky Friendz that Have Been Around Buildin' Maintainin' & UpGradin' Laptops & PC 4 Over 15 Yearz. Yep, We Most Definitely Do ABSOLUTELY Install Appz & Such 2 Other Hd's And/or Partitionz. Our Geek Buddiez Have ALWAYZ Insisted That We Always Do (Of Course Some Appz Do Still Install Filez 2 The OS Drive), We Learned That The HARD WAY Don't Ya Know. And Az 4 "If it's a SATA drive inside you can take it out of the enclosure and see if it works internally, or in another enclosure." That Was Also A suggestion From Our Geek Buddiez. Thankz Sooo Much 4 Your Input.
