Tet68survivor Loc: Pomfret Center CT

I use both WD and Seagate, I have noticed no difference in today's built drives. Years ago it was questionable which was better, but today very comparable! 2TB are about $70, 4TB about a $100, and 8TB about $150. Plug and play usb

Kuzano

LaCie never made hard drives... only HD enclosures, and most often with Seagate drives inside. Now Seagate owns LaCie which is unfortunate. Heaven knows why Seagate bought them, except to upgrade their quality control and run their own show.
Unfortunately, I think these moves have compromised Seagates own quality control at times.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Seagate has had their ups and downs over the years. Started as Shugart, they have become one of the three large remaining drive manufacturers by a myriad of acquisitions over the years, the latest being LaCie. I, like you, cannot imagine why they wanted them other than as a vehicle for external HDs (with hopefully better QC). At one time, Seagate's 15K RPM Chettahs were the hottest drive on the market and specified by many performance-oriented storage manufacturers. Then the infamous Chettah 7 recall caused them to accept the return of a reported 1 million HDs and cost them a 90+ million$ settlement with one of their disgruntled customers. Since then, their QC and quality has been variable - sometimes good and sometimes bad, often depending on where their drives were manufactured. I have several of their 4GB Chettah and Banrracuda SCSI drives which I used for many years, and the last time I checked, they still started and ran; but today, when I need a HD (which is seldom as I mostly use SSDs except where large capacity makes them too costly), I choose HGST.

BTW, some of the best HDs I've ever experienced we're made by Fujitsu (bought by Toshiba). I took a NetApp F330 NAS with 16 4GB Fujitsu drives on a trade after 4 years of hard use. I then placed the array in service in my unheated basement and used it for another 12 years with never a drive failure.

GrandmaG Loc: Flat Rock, MI

I currently have my Lightroom catalog and 3 years worth of pictures on a small 1 TB Seagate drive that I have used for over 3 years. Not one single problem with that drive. However, they say, "it's not IF a drive will fail, it's when!".

Of course, like others, I have multiple backups of my photos. For travel, I plan to invest in a solid state drive which is better, I'm told; but, for now, my Seagate works fine and is small enough to travel with. All of my pictures are on a NAS system in RAID 1 configuration and a duplicate is sent to a WD Drive that I keep in my safe. I also have all pictures from 2014 and older on a WD drive in the banks safe deposit box. I've used those drives for years without a problem. This year I enrolled in Carbonite and it saved my butt a few times already. Plus, I use Shutterfly to post the best pictures (after editing) AND my favorites are on my phone in Lightroom mobile.

I'm sure either drive will serve you well, but you need to have another backup plan (or two or three)!

Grace98 Loc: Waterlooville, Hampshire - United Kingdom

Thank you again for all your help and advise. After a lot of tooing and froing I bought the WD 2TB hard-drive to try it out - backing my files at time of writing this. Will get another 2TB one at some time in the future. Originally was going for the 4TB but went by a few suggestions that it's better to get two hard-drives. Need advise on something else now but will post seperate. Grace