Need advice on portable HDD: Looking on Amazon for a 2 TB portable hard drive to store/backup photo's. Choices are: Seagate Barracuda, Western Digital Elements and Toshiba Canvio...

SonyA580 Loc: FL in the winter & MN in the summer

Looking on Amazon for a 2 TB portable hard drive to store/backup photo's. Choices are: Seagate Barracuda, Western Digital Elements and Toshiba Canvio Basics. All are in the same basic price range so I'd like to hear from anyone having experience with any of these 3 ...., good, or bad. Thanks!

PixelStan77 Loc: Vermont/Chicago

SonyA580 wrote:

Looking on Amazon for a 2 TB portable hard drive to store/backup photo's. Choices are: Seagate Barracuda, Western Digital Elements and Toshiba Canvio Basics. All are in the same basic price range so I'd like to hear from anyone having experience with any of these 3 ...., good, or bad. Thanks!

My preference is Western Digital. Great experience of the years

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Never a problem with WD passports in 15+ years. I currently use 2 x 4TB passports. Googling the difference between the 'elements' line vs 'passport' is hard to discern the difference.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

Seagate: I had a few crashes on me. At the time Seagate was having issues (5 years ago).
Now I use only SSD drives for storage and currently experimenting with SD cards... 1TB for 99.00 Only issue is:

Where the in the ****** did put that thing???

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

PixelStan77 wrote:

My preference is Western Digital. Great experience of the years

Ditto.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Longshadow wrote:

Ditto.

While it's no guarantee of current or future performance, my personal experience with well over a dozen drives over the last 15 years leads me to prefer Western Digital's long term reliability. Of the 5 drives I currently use for my backups, three are WD drives over over five years old and the other two are Seagate replacements of previous Seagate drives which only lasted a couple of years. Given the choice, depending on the format, size, and cost I lean towards WD drives.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

mwsilvers wrote:

While it's no guarantee of current or future performance, my personal experience with well over a dozen drives over the last 15 years leads me to prefer Western Digital's long term reliability.

I DO have three Seagate Barracuda drives salvaged from desktops that are still functioning fine in my drive dock. Barracudas used to be VERY good also.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Longshadow wrote:

I DO have three Seagate Barracuda drives salvaged from desktops that are still functioning fine in my drive dock. Barracudas used to be VERY good also.

Each of us has anecdotal stories about our own long term experiences. I can only report mine. However, there does seem to be a trend towards a preference for WD vs Seagate drives in this thread and in a number of other threads I've read on this topic.

Bob Mevis Loc: Plymouth, Indiana

I prefer Western Digital.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

SonyA580 wrote:

Looking on Amazon for a 2 TB portable hard drive to store/backup photo's. Choices are: Seagate Barracuda, Western Digital Elements and Toshiba Canvio Basics. All are in the same basic price range so I'd like to hear from anyone having experience with any of these 3 ...., good, or bad. Thanks!

I buy bare drives that are "certified" for enterprise or data center use, then I buy an enclosure that has the connectivity I like - currently USB-C or faster, slip the drive in the case (takes about 30 secs) and plug it in. This solution is more expensive than the consumer drives on the market - but these drives come with 5 yr warranties and they will last much longer. The consumer stuff too often fails before the 1 or 2 yr warranty is up. If I am backing up data, I want to back it up to something reliable, and in duplicate. I would suggest reading the negative reviews - they will give you a sense of what can happen when things go wrong.

Or you can spend some $$ and go solid state and generally forget about mechanical reliability issues.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

mwsilvers wrote:

Each of us has anecdotal stories about our own long term experiences. I can only report mine. However, there does seem to be a trend towards a preference for WD vs Seagate drives in this thread and in a number of other threads I've read on this topic.

YEARS ago I went with Barracudas exclusively. Not sure when i switched to WD.
So, maybe both are still equally as good???

UTMike Loc: South Jordan, UT

WD for sure. Avoid Seagate

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

UTMike wrote:

WD for sure. Avoid Seagate

Wow, any idea for a time frame when they became not as good as they used to be?

Jay Drew Loc: Boise, Id.

You might want to check out these 2 sties:
https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-for-2020/
I'm not quite sure what relevance it has to ordinary folks like us, but it can't hurt either, Jay

Rongnongno Loc: FL

Longshadow wrote:

Wow, any idea for a time frame when they became not as good as they used to be?

https://windowsreport.com/seagat-hard-drive-windows-10/
https://iboysoft.com/mac-data-recovery/seagate-backup-plus-not-mounting-working-on-mac.html