dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Or better, at the current cost, get two 4T or 5T drives.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I congratulate you on having 3 copies of your data (and hopefully one of those copies off-site for disaster recovery).

As far as the never exceeding 80% because the drive has to “work harder”, I don’t know that I’d worry about that. Same with the Respondent that never exceeds 50% because the assumption is that the drive writes from the outside tracks (which are the fastest) in. It all depends on the particular file system and how fragmented the disk is. For example, some file systems write to the closest block, regardless of location to minimize head seek time. And if the disk is badly fragmented, then there will be theoretically more head seeks, BUT they may be shorter seeks. That also assumes that the head actuator is the failure point. Long story short, if you keep your HD defraged (which also helps with speed), it probably doesn’t matter how full you get it, but if you’re comfortable with that, then nothing wrong with it. Btw, none of this applies to SSDs, which are random access devices and don't need to be defragmented.

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

I have had students and others who turn to me when something goes wrong have failures with the cheap drives - mostly nicely packaged WD Green or cheap Seagate drives. When it comes to data security, nothing beats drives with 5 yr warranties. I fill these up fairly regularly, and rotate them out every 4-5 yrs. I have yet to suffer a drive failure. Many of the cheap junk seems to fail either just before or just after the warranty period. It's like playing Russian Roulette with a six shooter with 4 chambers loaded - just not with the risk just to save a couple of $$. Besides, the datacenter or enterprise drives are also generally faster.

If you are on a Mac, you don't have to defrag the drive, since OSX does that automatically. Windows 7 and later gives you the option to schedule a defrag. I periodically check my drives just to make sure they are not in need of defragging, and every time I check Windows reports 0% fragmented.

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

All drives may fail at some point, but there is failure data that shows that some drives will last longer than others - HGST, Samsung and WD Re, Black and higher will outlast the cheap stuff. For a little perspective, I've been in this game since 1983, when I bought my first 10 MB - not a typo - from 47th St Photo - and paid $900, a total bargain in those days. This drive had a 180 day warranty and it failed before the end of the warranty period, and it was replaced with a 20 MB drive, because no one had the 10 MB drives anymore. I've build over 3,000 computers and installed at least 3x that many drives in computers - so while I am happy that you've been fortunate to have had good luck with your passport drives, I could build a small island with MyBook, Passport and other consumer-packaged junk drives that I have replaced after failure. So I do agree with you - everything fails at some point. But you can hedge your bets by getting quality stuff.

TonyBrown

I have a Toshiba and a WD hard drives. The Toshiba is over a year old and the WD Osvaldo fairly new. So far the Toshiba has been fine(fingers crossed). However, I do have one question. Is it better to shit the hard drive down after each use or keep it running. I know that external drives are prone to failure and it would be helpful to know if there is any increased risk of failure with continually shutting down or keeping the drive connected to my computer.

Baysitter11 Loc: Cincinnati

I have 2 and they have been very dependable.

TonyBrown

RPaul3rd Loc: Arlington VA and Sarasota FL

This may be overkill but I have two 5T Seagate external backups. The first to backup my originals and then the second to backup the backup. My backup program is Acronis 2020. Set it and forget it. Easy and not that expensive compared to some. Just a thought.

hcmcdole

Get two of the same thing and duplicate. Glad I did as one failed on a trip to Thailand so I had the duplicate. Bought a replacement when we got back home (same thing WD 4 TB) and had it copied within a few hours. I also have a network drive too so that is triple backup on important files and pictures. I try not to save photos to my C drive (SSD) as this is reserved for the OS, programs, and other files and makes backing it up to a small 1 TB drive super easy.