<p dir="ltr">relevant: <a href="https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/">https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/</a></p>
<p dir="ltr">Sent from my mobile. Please excuse the brevity, spelling, and punctuation. </p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On May 19, 2016 5:43 PM, "DJ-Pfulio" <<a href="mailto:DJPfulio@jdpfu.com">DJPfulio@jdpfu.com</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">+1. Seagate lied, lied, lied for almost a year back in 2007 about<br>
terrible HDD issues. I avoided them until a few years ago, when my need<br>
and their pricing tricked me - picked up 2 2TB Seagate HDDs from NewEgg<br>
during an EggCrusher ... let the pressure of the perceived low-pricing<br>
push my order BEFORE I'd done enough research. 30 min after my order,<br>
they'd already shipped and I'd discovered all the complaints on<br>
Seagate's forums for the drives I'd bought. 1 yr + 1 month later, 1 of<br>
those drives failed. Rather than fight for the 1yr warranty to be<br>
covered (or use my CC to extend it), I bought 2 new HDDs - non-seagate.<br>
<br>
There was a study published about HDD reliability 5+ yrs ago. A vaguely<br>
recall that Seagate was significantly more likely to fail than any other<br>
major brand. Hitachi was shockingly less likely to fail than the<br>
averages. This was awhile ago, so all those numbers don't really count<br>
today. I try to buy Hitachi-branded drives with at least 3-yr warranties.<br>
<br>
BTW, from 1985-2005, I always tried to buy Seagate because they had the<br>
best reputation and were very reliable in my uses. Still have 6 of<br>
those pre-2005 Seagate drives spinning just fine here. Those HDDs had 5<br>
yr warranties.<br>
<br>
USB HDD warranties usually suck - 90 days or 1 yr. Never higher. It is<br>
a reflection of the engineering and HW used. They make tens of millions<br>
of these devices yearly and know about the expected reliability. Best<br>
to get a 3yr warranty disk (no consumer-level 5yr warranties are<br>
available for a reasonable price anymore), and put that into a $9<br>
enclosure yourself. If this is a desktop, it doesn't need external<br>
power. If you ever plan to use it with a laptop, get a powered<br>
enclosure. If you don't plan to boot off this USB, then USB2/3 doesn't<br>
matter.<br>
<br>
SAS drives are a completely different thing. Don't know anything about<br>
those - those disks were always a DC choice.<br>
<br>
Hope this helps. That's about all I know related to HDDs and USB.<br>
<br>
On 05/19/16 16:06, dev null zero two wrote:<br>
> that's a horrible price and Seagate isn't quite known for their reliability<br>
><br>
> <a href="http://dealnews.com/Western-Digital-3-TB-USB-3.0-Portable-HDD-for-100-free-shipping/1670903.html" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://dealnews.com/Western-Digital-3-TB-USB-3.0-Portable-HDD-for-100-free-shipping/1670903.html</a><br>
> <a href="http://dealnews.com/Western-Digital-2-TB-USB-3.0-Hard-Drive-for-70-free-shipping/1661636.html" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://dealnews.com/Western-Digital-2-TB-USB-3.0-Hard-Drive-for-70-free-shipping/1661636.html</a><br>
> <a href="http://dealnews.com/Toshiba-3-TB-External-USB-3.0-Hard-Drive-for-80-w-padding-free-shipping/1660976.html" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://dealnews.com/Toshiba-3-TB-External-USB-3.0-Hard-Drive-for-80-w-padding-free-shipping/1660976.html</a><br>
><br>
><br>
> On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 3:57 PM, Leam Hall <<a href="mailto:leamhall@gmail.com">leamhall@gmail.com</a><br>
> <mailto:<a href="mailto:leamhall@gmail.com">leamhall@gmail.com</a>>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> This is a resend. For some reason the mailer said it would wait a<br>
> couple days to resend and I told my wife I'd try to order the drive<br>
> sooner.<br>
><br>
><br>
> My wife has an old Mac and I'm looking at a ~2 TB or so external drive<br>
> for her. Looking at the Seagate Expansion 2TB Desktop External Hard<br>
> Drive USB 3.0 (STEB2000100)<br>
> (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STEB2000100/dp/B00TKFEE9E" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STEB2000100/dp/B00TKFEE9E</a>).<br>
><br>
> Her computer is USB 2, and older iMac. Is there a better drive in the<br>
> $100 range? Speed isn't as important as reliability.<br>
><br>
_______________________________________________<br>
Ale mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Ale@ale.org">Ale@ale.org</a><br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a><br>
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a><br>
</blockquote></div>