I'm looking to do some local backups to an external HDD and would love to find a good deal. Am I better off buying an enclosure and sticking a desktop drive into it? Will that be a cheaper option than buying an out-of-the-box portable drive?
Anyone Know of a Good Deal on a High Capacity External USB 3 Drive? around 10-12TB
Comments
Yes, one with an AC adapter is fine. Those are still portable…are they not?
Technically yes, but requires AC Adapter.
- 'Portable Hard Drive' are usually 2.5" drives, which doesn't require external power
- 'External Hard Drive' are usually 3/5" drives, that does require an AC Adapter.
As for recommendation, keep an eye out for the Western Digital Elements, which are usually discounted from Amazon US via AU (10TB are ~$250 to $300).
Thanks, I've updated the title :)
I'll keep an eye out on WD Elements. Cheers!
I assume it's probably best to hold off on purchasing until at least Black Friday, in case of deals?
@Meeb: Definitely wait until Black Friday (which is in a few days), to make any decision of purchasing.
Practically yes, technically no.
Thanks for the tips! Damn I wish I caught that deal in May!
Only a handful got it, so don't feel bad about missing it!
To be fair though, I'm usually personally against taking advantage of pricing errors (it feels like kicking someone whilst they are down).
hands over his OzBargain license
@spackbace: In this case I probably wouldn't feel as bad, but when I see individual eBay sellers get OzBargained due to a pricing error I do feel bad for them a little.
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/440438
Wait for another Amazon Seagate 10tb deal. These drives are great. I own 2. Helium. Good performance. Quiet. It'll drop in price again.
Hmm, thanks. I'm not a huge fan of Seagate personally as their drives tend to have higher mean failure rates in comparison to WD/HGST drives. I've actually had 3 Seagate drives die on me in the last decade, in comparison to a single WD drive.
You just started the usual wd/seagate feud. Buckle on.
Yeah the whole "higher failure" rate thing is internet hogwash.
Even big corps like BackBlaze don't even use WD anymore
WD had the biggest known failure of hard drives with their old WD Green drives using "intellipark" that wasn't intelligent at all. It killed many drives that were used for media etc. I lost many drives until the WDIDLE3 workaround was discovered.
HGST which is owned by WD still have lower failure rates than Seagate though, based on the data from the link you sent. I have had a few HGST drives over the years and they have definitely been most reliable.
@Typical16-bitEnjoyer: Well either way, as I've said, I've been burnt by Seagate in the past so it's kind of hard for me to get on board with them again.
consider 2 x 8tb externals instead gIving you 16tb in total and would be around $400 with Black Friday deals. Or 2x6tb for about 300. Where as the 10tb and 12tb drives see a significant bump in price for those capacities.
Something to consider anyway.
Actually this is a good idea, thanks for the suggestion. I wonder if I can hook up both of them to my router via a USB hub and then have my backup go to both drives simultaneously - essentially creating a RAID 1-like array.
I wouldn’t venture into raid or software mirroring with usb personally. Possible with a few free backup utilities out there like sync back free. But it’s probably more hassle that it’s worth.
I don't think portable hard drives goes up to 10TB - 12TB.
Unless you're talking about External Hard Drive (which requires an AC Adapter).