Can anyone recommend a good external hard drive. I’d like something compact and at least 3 TB. I’ve been using the tome capsule drive that came in my airport router as a backup drive, but it failed this week. I was going to replace the drive but the process looks a little bit complex with opportunities to break the connectors if not done just right. Rather than go down that road, I’m just going to get an external one and plug it into the airport. But I have no idea what I should be looking for or which brands have a good reputation for longevity and reliability. Thanks in advance,
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Good external hard drive
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Drives are pretty much a commodity any more. I would just grab whatever 2.5" USB3 drive you can find on sale and run with it.
I have several WD 4TB Elements Portable External Hard Drives
they work great for me and never had any problems
they work great for me and never had any problems
Agree with this 100%. Drives in the 3-4TB range are close to $100 USD, so hardly a risk... any of the name brands (WD, Seagate, etc) will do.
Thank you for the recommendation. Those look perfect, and Amazon is offering 15% back if you use an Amazon credit card. I just bought one.
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Thanks. I had seen some comments when I searched for the error message I got about my hard drive filling & several of them said that Apple used low end Seagate drives that were prone to failure, so I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't buying anything that was bad to begin with. I appreciate the info.
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If you watch the deal sites, the Western Digital MyBook/Elements/EasyStore drives are popular because they contain "Red" NAS drives that can be shucked and employed in users' own NAS enclosures (albeit at the risk of the warranty; it is said they can be restored in their original case if issues arise). There's little to no price advantage to buying bare drives now.
6TB versions go as low as $100, and 8TB versions for $20 more, and so on.
6TB versions go as low as $100, and 8TB versions for $20 more, and so on.
Grabbed a 5TB WD EasyStore on sale for $89. Portable, bus powered, and surprisingly quiet. My older "tower" 4TB powered 7200 drive is still slightly faster and the directory tree populates quicker but I'm surprised at the quietness of this portable unit. Worth it if that's something you value.
For now I took a 4TB drive out of my PC and put into an external case. I reformatted for Mac usage and voila... I have a 4TB storage drive for my photos. But I want a backup for the whole machine and looking at regular drives the 8TB go over $200, whereas an external WD or Seagate are in the $130 area. I don't need speed for backups.