External Hard Drive

[phutoie2]

Thinking of purchasing an external hard drive.

What spec & price should I be looking at?

Not much on offer here at our local small town computer shop, so looks like a trip to Bangkok/Petch City or Saraburi.

Its some years ago now but did some shopping at Zeer in Rangsit once, anyone recommend?

Thanks all.

[lopburi3]

Zeer should be good. Have seen it recommended for anyone in that area of the city.

[Thanyaburi Mac]

You might stop by Future Park Rangsit if you're headed towards ZEER. Check up on the 3rd floor, which is the top, SW corner, AMY Computer. Seems like I paid something slightly less than baht 3,000 for a 320 GB external HDD a year ago.

Mac

[sorensen]

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/External-Har...77#entry3582077

[cpofc]

really depends entirely on what you want to use it for. There is now an abundance of them on the market nowadays. It pays to shop around though. prices can and do fluctuate a bit.

Without knowing what you want to do with it, it is pretty useless speculating.

Portable? AC Powered or USB Powered? Network/Print Server Capable, UpNp, DLNA. Media Type, Size?

[witold]

Depends on what you use it for.

Personally, I find online storage system much more preferable.

[Blackberry9700]

WESTERN DIGITAL My Book USB 3.0 WDBAAK0010HCH 1.0TB USB 3.0 5890 Baht

WESTERN DIGITAL WDBAAF0010HBK My Book Essential 1.0 TB Desktop USB 2.0 3690 Baht

WESTERN DIGITAL WDBAAF0015HBK My Book Essential 1 .5 TB Desktop USB 2.0 4690 Baht

WESTERN DIGITAL WDBAAF0020HBK My Book Essential 2.0 TB 2.0 TB Desktop USB 2.0 6390 Baht

WESTERN DIGITAL WDBAAH0010HCH My Book Elite 1.0 TB Desktop USB 2.0 4290 Baht

WESTERN DIGITAL WDBAAH0015HCH My Book Elite1.5 TB Desktop USB 2.0 5190 Baht

WESTERN DIGITAL WDBAAH0020HCH My Book Elite 2.0 TB Desktop USB 2.0 6900 Baht

WESTERN DIGITAL WDBAAA3200A Passport 320GB USB 2.0 (Black, Silver, White, Red, Blue) 2550 Baht

WESTERN DIGITAL WDBAAA5000A Passport 500GB USB 2.0 (Black, Silver, White, Red, Blue) 3550 Baht

WESTERN DIGITAL WDBAAA6400A Passport 640 GB USB 2.0 (Black, Silver, White, Red, Blue) 4700 Baht

WESTERN DIGITAL WDBABM0010BBK Passport 1 TB USB 2.0 (Black) 6950 Baht

[sorensen]

WESTERN DIGITAL WDBABM0010BBK Passport 1 TB USB 2.0 (Black) 6950 Baht

I got that one for 6,050 baht at Pantip

[Blackberry9700]

WESTERN DIGITAL WDBABM0010BBK Passport 1 TB USB 2.0 (Black) 6950 Baht

I got that one for 6,050 baht at Pantip

I am not sure if the above prices are the latest prices.

[TigertheCat]

I have just ordered a Buffalo portable 500Gb drive from Invade IT www.invadeit.co.th 3582 baht including EMS postage,all done online,a very easy and painless process.

The owner,a Dane,went the extra step to inform me that the red one I ordered was not in stock and would I like the blue one,which I accepted.

I will be using them again.

[astral]

I would not touch WD with a barge pole.

Far to many failures.

Seagate is much more reliable.

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/9752952/Seag...ve/Product.html

I currently have the 500Gb version and am looking for the 1Tb

[thaibear1]

I oder my goods mostly by http://www.invadeit.co.th/ very good service and can trust

[tutsiwarrior]

I also recommend invadeit.co.th; I bought extra memory from them last October...good service...

Edited June 5, 2010 by tutsiwarrior

[robblok]

Invide IT is good if you need special things, i ordered there too and was happy. Price wise your better off at pantip / zeer / ect

[dingdongrb]

I got two WD Essential (1Tb ea) and love the performance so far. Got the first one about 4 months ago and the second only a month ago. No problems so far (knock on wood). I paid 3,600 baht for the recent one here in Chiang Mai.

I would recommend buying one that uses an external power source as I have a handful (40Gb/80Gb/320Gb) that all use the USB for the power source and to be honest at times they don't perform so well.

BTW, you might try IT Square in Lasksi as well.

[muji]

just bought myself a Seagate 1Tb desk external drive about 5,500 baht.(bought it in KL). comes with 5 years warranty. Its width 17.5cm, length 17.5cm, height 3cm. Its name - Free Agent Desk hard disk.

I think Ive probably put in 3 years of work in there, and its only half filled up. works like a charm.

Pm if need details.

[Spoonman]

I would not touch WD with a barge pole.

Far to many failures.

Seagate is much more reliable.

And yet Iam the complete opposite, I would not touch Seagate with a bargepole, way to many documented failures, My WD drives have been 100%, as have all my mates WD drives.

Edited June 5, 2010 by Spoonman

[welo]

Just keep in mind that it is not necessarily a certain manufacturer that is more or less reliable, but a certain model, series/vintages, or maybe even disks manufactured during a specific time period at a specific plant that are showing unusual high failure rates.

For example, there seems to be a high failure rate for the Seagate 1tb & 1.5tb drives, but their 250gb & 320gb drives are solid. Yet the Western Digital 1tb, 1.5tb, & 2tb drives seem more stable, but there have been issues with their 500gb drives.

source: http://serverfault.com/questions/7952/what...rates/8023#8023

The number of customer complaints on message boards and such, and even personal experience are not the best tools to draw conclusions on the reliability of a vendor. This is a matter of statistics, test sample size and significance. Unfortunately there is not a lot of data available on that subject.

These kinds of data sets are hard to get - first you have to have 100,000 disks, then you have to record failure-related data faithfully for years on end, and then you have to release the data in a form that doesn't get anyone sued.

source: https://lwn.net/Articles/237924/

Google published a much talked about report in 2007, but didn't include (or publish) results based on vendor or model.

Failure rates are known to be highly correlated with drive models, manufacturers and vintages [18]. Our results do not contradict this fact. For example, Figure 2 [that was a chart on failure rates after x months] changes significantly when we normalize failure rates per each drive model. Most age-related results are impacted by drive vintages. However, in this paper, we do not show a breakdown of drives per manufacturer, model, or vintage due to the proprietary nature of these data.

source: Google report, http://static.googleusercontent.com/extern...sk_failures.pdf

One interesting find was that failure rate does NOT correlate to higher temperatures (if not exceeding 55°) which was a commonly accepted 'fact' until then.

There is a reliability database at StorageReview.com (unfortunately one has to register and add at least one sample before being allowed to access the database), and it seems that WD was not doing that well in mid 2008, but even (or especially) StorageReview has a problem with a low number of samples/entries and statistical relevance, as this poster sums it up:

Well, there is a bias, but it's not StorageReview's. In any survey where you only get a sample of the population, the survey results reflect the people who answered the survey, not everyone. If there are factors that make the sample population different from the whole population, then the survey won't show meaningful results.

For example, suppose that of the people who have failing Raptors, a higher percentage of them go to StorageReview to input their experience than the people who have working Raptors. Thus, the StorageReview survey could reflect a higher failure rate than actually exists in the field.

With the low sample size of the StorageReview survey (I think I saw somewhere where there's only 140 data points for one of the Raptors), this makes the sample results all the more likely to deviate from the population.

In short, I don't think the StorageReview results can be trusted because of these statistical factors.

So which harddisk to buy?

The one with the longest warranty!

Just prepare that the drive will fail sooner or later and implement a backup strategy (or prepare to loose your data)

welo

[astral]

I had a WD 160Gb, with 2 year guarantee.

It failed after one year and was replaced

The replacement failed just before the 2 year mark and was replaced,

but I never used it.

How could I trust it??

This was my security backup.

[welo]

Btw, anybody remembers IBM's Deskstar 75GXP in the late 90ies? There were claimed failure rates of >50% within the first year, and a law suit was filed (and won).

IBM's problems back then were most likely due to a problem with newly introduced technologies (glass platterns), and not necessarily with a generally inferior quality of IBM disks. What does this mean today, 10 years later (IBM sold its harddisk business to Hitachi btw)

More recently, there were issues with the Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB drives in the beginning of 2009 (see here and here), but what does this mean for newer models/vintages?

Seagate Barracuda used to be a very reputable hdd series before that (in terms of performance, and reliability). So today, a year later, would I recommend against buying a Seagate drive? Based on what?

I understand that one feels strongly about a brand if it has failed on one personally (and more than one time). That's why you'll find the same contradicting information on WD and Seagate all over the web.

Google reports a failure rate within the first year of about 5% (on average, not on specific vendors/models). 5 out of 100 is not that much, but would you bet that your drive is NOT one of those 5 (the bet being your sole copy of 10 years of family pictures).

So my point is: better assume that your drive WILL fail and plan and actually IMPLEMENT a (regular) backup strategy

welo