[BC] Portable Hard Drives

[Cowboy]

On Monday 08 June 2009 06:18 am, Ernie Belanger wrote:
>  Has anyone had experience with either the Toshiba  or Western Digital 
>  External Hard drives?
>  
>  I can get a 500GB Toshiba for About $100 or a 1TB Western Digital for 
>  $119. It's not the size I'm concerned with but the reliability.

 Typically, Western Digital's lose bearings at their end of life, so data
 recovery is expensive.
 Toshiba's it's the electronics that go, so recovery is relatively inexpensive.
 ( by comparison )
 You usually get more warning of impending doom when bearings start
 to fail than when the electronics quit.
 Of course, if you're doing regular routine backups, ( AS YOU SHOULD )
 and routinely scanning for errors, you won't be calling me in a panic
 when they ultimately do die.  ;)

 If it was me, for an external USB I'd go Toshiba.
 If it was internals, I'd go with two WD's and put 'em in RAID-1.
 ( I also replace disks every two years, whether needed or not )

-- 
Cowboy