Portable HDDs?

[superbuu]

Anyone knows what portable HDDs in the market are reliable for backups? 2TB should be enough. I was thinking WD Elements and Seagate Portable to diversify with 2 brands.

[Electronics Wizardy]

I don't know of any good public relability info on drives like those. 

 

Generally if you don't drop them there fine from my usage. There basically all SMR though and Ive seen some backup software that can get very slow at merging old backups, but depends on how your backup software works.

[gentlemanspot]

price is always what's drives me.  

 

I've had a bad run with Seagate personally.

[manikyath]

buy bare drives and your own enclosures.

[SansVarnic]

I found the sandisk ssd portables are pretty good buy with good longevity.

[OhioYJ]

5 hours ago, superbuu said:

I was thinking WD Elements and Seagate Portable to diversify with 2 brands.

I generally always have at least 8 externals in rotation as part of my backup strategy (I've had many over the years, in various sizes):

 

 

As for internals, I only use WD (HGST is fine as well). However, I've had bad luck with their externals, with more than one failure. I don't touch Seagate anything (internal or external). For externals, Toshiba has been my go-to, and so far, with no failures (I'm going to go knock on wood now).

 

Externals still seem to have higher failure rates than internals in my experience, which is why I keep them in pairs (the cases pictures above). I'm working under the assumption that odds are high that only one drive would fail at a time.

[superbuu]

Any other?

[Needfuldoer]

If you want desktop reliability, put a SATA drive in a USB enclosure. Then you can pick any SSD you want, even a datacenter drive with petabytes of write endurance.

[superbuu]

On 5/14/2025 at 9:37 AM, Needfuldoer said:

If you want desktop reliability, put a SATA drive in a USB enclosure. Then you can pick any SSD you want, even a datacenter drive with petabytes of write endurance.

Aren't those just regular HDDs with USB cables?

[Blue4130]

13 minutes ago, superbuu said:

Aren't those just regular HDDs with USB cables?

Yes, and they are great for backups. Lots of space for little $$$ and decent reliability.

[superbuu]

13 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Yes, and they are great for backups. Lots of space for little $$$ and decent reliability.

So which ones do you recommend

[superbuu]

On 5/5/2025 at 9:38 AM, OhioYJ said:

I generally always have at least 8 externals in rotation as part of my backup strategy (I've had many over the years, in various sizes):

 

 

As for internals, I only use WD (HGST is fine as well). However, I've had bad luck with their externals, with more than one failure. I don't touch Seagate anything (internal or external). For externals, Toshiba has been my go-to, and so far, with no failures (I'm going to go knock on wood now).

 

Externals still seem to have higher failure rates than internals in my experience, which is why I keep them in pairs (the cases pictures above). I'm working under the assumption that odds are high that only one drive would fail at a time.

No other brand to diversify with Toshiba for externals? I don't want to buy the same one twice in case I get confused and format the wrong drive.

[OhioYJ]

11 hours ago, superbuu said:

No other brand to diversify with Toshiba for externals? I don't want to buy the same one twice in case I get confused and format the wrong drive.

Why would I? If you notice they are labeled in that image. Toshiba makes them in different colors, so you can also diversify in that manner if you want. 

 

Also I've had bad luck with Western Digital's externals (internals are my go-to), and I definitely don't want Seagates.