Need External Drive

[Animatera]

Hi guys, 
Im going to university starting next September and im gonna need an external hard drive  since im going to be studying 3D animation. 
I already have projects on my pc which means that my hard drives are almost full, I decided to buy an external hdd to use on the go.
I  want to buy a 4tb WD or Seagate USB 3 but im not sure what to buy. I found this one
https://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/4000GB-WD-My-Passport-WDBYFT0040BBK-WESN-2-5Zoll--6-4cm--USB-2-0-USB-3-_1125556.html
any advice would be appreciated.

[Radium_Angel]

3 minutes ago, Animatera said:

Hi guys, 
Im going to university starting next September and im gonna need an external hard drive  since im going to be studying 3D animation. 
I already have projects on my pc which means that my hard drives are almost full, I decided to buy an external hdd to use on the go.
I  want to buy a 4tb WD or Seagate USB 3 but im not sure what to buy. I found this one
https://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/4000GB-WD-My-Passport-WDBYFT0040BBK-WESN-2-5Zoll--6-4cm--USB-2-0-USB-3-_1125556.html
any advice would be appreciated.

An external hard drive does not prevent failure, and therefore the total loss of data, you'd be better off looking into a NAS.

 

Yes yes yes it's not a backup, but in the event of a drive failure, all your data isn't gone.

Or, be religious about your data backup and use whichever external drive you want.

 

Good luck with that last one, this forum is full of stories of external drives dying and no backups in sight

[Animatera]

I would love to buy a NAS but i dont have the money at the moment, i want to buy something decent, something that is not going to die (at least not in the first 3 -5 years) and that is cheap. 

[Animatera]

Is there any deference between WD elements and my passport? Since i found a 4 TB WD elements offer for 111 dollars.

[Radium_Angel]

7 minutes ago, Animatera said:

I would love to buy a NAS but i dont have the money at the moment, i want to buy something decent, something that is not going to die (at least not in the first 3 -5 years) and that is cheap. 

Cheap and quality do not go hand in hand.

If you don't have the money, save up until you do.

I have several used NAS devices, that I've populated with new hard drives. 200$ (total) for 4 drive RAID 5 is good piece of mind.

Buy a full sized external drive, not the laptop ones if you still want a single drive. At least with the full-sized ones if the housing dies (as is my experience) then you can still pull the internal drive out and hope to get data off it

[FStopDesigns]

If you're based in Germany you might wanna check this shop out. They have Lacie HDDs that are used in professional Postproduction Houses alot and have an excellent reputation concerning the longevity and robustness. And they're on sale right now

 

https://www.gravis.de/Zubehoer/Speichermedien/externe-Festplatten/LaCie-Rugged-Mini-4TB-ext-6-35-cm-Festplatte-USB-3-0-silber-orange-127791.html

[seagate_surfer]

Hey OP, congrats on going to University and thanks for considering Seagate, regardless of which route you decide to go in the end. The first thing you'll need to consider is whether you want the drive to be USB-powered (better for portability but in some cases slower) or wall adapter powered (less portable but in some cases better performance) Wall powered units are ones we typically call desktop or hubs when they have built-in USB ports at the front. After that, when it comes to our externals, it's best understood through a "Good, better, best" approach:

Good: Expansion Portable,  Expansion Desktop
Better: Backup Plus Portable, Backup Plus Hub, Game Drive (for Xbox & PS4)
Best: LaCie Porsche Design