Posts by Brenda Palmer33

Edward Stewart said:At the end of the day, even if you find some statistical breakdown of sales versus failure rates, you’re still essentially gambling on luck. It’s a bit of a fool's errand to obsess over those numbers...

Exactly. It all boils down to pure luck.

Edward Stewart said:Regarding Verbatim, they aren't actually manufacturing the platters themselves. They're sourcing drives from Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, or Hitachi (which, for what it's worth, is owned by Western Digital). For instance, looking at the small 2.5" Verbatim drives I have on hand, they contain Seagate drives; Transcend and ADATA tend to use Western Digital components, and so on.

Well, look at that. I had absolutely no idea. Consider me educated today. 😬
Thanks for the insight. 🙂

darkowl72 said:There are plenty of them out there, and honestly, they're almost all solid choices. You really can't go wrong...

If I had to pick a standout from the pack, I'd point to Samsung. They tend to utilize Seagate drives in their setups, offer a very reasonable price point, and back them with a 36-month warranty. They come in both 3.5" (the D3 series) and 2.5" (the M3 series) formats.

That said, you won't make a mistake with any of the others—just prioritize the length of the warranty. Both ADATA and Transcend offer 36 months, though Transcend has those colorful, ruggedized, quasi-military-grade enclosures. Then there's LaCie, which targets the design-conscious crowd; they're a bit pricier, but the build quality is top-tier. It's an overwhelming amount of choice...😬

Good grief. 😬
Balance the price against the warranty coverage. Got it.
Thanks; at least now I have a roadmap for when I actually need to buy something. 👍

I'm in the market for a 2-3TB external hard drive, primarily to handle PC backups and act as a storage hub for my movie collection.

A few years back, I picked up a Western Digital Elements 2 TB, and it turned out to be a total disaster—over 2,000 bad sectors right out of the gate. It was essentially throwing money down the drain.
I haven't had much hands-on experience with Transcend, Seagate, or ADATA.

The sales clerks, predictably, tried to insist that Western Digital is the gold standard and that I shouldn't judge the entire brand based on one single failure. But since I got burned so badly by that Elements drive—which became nothing more than an expensive paperweight—I’m really not feeling the urge to go back to Western Digital. On the other hand, I've been using a small 250GB version from Verbatim for ages now, and it’s still chugging along perfectly fine. That doesn't exactly guarantee a 2TB Verbatim model will be any better, though.

What should I actually be looking for here?