iMac (2017) External Hard Drive Recommendations - Note: I Live in Thailand

[Buadhai]

I have horrible luck with external hard drives. My fridge is covered with rare-earth magnets harvested from failed drives.

Last night my Western Digital My Book 3TB backup drive failed. I've reformatted it and written zeros to the entire drive to try to resurrect it. Disk Utility claims it's OK, but writing to the drive is extremely slow. (It took about two hours to write 60GB.)

I've given up on Seagate drives. They seem to fail with great regularity. Have a look at Backblaze's drive stats for 2q2019: Backblaze Hard Drive Stats Q2 2019. Oddly, Seagate has a massive hard drive factory about 30K west of my home. One of my neighbors is a Seagate production engineer. I don't have the heart to tell him I won't buy his company's drives anymore. (To be fair, Seagate drives manufactured here in Thailand can't be sold in Thailand due to tax rules. The Seagate drives we get here are made in Malaysia.)

That said, I don't have many choices. In fact, aside from Seagate and WD, there's not much available here in Thailand.

One alternative is La Cie. I can get a LaCie 4TB Porsche Design USB C Desktop Drive for about US$200. Seems high compared with what both Seagate and WD offer. But, it might actually last more than a year or so.

Any other ideas?

 

[HDFan]

One alternative is La Cie.

The Backblaze stats have shown a continual reduction in drive failure rates so the differences between HGST, Seagate and Western Digital are becoming minimal.

La Cie is owned by Seagate so likely uses Seagate drives. HGST which used to have some of the best Backblaze numbers is now owned by WD. You could look at an enterprise drive which typically has a 5 year guarantee. They still fail (the one that I bought did), but at least your only cost for replacement would be shipping.

 

[Buadhai]

Thanks. I didn’t know Seagate had purchase La Cie.

At the moment I’m leaning toward a WD Elements desktop drive. 4TB for about US$120.

 

[Mannaerts]

Why don't you buy a WD blue and a case for it? Then you are sure the WD drive is a brand new version while otherwise it's a guess what's in it

 

[Buadhai]

Easy to find the bare drive, hard to find a quality case. Been burned before. Any recommendations?

 

[TopherMan12]

Easy to find the bare drive, hard to find a quality case. Been burned before. Any recommendations?

I'm currently using this one, which works very well:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D2BHVBD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

But it is USB-C.

Here is a USB 3.0 variant from the same company and has good reviews.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XWRRMYX/ref=dp_cerb_1

 

[Buadhai]

Thanks. All the WD Blue drives I can find are 3.5", but all the UGreen enclosures are for 2.5" drives.

I'll keep looking.

 

[HDFan]

If you buy an enclosure be aware that some can be subject to unexpected ejects. I had this problem with an inexpensive 5 drive enclosure. When I replaced it with a more expensive one from OWC the problem went away. The firmware in the enclosure is important.

 

[Buadhai]

Right. I had a similar experience. Bought a good drive, but had to settle for a generic enclosure that had crummy firmware. That's what has made me wary.

In any event, I spent too much time looking for a bare drive and a good enclosure, so I gave up and ordered a WD Elements.

Thanks to all for the input.