recommendations for external usb hard drive

[aaronep]

I am interested in purchasing a 500 gb USB external hard drive. Does
anyone have any information as to quality & reliability of Maxtor,
Western Digital, Seagate, etc. drives?

Is one brand any better or poorer than the other? They appear to be
similar in price.

Sincerely, Aaron

 

[James McTavish]

Maxtor has a much worse reputation for reliability.

They did but there is no Maxtor owned Corp. anymore and they are actually a
Seagate owned company so maybe they are better now.

I have 2 external HDD's. One is 1TB Comstar and the it has 2 500GB Hitachi
HDd's in raid mode so they are seen as one single HDD. The other is
AcomData and it has a single Western Digital 500GB HDD. Both have been very
reliable but the AcomData is much quieter as the Comstar has fan for
cooling that is a bit noisy but not overly. You can get AcomData external
HDD's for quite cheap compared to the big name brands and they are just as
good so that is my recommend.

 

[Robert Brereton]

I think Seagate is the only 1 with a 5 year warranty.

Bob

I have 2x320Gb Seagates and a 160Gb Maxtor portable for the laptop. Pleased
with all 3 so far.

 

[aaronep]

I have 2x320Gb Seagates and a 160Gb Maxtor portable for the laptop.  Pleased
with all 3 so far.

THANKS to all who replied. Information is very useful. To my
chagrin, the WD model that interested me had only a one year
warranty. The comparable and similar priced Seagate has a 5 year
warranty. This info makes narrowing down to Seagate a no brainer.
From time to time, Fry's in Burbank has the 500 USB Seagate for just a
$100. .
Again, my appreciation to the replyers. Aaron

 

[Jack Schitt]

I have 2x320Gb Seagates and a 160Gb Maxtor portable for the laptop.
Pleased
with all 3 so far.

THANKS to all who replied. Information is very useful. To my
chagrin, the WD model that interested me had only a one year
warranty. The comparable and similar priced Seagate has a 5 year
warranty. This info makes narrowing down to Seagate a no brainer.
From time to time, Fry's in Burbank has the 500 USB Seagate for just a
$100. .
Again, my appreciation to the replyers. Aaron


I have been building PC's since 87 and have never had a Western Digital,
Seagate or Maxtor hard drive fail. I'm on the computer a lot and I leave
mine up and running most of the time, so it isn't pampered or used just
occasionally.

I bought two of the WD 500GB drives a while back (my first computer with a
terabyte of storage capacity). They are purring silently and reliably for
well over a year or so. Not that I am against buying Seagate drives.

Ed Cregger