Hi,
I’ve just spent some time surfing the net and Amazon looking for a good 4/5 Tb hard drive (I use a Mac) to back up my photos. I’ve already got a Seagate 2Tb but want to get one more to have a back up for the back up. The reviews on the net are all quite negative, suggesting the drives fail or crash after a few months. Not what I need!
Any suggestions?
A car will fail unless you keep up with the regular yearly services, an aircraft will fail which is why they have to be checked out regularly, a camera will fail, a watch will fail, technology will fail. No matter what, any technology will have a lifespan like people and animals do. You won't find a perfect hard drive that won't fail at all. But how long they last and how soon they fail really depend on what kind of people are using those technologies. For all we know, the hard drives that fails after a few months belonged to people who keep knocking those hard drives around, maybe a student who keeps bringing the portable hard drive with him to college, in his backpack, which keeps getting knocked around, so start to fail after a few months. I have a portable hard drive that stays in the same place and had never been moved about, yet it is still in good working order after few years so far.
It is good and important to read the negative reviews but don't take them for grant. Same as with the positive reviews, don't take them for grant. Use your judgement, common sense, and gut feelings / intuitions to figure out what you think is best. Also aim for well known brand names, like Seagate, Western Digital, (um, guys help me out, what are the other top well know brand names in the field of hard drives?), oh, there's Samsung, and whatever else, rather than going for a company name you are not familiar with. Also consider this: Amazon do sell brand new things, but sometimes they do also sell used ones too, so maybe the people who posted negative review were the ones who bought them second hand rather than brand new.
Sometimes some people buy something from Amazon, and it works fine for years to come. But sometimes some poor unlucky person ended up with the one item that failed the company's quality control checks, find the item fails in a matter of few months, and take out his anger at Amazon by posting a negative review.
All I can suggest is try the top well known brands, like Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, (and a few others), also buy brand new instead of opt for used, be careful of who is the seller, and when you get your hard drive, just take good care of it.