Nerd Help Needed Plz Thx

[palsgraf_polka]

I need to reformat my entire hard drive. It's become slow and sluggish and I just want to start from scratch.

I need to back up both of my internal hard drives, so I am going to buy a 1 TB external hard drive. Fry's has a Seagate USB drive for only $104.99.

But don't Seagate drives suck? I can't remember, and unfortunately the person I used to turn to for all matters geekery is no longer in my life [sigh].

So, I would appreciate some advice. TIA!

Comments

[jdack.livejournal.com]

I've not had the best of luck with them, but the truth is, all hard drives even good ones have a certain percent chance of failure.

I've been a Western Digital buyer for years but they still fail on occasion. The most important thing is not to have them dropped/kicked/knocked over while they're spinning (reading/writing/open).

[reeeeeeeeflex.livejournal.com]

A guy I know who works as a computer tech swears by Seagate. He says they have fewer internal parts, so fewer things can go wrong. I've had good luck with them myself over the years. You will get contrary opinions over the net, however.

As jdack said, you can't really predict which ones are going to fail beforehand. The only thing you can do is keep multiple backups of your important data. ANY drive will fail eventually.

[lilredfh.livejournal.com]

Al approves seagate. he says that there was a problem earlier with some seagates but they took them off the market. but if you feel uncomfortable about them then try to buy something else that does not have seagate (should be written on the box whether it does have seagate or not).

xoxo

[sandman008.livejournal.com]

It's easy to get confused. The best choice right now varies from year to year.

It used to be that Seagate sucked, but they've gotten better. I've heard that Western Digital aren't so hot, but there's another responder who is having good luck with them. So … your mileage may vary.

[lincard.livejournal.com]

Actually a brand that I am fairly loyal to is Samsung... Their Spinpoint drives are quiet, cool running and quite reliable - I've never heard anyone with anything bad to say about them. No doubt they have their failures as well, but when you don't hear a lot about them, you tend to think that they're doing their job well.

Personally, I tend to shy away from both Seagate and Maxtor. Mixed results with WD but their raptor/velociraptor drives are pretty good (if small, hot and noisy) :-)

[leroyjackson.livejournal.com]

I eat hard drives like candy. Right now I ONLY buy Seagate drives, mainly due to the 5 year warranty. I keep all my precious data backed up with Jungledisk so it it fails, not that big of a deal. I also bought SpinRite and use it on my drives every few months to exercise them. I have not had a failure since. My friend did have an older Seagate external fail (SpinRite saved it), and I heard their 1.5 TB have issues. I currently have 2 of those in my file server with no problems. Right now I have 2 1.5TB, 1 750GB, 2 400GB, and 4 200GB all in various computers/devices all Seagate and all work fine. I have 1 western digital 400gb too, given as a gift and it works great too.

A good rule of thumb, if the data is not in 2 places it does not exist. I would suggest looking into online backup like Mozy, which I used before Jungledisk. I loved it, but only switched to Jungledisk because Mozy does not have a Linux client.

[vyrdolak.livejournal.com]

Try defragging the drive before you reformat.

It was mostly the 1 tb Seagate drives from one factory in Thailand(?) that were bad, iirc. But their quality has gone downhill ever since they bought Maxtor. I buy WDs now, I have only had one of those fail and that was after several years.

I always buy regular internal HDs, stick them in an Addonics enclosure, and format them with Acronic disk manager. I don't really care for most dedicated external drives, they don't have actual on-off switches (1) and a lot of them use proprietary USB cables now (2). (1) The Seagate drives that come on pedestals are like that. They are also not stackable.

(2) WD MyBook's use these, I usually leave USB cables connected in the back, and this fucks with that strategy.