External 2.5" drive 750 GB

[NIM]

I plan to buy myself a new external 2.5" hard drive, that will be mostly used for backup purposes.

These two disks are my choice:

HDD External 2.5" 750 GB StoreJet 25M3 Transcend, USB 3,0

HDD External 2,5" 750 GB WD My Passport, USB 3.0

WD looks/is more attractive that Transcend except it has 24 months warranty while Transcend has 36 months warranty.

Any recommendations/experience on this?

[Mr_Smartepants]

What you need to be careful of with the 2.5" Passport series is that they no longer stick a SATA-USB converter board in a case with a standard SATA drive. Their USB controller is soldered directly onto the drive itself, so you can't remove the drive and connect it directly to a PC via SATA anymore.

If the drive fails, your data recovery bill just doubled because of that.

Don't use it as your ONLY backup.

I follow the 3-2-1 backup solution.

3 backups of critical data.

2 different backup media (HDD/Tape/Online/DVD/etc.)

1 of the backups is off-site (online/cloud/mom's house/ etc.)

[Kelsenellenelvian]

I would Google and see the innards of each.

Also beware of cloud style storage and their auto scanner and filters.

I have read where a father uploaded family pics to cloud storage and they got flagged as child porn and the FBI was sent to his home.

Those cloud style storage places can seize your data and close your account for nearly any reason!

There's no safe guarantees...

Hell there is no regulations on them yet...

[NIM]

No cloud backup for me Kels, also I have found that WD 2,5" 1 TB WD My Passport, USB 3.0 is 10$ more than 750GB version. It's flagged as best buy..

As for the backup. I have data on my machine and on external disk which is not always connected. What are the chances that both of the drives stop to work at the same time..

So Transcend disk is not soldered to the case and thus it would be your suggestion Mr_Smartepants?

[bphlpt]

For the transcend, I assume you mean this one? That looks pretty rugged which would be a plus.

The thing Rick is talking about is pictured here, though the article is about their 2TB model you'll get the idea. Not counting the difference, supposedly, in the ruggedness aspects of the Transcend, I'm not sure if having the USB adapter as part of the drive is that big an issue. It should only have an impact if the adapter is what fails, right? I guess if the drive fails and you really HAVE to get the data off it and you then have to send it off somewhere to do that then they might charge you more for that, I don't know. But those services are really expensive to start with so I tend to go with Rick's suggestion, and yours, of multiple backups when it's important.

I personally like the larger drives like the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 3TB USB 3.0, I have two of them. I've seen them as low as $139. That particular one is discontinued now, but I think you can still find new ones on ebay. There are also similar ones from different manufacturers including WD, the MyBook series I think.

Cheers and Regards

[ccl0]

i think if you don't intend to travel with your backup, then 2.5 will not be very useful for you. if you just plan on sticking it somewhere in your house, i'd take the approach as above and get a big one like the seagate. if you decide on a desktop hd instead of a portable one, you have a lot more options. some with wireless capability, like this one for example http://www.seagate.com/external-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/goflex-home/ but i'm sure western digital and most other brands have their own versions as well. or you could go NAS, ESATA or even thunderbolt.

Edited December 5, 2012 by ccl0