I had a friend ask me for a recommendation on an external drive, so I've been doing a bit of research on the subject. Everything from actual reviews on various websites to Newegg user feedback. I would hate to recommend a particular drive and have it die on him a few months down the road.


My main question is this -- how reliable are today's hard drives, especially compared with drives a few years ago? I'm seeing everything from "Zero issues" to "I've had 5 external drives in the past few years and they've all died."


Based only on Newegg user feedback, it would appear that practically every drive on the market has a decent failure rate...and then I remind myself that there is a bit of selection bias for those comments ("My drive died so now I'm pissed and going to tell the whole world!")


My personal experience points to hard drives being pretty reliable. I've never had a drive fail on any computer while I've been using it. Not any any laptop, desktop, work machine, or personal machine. Heck, I still have the original 80GB 4200rpm drive in my Acer laptop from 2004, and it still works fine (slow, yes...but it still works).

I've also read over the Google hard drive reliability study and it would appear that overall, hard drives have a relatively low failure rate.

On the other hand, when I worked in computer repair as a teenager (2003-2004) someone bringing in a clicking hard drive was not uncommon.


Any thoughts on the subject?

As an aside, I figured I would recommend one of the higher-rated drives on Newegg depending on what my buddy wants to spend. I guess after 2,500+ reviews, having 4 stars isn't too bad.

5/1/2011 9:51:02 PM

Most HDDs will last longer than you need them for, but you'll eventually get one that lands on the crappy side of the failure curve. I tend to look for HDDs with the best warranties possible and make my data is archived such that a single drive failure doesn't lead to data loss.

5/1/2011 10:11:09 PM

Its a game of odds, every manufacture is going to have defects. People with bad experience tend to be more vocal than those with good, so keep that in mind. I have had a Hitachi, and a Samsung Fail. But I am not afraid to buy from them as a result, it is the nature of the biz. Just do your due diligence(or his in this case) and pick a drive.

5/1/2011 10:11:17 PM

Most external HDD companies either supply themselves or they get their HDDs from the same companies that make internal HDDs. All they do is make the casing and the connections.

5/1/2011 10:24:02 PM

I wouldn't rely on an external hard drive for any primary data storage. use it for backups or something like that...make sure you have the data elsewhere. i've seen way too many dead externals over the years, and rarely an internal.

Just go to newegg, look at all external hard drives, filter by the size youre looking, sort by rating, and pick one of the ones in the top 3 or so. don't bury yourself in the details

5/1/2011 10:29:21 PM

^ Yeah that's the plan.

After talking with him a few minutes ago we found a 1.5TB WD External for $80 at Best Buy -- if he can get it tomorrow that probably isn't bad price, and it had decent reviews on Newegg. I did caution him that external drives seem to have higher failure rates.

5/1/2011 10:47:13 PM

i buy hard drives with 5-year warranties, then just buy an enclosure. like the WD caviar black and an e-sata enclosure.

typically external hard drives that you buy retail with the hard drive included are some cheap 5400rpm hard drive that will only last 3 years or so and incredibly slow -OR- they are 2.5" 5400rpm laptop hard drives. either way, cheap and slow.

5/1/2011 10:51:57 PM

^ Also a good point.

5/1/2011 11:10:33 PM

In my own humble experience, from what I see all day at work--Iomega drives are pretty good (plus a 3-year warranty on the Prestige series, provided you register it), as are Western Digital. Seagate I don't see enough of to have an opinion on, but the last couple generations of Maxtor OneTouch drives were pretty awful, so take that into account. Avoid CMS like the plague--they will fail, over and over again.

Or you could just find a solid internal drive and put it in an enclosure yourself.

[Edited on May 2, 2011 at 1:11 AM. Reason : r]

5/2/2011 1:11:10 AM

I did a from-scratch desktop build using a 500GB Western Digital and, surprisingly, it was dead on arrival. Fortunately, having bought it from a local computer store (Intrex for those in NC), I brought it in, they tested some stuff, and sent me on my way with a brand new one. Now, I don't think that tarnishes WD by any means, but rather I got the bad batch early.

Echoing others here - every manufacturer is bound to put out failure-prone components, so it really seems to come down to a game of chance.

5/2/2011 2:20:20 AM

I go by the Google result. If a drive is going to die early it will die within the first 6 months, which falls under all manuf warranty. If it lasts past that it will most likely last at least 3 years, and then have a typical year over year death rate of 15%. So buy a drive with 3 year warranty and hope for the best.

5/3/2011 12:27:12 AM

I have a couple hard drives from 1990 still running fine. They are the exception though. Vibration and temperature changes are the usual enemies.

5/3/2011 12:47:21 AM

i rarely keep a drive longer than 2 years, just to be safe

5/3/2011 8:17:17 AM