external drives - should I just get 1 of each?

DeepSpring

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I have a cheap 250gb drive that I don't trust very much and it gets super duper hot after a little bit of use. I want to get 2 new drives so that I can mirror it and it will be safer and then every now and then plug in my current drive and back up everythign onto that.

I was reading all the reviews for the western digital and seagate 500gb drives.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136025

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148235

and as far as I can tell they are both big names, good reputations, and same price. Since I can't decide which one would be better I was thinking why not just get 1 of each? If there is something that would somehow cause one drive to crash, and the back up is a different brand, it might not affect it. If anyone has any reason why I shouldn't I'd like to hear


Would mirroring them make it any harder have two different brands? I haven't set anything like that up before so I don't lknow yet the steps.


Thank you
 
Just to point out my experience. I got an external hard drive to back up my photos and the power supply on my computer went "flaky" and wiped out the header and formatting info. on the external hard drive making my photos unreachable and unreadable.

skieur
 
The rate of failure is slightly lower for seagates.
I have a 500 gb internal backup and a 500 gb seagate external bu and I BU to both every day.
The external has its own power supply and I can't picture a situation where a bad computer power supply would hurt it.
 
If you want good data backup and you actually can put two internal hard drive into your pc, then you could buy 2x500gb of any company and connect them into RAID 1. This offers real-time backup - if you copy a file to one hdd, it also automatically copies to the second one - so if one HDD fails, you always have the second one.

It saves the effort and time needed for manually backing up data.
 
I have a WD mybook that I really like. It gets the job done and I feel it is reliable, haven't had a problem yet. It doesn't get hot and it has it's own power supply.
 
The external has its own power supply and I can't picture a situation where a bad computer power supply would hurt it.

My external had its own power supply too but all that was required was a surge from the computer supply to wipe out the format and beginning data on the external drive. By the way, this is not simply my opinion, it was looked at by a specialist and owner of a large company that handles data loss and recovery.

skieur
 
My external had its own power supply too but all that was required was a surge from the computer supply to wipe out the format and beginning data on the external drive. By the way, this is not simply my opinion, it was looked at by a specialist and owner of a large company that handles data loss and recovery.

skieur

but that was really bad luck that your external drive was switched on and connected while your computer got this hiccup.

my backup drives are usually only switched on when I back up.
 
I go the mirrored route too.

I use the Buffalo Terastation, and it's been very reliable.

A bit slower to copy over a network, but nice to have them where I can get at them from any PC in the house.
 
I'm actually using a laptop so anything internal is not an option. The thing that I do love about my laptop is if the power cuts out my laptop has its own battery of course and stays on which will allow me to safely shut everything off.

I'm actually considering buying 2x 250gb drives for pictures only and a little back up of certian other things and then a 500gb one for everything else.
 

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