# Looking for external hard drive recommendations



## madkoch (May 5, 2020)

Hi, I need to replace a 6Tb LaCie external drive I use for Time Machine backups. I've been told that Seagate and Western Digital drives are risky and that LaCie drives are also not reliable, even though they seem to be almost the only drives available in Canada. Glyph Studio and Oyen Digital Avastor HDX Pro have been recommended but they don't seem to be easily available north of the border. 

Has anyone found a Canadian source for Glyph and Oyen drives?
I'm in Toronto.
Cheers
Madeline

--
*Madeline Koch*
Toronto
madelinekoch.ca


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## eMacMan (Nov 27, 2006)

Are you looking for 2.5" or 3.5" drives?
For the pocket drive I would just get a USB 3.0 or 3.1 to female SATA 3 cable. Whatever drive you get can plug right into that and you can easily swap out drives or SSDs.
For the 3.5 inch drive I would look into a powered docking station. Again you can plug in any 3.5" drive and swap as needed.


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## makuribu (Oct 26, 2005)

You'll find people who don't like your choice of HD no matter what you like. 

WD lied about their red "RAID quality" drives for a while. SMR is bad for RAIDs, CMR is better. You can search the endless debate.
Seagate had a 3TB drive with a horrible failure rate, due (I think) to a bad batch of capacitors. I had one and it failed catastrophically right on schedule. Before I had read about the problem, of course.

I now buy big externals from WD and Seagate, reformat them, and use them for Time Machine and general backup..
BestBuy recently had a 6TB external for $120. Twenty bucks a terabyte is a good price.

Just keep several drives going at the same time.


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## madkoch (May 5, 2020)

Thanks, eMacMan and makuribu.
Not sure what eMacMan means by pocket drives or drive diameter. I'm just looking for something to plug into my MacBook Air once a week for a Time Machine backup (as one component of my backup protocol, which also includes a Time Capsule and Carbonite). 
I'm not sure I could trust the BestBuy cheap stuff. 
But I will check out OWC as I understand their stuff is available in Canada now, and they're carrying something with a Toshiba drive, which may work for my purposes.


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## Chapeau (Oct 9, 2016)

Many years ago, I lost all my images and files due to my hard drive failure on my PC. Since then, I have multiple external hard drives using Time Capsule. As one fills up it will be replaced with a new one. I use both WD and Seagate drives.


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## Randy B. Singer (Jul 23, 2005)

I think that Madeline's biggest question is what do you do when you want high quality computer gear, but the gear that you want comes from the U.S., and the companies involved don't ship to Canada?

Madeline needs an _external_ hard drive. One that is reliable, and not for an outrageous price.

WD and Seagate *external * hard drives tend to be of extremely low quality, and according to folks I've spoken to in the hard drive recovery industry, have unacceptable failure rates. LaCie, recently, is similar. (Though LaCie was once the premier provider of external hard drives for the Mac. But that was many years ago now.)

Do all of you just settle for the gear that you can find in local chain stores, no matter the quality?


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## unblocktheplanet (Feb 5, 2008)

Newegg has been good to me. I’d check there first for these specialty drives. If not available, they may be able to order them for you.

1) Are you backing up a Mac Pro or iMac Pro? If not, 6TB is way too much.

Rule of thumb is your backup should be double the capaciy of your internal disk.

2) I like Seagate Portable Backup Plus & have _a lot_ of ‘em. Pretty cheap & size of a pack of cigs (if anybody remembers what those are!). No power supply.

3) I keep two of these for backup. One for Time Machine, the second for Carbon Copy Cloner. Unlikely both would fail at once.

LaCie is owned by Seagate so a premium price for the same level of quality.

That said, 3.5-inch disks are _way_ less prone to failure than 2.5s.

Suggest Amazon.ca. Hard to avoid the GST. Bestbuy.ca is often pretty good & I bet even Costco has externals.


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## madkoch (May 5, 2020)

I'm not averse to paying HST! I avoid Amazon, though, and I don't shop at Costco. (I'd much rather my money go to taxes, which benefit me personally, than to big corporate profits, which benefit billionaires.)

I'm backing up a MacBook Air, and you're right that 6tb is a lot.  Size and portability are not an issue. Reliability and longevity are. Cheap disks are not worth the bother if you lose your backups every couple of years (and my backups double as archives, which I realize is not ideal).

I'm in talks with the OWC people who are setting up in Canada now to get one of their products, which has a Toshiba drive that, if I read the specs properly, is a 3.5" SATA drive. I think that's fairly reliable.

But some time in the next few years, I expect to have to replace my Time Capsule too, at which point I'll have to set up an NAS. So some of these questions may arise again soon...


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## unblocktheplanet (Feb 5, 2008)

Depending on the SSD capacity in your MBA, you may wish to partition whatever drive you do buy to double your SSD size.

A 3.5-incher is not particularly portable or light!

Toshibas are good HDDs but really no better than any other spinners. Buy two USB-3 portables. Use one for CCC, the other for Time Machine & you'll be safe as it gets.

I don't like the Bills, either, nor unnecessary consumerism. But I'm also a big fan on convenience. Your time is worth something.


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