External HDD recommendations in 2018
 

I want to purchase two external drives (4 TB): (4 TB because I have that much of data)

1. To use as back-up and archive for all important family videos, photos. The drive will be accessed only during the back-up process and will be disconnected during other times.

2. To use as repository of videos, photos for "playing" on TV via NVidia Shield on a daily basis. This drive will be always connected to the Shield and will be always ON.

I am confused between Western Digital and Seagate drives. Also, between 'portable" vs powered drives. Would 4 TB drives be powered enough through USB when connected to devices such as media players, NVidia Shield, in addition to normal computers?

We have only Seagate and WD widely available in my part of the world. Sometimes, Toshiba, Adata and Sony show up on the shelves in stores, but they are mostly 1 TB drives.

Obviously, I am looking at reliability, longevity. In one of the threads on this site, I noticed LS recommended Seagate over WD in 2017. However, in many internet forums, people are suggesting WD more. Also, I have had trouble with one of my Seagate portable drives and Seagate replaced the bad drive with a 'refurbished' drive, which also failed the SMART test. When I sent the refurbished one back, Seagate sent me a brand new drive, which appears to be working fine. The WD HDDs that I have from the past did not have faults so far.

Can you please help me choose?

I recently acquired several Seagate 5TB USB3 portable/backup drives, which were $120 USD each.

Get this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZP2B23...thdifa-20&th=1
aka 'Seagate Backup Plus 5TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0'
(Where do you shop for drives/electronics in your country? We might start to link there as well. We're not USA only site, just USA centric. We try to be inclusive for everybody.)

I put a lot of research into this in the past few months. I needed a drive setup that was cool and quiet, yet fast and reliable. This was for my DLNA, home LAN from server. That checked off all the boxes. It's one of the fastest portable drives that currently exists (about 115MB/s max write speed, faster reads), but without being a whiny vibrator. If the light wasn't on, you'd never know it was on.

I used use the Seagate software, and told it to power down after 15 minutes idle. It come back from sleep almost immediately, unlike any other HDD I've ever used.

When I bought them, one of the Seagates was vibrating, meaning the disc wasn't completely flat while spinning. Long-term, that's bad. I returned it for replacement, problem solved.

Seagate does seem to have more immediate duds from the factory, but longer term they're better than WD and almost everything but Hitachi. Of course, Hitachi has a serious noise problem with their drives, so that's the tradeoff. WD love is overrated online, and you must also further be careful about the exact drive in question, and it's use. They have a rainbow of colors, for various uses. For server/RAID, NAS, DVR/CCTV, sure, not bad for that use. For for single drives for home/office desktop/laptop use, I find the drives to be lousy.

Thank you for your advice. I will go with Seagate then.

I am in India. For online purchase, we majorly have amazon.in, flipkart.com, paytm.com, snapdeal.com, tatacliq.com. These sites are reliable.

In one of your own posts, you mentioned that odd-numbered (such as 3TB, 5 TB) are prone for more failures when compared to even-numbered capacity drives.

Also, considering my use cases, powered vs portable matters?

As always, some rules have exceptions. This is one of those times.
And not that, but the 5tb is better than the 4tb.

Ok thanks. Any specific reason 5tb is better than 4tb in this case? My budget allows only for 4 tb.

The drive just performs better. That's not to say that the 4tb is bad. In the U.S., the price difference is $5 at most. On Amazon, several colors are the same price ($120). On Amazon India, I see that the 5tb are about $175 USD, while the 4tb are about $25 less, around $150 USD. It's not a huge leap in costs for an extra 1tb.

BTW: if using Amazon India, this link helps this site: https://www.amazon.in/ref=as_li_ss_t...qin-21&ie=UTF8

Ok got it. From now onwards, I will use that link whenever I buy on Amazon India. I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon India actually...I am even a prime member.

Just for this time, I will be buying this drive in offline store, simply because I have that store's gift cards lying around which will expire soon. And that store doesn't have 5 tb model. It only has 4 tb one.

I'm all for bargains. :)

On the Amazon front, thanks much.

There was a Prime Day Sale on Amazon yesterday and I used your DFAQ link to shop quite a bit.

I hope the benefit of affiliate reaches DFAQ.