Advice on storage devices...

[FalunGonged]

Long story short, I had a WD (Western Digital) passport drive type deal. its old (5years) and now it looks like all the files are not accessible.

In an effort to get something more portable like a thumb drive Im need advice whats best or better solution in regards to keeping data ruined or lost.

TIA

[Trip]

Seagate Expansion 1TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STBX1000101)

I love this drive so much I bought 2 more.
Unlike the old WD and Passport large drives (many failures)
these little drives are great. Just my .02c
Also, I always unplug after shutting down my laptop.

[FalunGonged]

Originally Posted by Trip

Seagate Expansion 1TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STBX1000101)
I love this drive so much I bought 2 more.
Unlike the old WD and Passport large drives (many failures)
these little drives are great. Just my .02c
Also, I always unplug after shutting down my laptop.

Thanks for your input Trip. I will look into that.
Incidentally, are there any smaller thumb drive out in the market today that are any good or is the best option a drive like you indicated?

The reviews I have been reading favor this drive over many other models, making me lean towards this. I was surprised how much cheaper they were at amaZ0n compared with B3stbuy...I don't shop online often as I perhaps should do for deals!

Another newbie related tech query
Does this work for a mac lap top and do you have to format this ?

[Rick Danger]

Originally Posted by Trip

Seagate Expansion 1TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STBX1000101)

I love this drive so much I bought 2 more.

Brother Trip speaks true. First, Seagate is a time-tested brand. Secondly, I'd buy two. Why ?

Any drive sooner or later is going to develop problems or suffer media failure. I notice with USB drives alot of times you start having problems with either the cable or the USB connector on the drive itself. The USB concept is great but it's not the most mechanically robust interface I've ever seen. Also, I'd check the manufacturer's recommendations concerning the usage of the drive. Is it intended only as a backup device, or can you run it continually as an additional storage device ? In the old days the OEM would supply Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) data as a guideline.

Check the OEM website or the packaging on the drive for MacIntosh compatibility. I shouldn't think this would be an issue though.

Finally, look into the new drives that are backed up by Cloud storage. (TIP: it was recently announced in an IT trade newsletter I subscribe to that Microsoft is increasing the space allocation of it's OneDrive service from 2Gb to 15Gb.).

Hope this helps !

[Trip]

Originally Posted by FalunGonged

Thanks for your input Trip. I will look into that.
Incidentally, are there any smaller thumb drive out in the market today that are any good or is the best option a drive like you indicated?

The reviews I have been reading favor this drive over many other models, making me lean towards this. I was surprised how much cheaper they were at amaZ0n compared with B3stbuy...I don't shop online often as I perhaps should do for deals!

Another newbie related tech query
Does this work for a mac lap top and do you have to format this ?

Well I bought it as a backup primarily, and don't continually use it.
When I found the ease of operation and simplicity, I bought the 2nd two.
One for massive model storage, another for vintage backup, my scans, etc.
SATA drives suit me better than the old IDE drives.
I would imagine the drive would be fine with a MAC system.
Just be careful with the drive side small connector. Keyed so can't fit it wrong.
However I never loan my drives out to friends, and don't allow family to touch either.
Where something can be destroyed if not careful, a family member will find out how.
I've seen it at work as well, they actually try and ram the connector in.

As for thumb drives I have a number of 8GB versions for work and home.
I like Kingston (The memory SRAM/DIMM/RAM designers) best but also use a Memorex.
3 Verbatims but for scratch work as they were cheap and not known for greatness.
The price has really come down on these while their flash storage increases.
One of my tech forums is drooling over a new Kingston 100 Gb but it is costly.
I usually wait on something like that. Don't need it either.

For the Seagate SATA portable I didn't need to format it like the WD series,
and again all things are designed to fail over time so take care of it.
Cars, humans, drives, everything fails eventually, especially if mechanical.
I just copied the master archives over and occasionally add to the folders.
Archive storage for VEF but mainly content I actually paid for like website content.
(DDF / Karups / ATK - over the years)

You are correct Amazon was the spot, not BestBuy, NewEgg, or TigerDirect.
I've slowly gotten away from more popular websites for building servers and systems,
I find Amazon works basically well for new items, at lower cost.

Hope you find something you like and works well for you.

[FalunGonged]

Thanks to both of you for your input and time on this matter, I am better informed now!
VEF Tech gurus ROCK!