Life of external HDDs

[desiibond]

I have a dilemma. I have these three external HDDs. One is a 3.5" Seagate Expansion 1TB drive that is nearly a decade old and the other two are Seagate 1TB 2.5" and WD Elements 2TB 2.5". Both are 7 years old approx. Seagate 1TB 2.5" is heavily utilized as Apple Time Machine drive and 2TB was used as a primary data backup and storage device. There were no accidental drops or situations that created high temperatures.

It is generally said that an external HDD will last 5-10 years and there is around 1.5TB of data that I do not want to lose. I am going to order a new 2TB drive. How was your experience with these drives? How long do these last for you.

 

[Silent47Assassin]

From my experience, I have seen that newer drives are more prone to failure and cannot be trusted without a backup copy of data. My current drive had to be RMA'ed twice. Its a WD Elements 4TB.

 

[ankushv]

Seagate expansion plus 4 tb
Seagate back up plus hub 4tb * 2
Out of the above 3 drives two have developed reallocated sectors count error . All under 6 months to a year old .
Covid times not worth rma to health .
Also all shucked by me so warranty may be invalid .
Best I buy internal drives than these external as all above drives are SMR drives .
Not the fastest kid on the block at 5000 rpm and SMR .

 

[desiibond]

Seagate expansion plus 4 tb
Seagate back up plus hub 4tb * 2
Out of the above 3 drives two have developed reallocated sectors count error . All under 6 months to a year old .
Covid times not worth rma to health .
Also all shucked by me so warranty may be invalid .
Best I buy internal drives than these external as all above drives are SMR drives .
Not the fastest kid on the block at 5000 rpm and SMR .

Yeah. I just placed order for 2TB seagate 5400 rpm internal drive. Do not want to tely too much on these aging drives that I have. Probably will use them as second or third backup.

 

[Kaleen Bhaiya]

Drives prior to 2010 are still going strong for me, Maxtor(2006) and Seagate(2007) both 320 gb. Post 2010, all my seagate 3 drives went for a toss within 2-3 years of purchase. So this time I got a Toshiba drive 2TB internal.
If data is important, get the ones with 5 year warranty. In the name of cost cutting, these companies have actually degraded the product quality. You can also get an internal drive and use it as an external using a case as mentioned by ankushv. But expecting today's drive to last for 5-6-10 years with 2 year warranty would be too much.

 

[nRiTeCh]

I have never used any Real external drive in my lifetime except for one laptops Toshiba 320gb (bought on olx) which I'm using into external casing since 6yrs working buttery as my travel-mate. Zero maintenance drive I should say!

Have one internal 1tb Seagate solely for backup purpose again using in a casing since 4 yrs now.
Managed to grab it from my ex co. as they were throwing/scrapping away drives which failed in RAID (without realizing that those might be under corporate warranties) so spotted this and one WD blue 1tb and checked their serial nos. and bought them home and immediately RMAed and extremely happy for my decision!

Just last week bought one WD Passport 4tb here for my brother as his Seagate died out of nowhere just after warranty expired.

So cannot actually vote here as I never held any true external drive.

 

[kalph09]

Using a Buffalo 500GB external HDD, running strong since 2011. While it is not showing signs of ageing or failure. I plan to get another one from Seagate or WD as part of the failover. For super important files, I use a cloud backup than relying on hardware alone.

 

[vaibhavyagnik]

I have a dilemma. I have these three external HDDs. One is a 3.5" Seagate Expansion 1TB drive that is nearly a decade old and the other two are Seagate 1TB 2.5" and WD Elements 2TB 2.5". Both are 7 years old approx. Seagate 1TB 2.5" is heavily utilized as Apple Time Machine drive and 2TB was used as a primary data backup and storage device. There were no accidental drops or situations that created high temperatures.

It is generally said that an external HDD will last 5-10 years and there is around 1.5TB of data that I do not want to lose. I am going to order a new 2TB drive. How was your experience with these drives? How long do these last for you.

I have a video about good backup practices. You may want to watch it.

 

[rpalpha]

I have never had a external drive fail but I have had an instance of silent data corruption once. Plus if you are going to carry around the drive in your backpack then the chance for its failure increases (Impact is your worst enemy in this case).
Other than this all my external drives work fine till this date also the ones I bought in 2013.

 

[thedeadghost]

My Seagate expansion 1 tb had some strange problem. Disk check shows no error but many of the family pics got corrupted with most of them with a green layer on them as if erased. Any idea what could have caused it ?

 

[ankushv]

I have 5 segate 4tb external drives , the expansion plus .. and the one with usb3 ports on the front . I would not recommend this drive , just pay more money and buy a better non smr drive .
Out of the 5 drives 2 show reallocate sector count... smart message . All drives less than a year old .
If you can afford it buy better internal non smr drives you won't regret it .

 

[nRiTeCh]

I do not own any but have internal disks working great in external casings for 5+ yrs.
Given the exp. around current externals are very delicate and prone to sudden death no matter even if you keep them in some locker or in middle of a large room.
Its all luck by chance game it may lasts very long or conk off multiple times within its warranty period itself..
Hence one will find very different reviews around.

 

[rdst_1]

I have 5 segate 4tb external drives , the expansion plus .. and the one with usb3 ports on the front . I would not recommend this drive , just pay more money and buy a better non smr drive .
Out of the 5 drives 2 show reallocate sector count... smart message . All drives less than a year old .
If you can afford it buy better internal non smr drives you won't regret it .

That's quite alarming. Can you tell me which tool you used to analyze this and how much have these drives been used. I bought the same drive last year in October. I went with Seagate, because my experience with WD Mybook wasn't good - a new drive conked off within 3 months and took all my data with it. Whereas my nearly decade old Seagate 3TB is still working fine. This time, I've made 2 copies of most of my data though, so not too worried. Also, I don't use these drives often. The new one has been connected at most 4-5 times since it was bought.

 

[ankushv]

I use crystal disk info . Also my use is only backing up tv serials I download and some 4k and full hd " study material" . Hahaha . I don't move the drives and they are connected to the desktop or laptop .
Also for all critical files I have atleast 3 backups .
I'd still not recommend these drives. . if you can afford just buy regular good quality non smr drives . I've owned all the drives for a period of 1 year. ... The oldest one. .. to about the latest one being 2 months back .