Storage Solutions Seagate or Western Digital? | Need a 4TB or 5TB portable HDD

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Digigear

Digigear

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I'm planning to get a 4TB portable USB 3.0 hard disk that doesn't need external power.

I'm looking at these two products:-
  1. Western Digital WD 4TB My Passport Portable External Hard Drive, Black - with Automatic Backup, 256Bit AES Hardware Encryp...

    Western Digital WD 4TB My Passport Portable External Hard Drive​

  2. Seagate Backup Plus Portable 4 TB External Hard Drive HDD – Black USB 3.0 for PC Laptop and Mac, 1 Year Mylio Create, 2 Mo...

    Seagate Backup Plus Portable 4 TB External Hard Drive HDD​

​

​​They seem comparable, except that the WD unit may be a bit smaller in size and comes with hardware encryption? Not sure if the Seagate one offers that.

Also, I want to ensure that the after sales service is good for whichever one I go for.

At the moment I'm leaning towards the WD My Passport and honestly I'd like to go for the 5TB option. But oddly, I noticed that a lot of the reviews on Amazon that mentioned low write speeds were from those who bought the 5TB option. Not sure if this is a thing, but it made me feel like the 5TB option could be slower than the 4TB option. Does anyone know more about this?

Also let me know if there are other options I should look out for.
 
Commenting for I want to know this too.

I am looking at their 2TB options because 4TB ones are a bit thicker and price/gb isn't much better. I think these externals drives are all 5400rpm ones. Why don't they make these in 7200rpm?
 
My experience with Seagate drives(internal /external /USB) has been horrible.
If it was for me, I would choose between Toshiba and WD models. Seagate has been cutting way too many corners at the cost of reliability.
Also heard positive reviews about Toshiba USB drives on YouTube.
 
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What about WD 4TB vs 5TB? Which would you prefer?

Some stats:-
  1. The 4TB one comes at Rs.8249 and the 5TB comes at Rs.9299.
  2. The cost per MB (Rs./MB) of the 5TB unit is 0.537 and the 4TB one is 0.484. So the 4TB one is relatively cost effective, but then the 5TB one is the largest USB powered portable storage solution available, at least from WD.
 
I had issues with seagate drive too, i was using 500gb in my router as nas and in ntfs format. Drive died soon, then i got another 1tb seagate z this time i formatted ext4 and using in same router as my nas, absolutely no issues
So i guess format of the drive matters too.
And i am a big time wd user.
 
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Digigear said:
  1. The 4TB one comes at Rs.8249 and the 5TB comes at Rs.9299.
  2. The cost per MB (Rs./MB) of the 5TB unit is 0.537 and the 4TB one is 0.484. So the 4TB one is relatively cost effective, but then the 5TB one is the largest USB powered portable storage solution available, at least from WD.
Click to expand...

I feel 4TB is the way to go unless you really need that extra 1TB. Cost per GB is less for 4TB variant and anyway 4-5 years from now, when your data accumulates, HDD costs will have dipped even further and you may then upgrade to 8-10tb (lets hope) at the same price.
 
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xkcd0137 said:
I feel 4TB is the way to go unless you really need that extra 1TB. Cost per GB is less for 4TB variant and anyway 4-5 years from now, when your data accumulates, HDD costs will have dipped even further and you may then upgrade to 8-10gb (lets hope) at the same price.
Click to expand...
That's one argument. But then I also think about the fact that if I pay 1k more, I get 1TB more. And that definitely seems worthwhile, considering how a 1TB drive pretty much costs 4k or so. So 1k for 1TB vs 4k for 1TB. I mean, yes, the 4k also includes the casing etc, but from the point of view of user convenience, it seems that 1k is justified for the extra 1TB. Currently I'm leaning towards the 5TB option.

And as you say, the prices will definitely lower in the few years time. But maybe that extra 1TB would delay the need for more storage and then I could get even lower prices down the line. :P
 
Digigear said:
And as you say, the prices will definitely lower in the few years time. But maybe that extra 1TB would delay the need for more storage and then I could get even lower prices down the line. :p
Click to expand...

Yup. That is also another way of looking at it. Let me give my example -
I have two laptops - 1TB and 500GB and I have two external hdds - 500gb and 320gb.
I also wanted to go for 4TB hdd at first, to future proof like yourself, but my storage requirement can be met with a 2TB drive itself and the 75% price jump didn't justify the 4TB HDD.

In your case, price jump is nothing substantial (10-12%) and with discounts it may get even less. Another factor - I read some comments on reddit which said that 5TB speeds are lesser than 4TB or 2TB. Check that out too.
Only factor you need to see is the extra space, if you have lots of data then you should go for 5TB.

**** it, you are right, get a 5TB one. I may switch to 4TB as well, changed my mind while writing this comment.
 
xkcd0137 said:
I read some comments on reddit which said that 5TB speeds are lesser than 4TB or 2TB. Check that out too.
Click to expand...
Wait, this is what I've been wanting to learn about. I would REALLY appreciate if you could point out to the exact source you were looking at. I need more info on this.
 
I too faced issues with Seagate. As I remember all my 4-5 Seagate HDD's failed.
so for me it's not Baracudda it's कूड़ा
Using WD since last 15years, out of 15-20 internal / external HDD's only one 2tb passport failed after 3 years.
seems like WD is more reliable.
2nd choice is always Toshiba.

Choose even number 2 / 4 / 6 /8 TB , avoid 5TB.
 
In the consumer grade stuff, there will always be bad reviews for all brands. Chances of failing of either WD or Seagate would be similar as one can see from the posts till now. My personal experience, I have a 3TB Seagate external drive bought in 2010. In 2014,I bought a WD My Book and transferred all data from the Seagate drive and guess what - The new drive failed within 2 weeks taking all my data with it because I was foolish enough to have not kept 2 copies. Since then I haven't bought another external HDD and decided not to hoard my downloads. The decade old Seagate drive still works fine but it is now only connected once every 3 months, just for taking backup. I am contemplating buying a 6TB WD Mybook again in the next sale because my music collection is growing very fast these days, but I'll make sure I have 2 copies of the data this time.
Once SSDs become even more cheaper, then probably one can contemplate moving to them as they are far more reliable. I have a 1TB Crucial SSD doing duty in my laptop since 2013 and it's still working great.
 
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