Hard drive choices?

[mac_24_seven]

Basically, my wife needs a good size HD for her pictures. She wants a TB sized HD but I don't like the idea of all her pictures being in one spot. If that HD fails, game over. So I'd rather buy two smaller drives to better my odds.

What brand HD's do you computer people recommend? Seems Western Digital has really good reliability, as they are the most purchased and highest reviews HD on New Egg.

Thoughts?

[gsdave]

I had a WD 'MyBook' that failed and I lost all the data. It was not recoverable. I have replaced it with a IoMega and have had no trouble with it. I had the WD replaced under warranty and I use it as a backup for the IoMega. I like the IoMega better.

[Sandy H.]

Backup is your only safety net.

I'm out of touch with the market now but I used to only use Maxtor 7200 RPM drives and I still have all of those running. Since Seagate bought them out I don't know. My last drive purchase was a Samsung and so far so good with it.

[FlamingStang]

if you are worried about failure buy 2 hd's and raid 1 them. If you want performance buy 2 and raid 0 them. If you want performance and failure buy 3and raid 3 or 5 them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

WD is usually a good choice simply for the price, and they are usually reliable. Honestly I dont know what any human being could do to fill a Tb of data. I can't fill 500 Gb if I tried.

[slmdLS1]

i've got an external Terabyte "My Book" WD and have had no problems. i usually use it to backup pictures, but also store movies and audio files on it that i dont keep on my laptop.

[tedness]

like Flaming said, if you want to cover yourself completely, get two identical drives and RAID 1 them. but as the others have stated, if you just want to backup documents and videos etc. get an external.

i also vote for WD, i've always used them and never had any problems.

[4348rd]

the hard drives i'm having the most problms with right now is toshiba laptop sata's

[hungryjack]

Buy the hard drive. Then get this: http://www.carbonite.com/

[go_speed_go]

if you want to cover yourself completely, get two identical drives and RAID 1 them.
Two identical drives would expose you to two identical drives failing in similar time frames.

[madderhatter]

How many PCs do you use at home ? If you have more than one you might want to consider a Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution - this way you can backup files off of all PCs and access them from any of them, it even supports FTPing from outside your LAN.

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11490

Simple to setup and use and it's RAID 1 and supports hot swap with the drives. We've got a similar setup here at home from Lacie and absolutely love it. Of course you could buy the parts separately and possibly build one cheaper but this one has it's own Linux operating system that you don't have to mess with and it does all the traffic direction and whatnot in the background.

[SS2win]

I'd get the TB drive and another external to back it up. Maxtor has a very bad track record with me. something like 70% failure rate. WD is my brand of choice now. Look for their RAID edition drives (RE2 / RE3) and you'll get something thats rated for more constant use.