Ext Hard Drive failed - Best storage method

pavb2

My WD external hard drive failed in Jan 2015 I replaced it with a Samsung which has now also failed so what is my best method of storage.

Generally I'm storing photos and music so about 150 gb max. I think my options are:

Get another external hard drive. Get a NAS drive but I don't really know a lot about them. Put everything in the cloud, I have a small drop box account and iCloud but this seems a bit expensive per year.

Any help appreciated.

crazygeryy

What i would do is email Samsung. That is a very short lifespan of an external hard drive.unless you were throwing it around the place it should last a lot longer than that. They might replace it for you.

Personally i wouldn't go near cloud for that much storage, your right it is expensive.

So i would go with buying another.
I've had a Toshiba canvio basic 1tb hard drive ( on Amazon uk)for over a year and a half and not a bother on it.i would recommend that.

Or possibly buy 2 500gb ones and then you won't loose everything if it fails.?

pavb2

Thanks cg the drive fell about 2 inches off my table onto a shelf Similar story with the WD one so I'm a bit reluctant to go down that road again.

enniscorthy

mate i have an old FREECOM drive hehe would you believe still running after 12 years

Skerries

enniscorthy wrote: »

mate i have an old FREECOM drive hehe would you believe still running after 12 years

ED E

pavb2 wrote: »

Thanks cg the drive fell about 2 inches off my table onto a shelf Similar story with the WD one so I'm a bit reluctant to go down that road again.

Portable drives are horrendous. They take far too much abuse.

A basic 1TB NAS would be perfect. WD make some nice little units that can sit safely on a shelf. Basic but user friendly.

riclad

Its possible the circuit boards ,or the power supplys of one or both of those external drives
are faulty.
IF you remove the drives put them in a caddy the drives might work fine.
i have 2 external drives, after 5 years they both work fine.

Ste-

Google photos give you unlimited storage for photos (with some compression), or Flickr give you 1TB for photos.
Google music will let you upload 20,000 tracks for free and you can use their app to stream the tracks from there. Handy as a backup.

A NAS is essntially another hardrive but with network capabilities. Many of them have handy apps etc that make things very easy for you to access media.

PropJoe10

enniscorthy wrote: »

mate i have an old FREECOM drive hehe would you believe still running after 12 years

Also got an old Freecom drive, 400GB capacity, had it for 9 years now. I don't fire it up too often, but she still works perfectly

For the OP, if you only have about 150GB then I'd consider a cloud solution. I find Copy to be quite good and their pricing plans are pretty reasonable I think. They are owned by Barracuda so are reputable and reliable.

beauf

Build a file server from a cheap/old machine. Put it somewhere save.

Always have backup's then drive failure isn't a big deal.