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2,5 External Hard Drive - Seagate vs. Western Digital
- Thread starter Ron Zamir
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The one that's cheaper at the moment? 2.5 is a laptop size and I doubt anybody is putting them in laptops so both companies are offering externals for little money.
They both have some fancier / newer models. Look at the interface is it slower USB? WD at least sells a WiFi equipped drive. But if you just want storage check the price and connection.
They both have some fancier / newer models. Look at the interface is it slower USB? WD at least sells a WiFi equipped drive. But if you just want storage check the price and connection.
I have 2 external hard drives for long term backups. every couple of years (5-6 years) I am doing a refresh and replacing the older drive with a new one. One is 3,5 external and the other is 2,5. The 2,5 is more convenient to so time to replace, and this is why thinking. And yes, I was attracted by the cheap offer these days.
Chris Noble
Veteran Member
How much storage do you need? How do you refresh your old backups? From other copies somewhere else? That affects the answer.
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I need 4-5 TB. The refreshing is just by replacing the older external hard drive with a new one.
Chris Noble
Veteran Member
I'd get a couple of 3.5", 6 TB SATA internal drives and a docking station. More reliable. Don't compromise the security of your backups for a few $.
I have a Seagate Backup Plus 5TB. But the reason I bought it is because it was cheaper than WD. I have it for a year and performing backups (previously with Acronis, now with Macrium) every day and the drive has not failed for me yet.
I am pretty certain both brands are similar. You may consider the additional features, e.g., the bundled software with Seagate and WD.
However I do not solely rely on the external HDD as backup. I also have BlackBlaze as cloud backup and Google One as cloud sync for important personal files (e.g. photos).
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That's what I'd do. And I'd get one of each brand, in case one drive proved to have a model-specific problem, you'll still have the other.
Tom_N
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If you were looking at 3.5" hard drives, I'd suggest trying to find one that does NOT use Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR). However, there may not be any realistic chance of avoiding SMR on 2.5" drives, these days.
Mountain_85
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Compared to 3,5" HDDs the small 2,5" HDDs are often less reliable and more prone to write/read errors. The compact USB-drives are designed for home use. All larger 2,5" HDDs use SMR. I don't trust 2,5" HDDs any more, had some bad experience with several drives, I buy SSDs instead.
If you want a compact, portable drive -> 2,5" USB
If you want a more reliable drive -> 3,5" USB
If you want a compact, portable drive -> 2,5" USB
If you want a more reliable drive -> 3,5" USB
Look at the warranty for the drive. Buy the one with the longer warranty. If warranty is the same, buy which ever one is cheaper at the time.
For backup drives, SMR drives are fine and cheaper. If you want speed, then CMR drives are faster but can be much more expensive.
For backup drives, 5400 rpm is fine and run cooler. For speed, 7200 rpm drives are faster. But 7200 rpm drives can be used as backup drives too.
For external drives, recommend getting a USB3, SATA docking station and 3.5 inch drives since they fit better in the slot.
Beware of getting drives that come enclosed in a USB case. My experience is that if the case electronics fail and the drive is removed from the case, it didn't work when connected directly to a motherboard SATA port. But putting the same drive in a known working case, the drive worked fine. .... OTOH, drives written in docking stations will work when connected directly to a motherboard SATA port. .... Not sure if it applies to all enclosed drives but that's my experience. .... I won't buy enclosed drives anymore except to remove the drive from the case and use it as a bare drive in a docking station. In that scenario, expect the drive to be a SMR drive.
Sky
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Mountain_85
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Some WD-Enclosures convert the drives with 512e sectors to 4K sectors. Weird and complicated, but nothing to worry about. Some other USB-Enclosures offer similar settings via firmware-update.
I usually buy 3,5" USB-HDDs for my NAS because they are cheaper then non USB-drives.
Tom_N
Forum Pro
If that NAS is a redundant RAID, you want to avoid using SMR drives. SMR drives can make rebuilding a RAID take so long that the rebuilding effectively fails.
Mountain_85
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16TB WD, white label, CMR
a_c_skinner
Forum Pro
SSDs are unsuitable for backup unless you power them up regularly. As you could buy three HDDs for the same cost three copies beats a single copy every time.
On a life span of 5-7 years, is the 3,5 drive more reliable than 2,5 or there is no difference?
a_c_skinner
Forum Pro
The point about backups is that you have enough copies so that modest differences in reliability don't matter.
there is no NAS in this conversation. So people putting out the SMR disdain need to zero in on if they are more prone to uncorrected read errors than CMR, as that is all that really matters here.
My take is that external 2.5" drives and reliability are distant cousins, mostly because they get handled a lot. If you go this route, what can you do to minimize that?
Drive warranties are kind of irrelevant - they don't cover your data. Just give you a replacement $100 device.
Tom_N
Forum Pro
There is in the post to which I responded.
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