# 2TB or 2 1TB ?



## Saidrex (Jun 20, 2012)

Hi everyone. I'm thinking of buying 2TB USB3 external HDD. How reliable are 2TB HDD's? Or is it better to get 2 1TB external HDD's?


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## FordGT90Concept (Jun 20, 2012)

1 GB HDD?  Did we just go back 20 years in time?

Did you mean 1 TB HDD?  I would recommend buying an enclosure and hard drive separately.  When you buy them pre-assembled, they almost always have cheap cases and even cheaper hard drives.  One good hard drive is better than two crap hard drives.


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## lilhasselhoffer (Jun 20, 2012)

Saidrex said:


> Hi everyone. I'm thinking of buying 2GB USB3 external HDD. How reliable are 2GB HDD's? Or is it better to get 2 1GB external HDD's?



Seconding the assumption that GB was supposed to be TB.

Other than that, there's a reason most external HDDs are prefabbed that way.  If a batch has faulty or otherwise damaged components, that don't kill the drives, they are often binned to be put into external HDDs.  I bought a My Book 2 TB, and the thermal sensor in the HDD was borked (reads 128 C constantly).  This is "acceptable" because the data never gets out, so the external doesn't have an issue being used.  


If you want reliable, and reasonable, build your own.  HDD failure, specifically on frequently used externals, happens.  Never trust any of your important data only in one place.


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## Peter1986C (Jun 20, 2012)

Or just buy a SATA-USB adapter and a drive. If you want it you can make an enclosure yourself and include a fan if it is a desktop drive (for the latter you will need extra cables though, so better don't do this if HDD temps are fine in the summer).


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## Fourstaff (Jun 20, 2012)

Using prebuilts external HDD to store most of my things. They are convenient and cheap, and so far reliability is fine (ie no drives have died on me when I am not paying attention). With a proper backup regiment you don't even need to care how reliable the drives are (most new ones are really reliable anyway), unless you get annoyed easily by dead hardware.


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## Saidrex (Jun 20, 2012)

Yeah, TB not GB =)) sorry about that =)


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## happita (Jun 21, 2012)

Fourstaff said:


> Using prebuilts external HDD to store most of my things. They are convenient and cheap, and so far reliability is fine (ie no drives have died on me when I am not paying attention). With a proper backup regiment you don't even need to care how reliable the drives are (most new ones are really reliable anyway), unless you get annoyed easily by dead hardware.



I agree. Unless you keep your external on along with your computer for extended periods of time without unplugging them, they will have a reduced reliability rate for sure. When I feel I have either added/downloaded enough new files or modified important files, that's when I reach for my external. And being the safety nut that I am, I have 4x 1TB drives. Drive 2 is a clone of Drive 1 and Drive 4 is a clone of Drive 3, that way I have a backup of my backup


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