Portable external hard drive

wazza

wazza

Joined
Friday January 9, 2015
Im just wanting a bit of advice really.
In a couple of weeks the plan is to buy an external hard dive to take away on holiday with me so that I can pull videos and photos from my GoPro onto it. The reason being my laptop is crap and doesn't appreciate the files.
Ive been looking at a 2TB Seagate or Toshiba for around £60.
Comparing the two people who bought Seagates say they would stay away from Toahiba and vice versa.
Is it people just being bias, a bad experience.
In my head, they're the same thing but different brands?
Any thoughts?
 
There's only two companies that make the actual drives that go in any external these days! They are all mechanical so will all fail at some point, get the one with the best warranty at the price point you want to pay.
 
All much the same these days. Much more reliable than when I started out with hard drives in the early nineties. Back them up to an online photo account as well just to be on the safe side
 
Firstly I should say that I know absolutely nothing about how GoPros transfer data to other devices, especially external drives, but I suppose that it's via USB (hopefully 3.0) and some onboard software. Anyway, on to drives.

It's often a matter of luck, as to whether you get a long-lasting soundly-operating drive or not. That's why you get such a variation of people for and against a particular make; presumably based on direct or anecdotal evidence. There's also the question of how many of a make are out there. More usually means more chance of duff ones turning up, and less amplifies the comparative failure rate.

The three remaining manufacturers of hard disk drives are Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital (WD-who now own Hitachi drives). Each has enhanced what is essentially the same sort of device, in various ways, but, in theory, they should, as you say, perform and last the same. That they don't is down, IMHO, mainly to enclosure design etc., followed by user treatment/resistance.

This last is quite important, as in a portable drive, you're expecting a lot of sturdiness from a precision electro-mechanical device, which may suffer all kinds of shocks and ill-treatment.

WD drives had a poor reputation at one time, as being cheap, cheerful and unreliable, but they seem to have improved greatly.

Sound advice from @mattyb240 and @NotTheStig, but I'm not sure that you'd be able to back up to an online or cloud account without having or accessing a computer of some sort, besides the GoPro and drive. I guess using several high-capacity SD cards is not practical, as well as being very expensive.

Personally, I'd go for a WD drive, probably a My Passport Ultra model.
 
Ferrum said:
I guess using several high-capacity SD cards is not practical, as well as being very expensive.
Click to expand...
There are a few bargains out there -- yesterday ebuyer were selling Kingston 32GB Class 10 microSDHC Card with Full Size Adapter for £7.98 incl del.
 
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