On 26/01/19 03:06 AM, Celejar wrote:
On Fri, 25 Jan 2019 09:24:56 -0800 "James H. H. Lampert" <jamesl@touchtonecorp.com> wrote:Fellow List members: Would anybody care to voice an opinion on USB external hard drives in the 2 terabyte size range, for automated backup purposes? We've been looking at the Seagate "Expansion" and the WD "Elements"; I've noticed that on Amazon, both have a fair number of negative reviews citing reliability issues. (We recently discovered that our current Seagate had apparently failed on us.) Any opinions? Seagate? WD? Toshiba? Something else?
I so far am not having any trouble with something called "Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive" -- "product of China (HDD), assembled in Thailand" as proudly proclaimed on the cases. These two I purchased in Thailand and am using them there. The spec sheet claims that they work with both USB 2.0 and 3.0, but likely with a lower transmission speed with 2.0. I am using them only on 3.0, not having tried either on 2.0.(1)
They are usable 'right out of the box' with Mac computers and also with Micro$oft, complete with built-in 'hardware' encryption if you choose to use it. I of course chose not to use any of it and so reformatted both with ext4 and luks encryption.
They also come with a 'limited' three year warranty. I have only had them for a year; so far I have had no need to test those 'limitations'. Finally they come in six decorator colours, light and dark blue, red, gold, silver and black, useful to tell them apart if you have more than one. I stuck to black for both of them as I have another way to tell them apart -- relative depth.
The height,width and depth of the 1 TB model are respectively 114, 77 and 11 mm. The height and width of the 4 TB model are the same; the depth however is 20 mm. In view of the height and width the electro-mechanical drives used in these drive must be the 63.5 mm size. In view of the depth difference I suspect that there is one such drive in the
1 TB model, but two such drives in the 4 TB model. Besides the 1 and 4 TB models, also available are 2 and 5 TB models. (1) https://www.seagate.com/as/en/consumer/backup/backup-plus/ Ken