External hard drive advice please

On Wed, 14 Mar 2018 20:17:39 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

I'm looking for another external drive or two. My usual source has both
Seagate/Lacie and Western Digital. It looks like 1 or 2TB are the
smallest ones these days. Price range is around $50 to $100 per terabyte.

Lacie prices are double Seagate models of same capacity - is Lacie the
better quality version of Seagate?

Western Digital models are generally in same price range as Seagate.

Or should I look at other brands? I'm willing to spend up to about
$100/terabyte for greater reliability.

All advice and recommendations gratefully received and carefully considered.

Thank you,

Stop worrying about consumer drives. I had four consumer Seagate 1TB
drives I got in 2007-2008 (retail box, 5 yr warranty) run through
2013-2015, and I replaced each with a 4TB drive as they aged out of my
system. I have a 4TB Seagate GoFlex backup drive that is 5 yrs old and
is still running fine (powered 24/7, but only connected via USB to
make a backup--then disconnected). My Dell has the original 1TB
C-drive (Seagate) and the drive is 100% good (since Jan 2012) per the
drive monitoring software I use.

Seagate ST4000DM005--current version 4TB consumer drive. Runs 5400rpm,
so is cooler than the other drives in the NAS RAID box (1 Seagate at
5400rpm, 2 HGST at 7200rpm). For backup, that is not a problem.
HGST 4TB consumer drive (have 3 of them--1 is 4-5 yrs old (HGST) and
is still rated 100% by the drive monitoring software I use).

Get an external enclosure for the number of drives you want, plus a
spare drive bay or two, and add/remove drives as desired. I have a
4-drive NAS RAID box with three 4TB drives in it (running JBOD). I can
add a fourth drive (any capacity) whenever I desire. The NAS RAID box
will go to at least 12TB/drive and will likely go much higher. There
are (realistically) no drives larger than 12TB to test it at this
time, so they don't claim larger capacity capabilities.