What should I pay for an external hard drive?

[jeremy_09]

I'm looking for a brand name such as Western Digital or Seagate, around 4TB, I'm seeing prices around $75-$100 new. Are there any better deals than that? Is there a place to buy storage that's known to be less expensive?

Thanks!

[jshm2]

Doesn't really matter as most are produced in either Taiwan or South Korea. so quality tends to be good on most. You need to buy for use instead.

The main thing to look for is the speed and level of the drive depending on how much you are going to use it.

In other words, you could pay 100 bucks for a 5TB Seagate and have it fail in your NAS after a month. But you could pay 50 bucks for a second hand 3TB WD black enterprise and have it never fail on you.

The higher quality enterprise drives are made to run and run, and even the second hand ones can do a good job. but always test with Crystaldisk before use.

[jeremy_09]

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it.

I bought a 6TB WD enterprise drive last time thinking I was getting a great deal on something that would be very high quality, but from the beginning it's been hit or miss, it only works every 10th time or so, most of the time I can never see it, I have to keep connecting and reconnecting it. I'd like to get my files off of that and onto something reliable.

I just saw an 8TB WD Black 7200rpm gaming drive with active cooling for just over $100 but when I read the reviews everyone said it runs very hot and is very noisy. Why?

The hard drives that come with the laptops even before SSD have never failed, why can't I find an external drive as reliable as that?

[NathanDavis]

what do you want to use it for...

if you just want to store "regular files" and leave them there for a while, then maybe get a cheap one like these

if you want more reliable storage and on the go... maybe pay around 100 dollars per 2TB... which is double to this price

[strateguy632]

70$$

[slatyb]

Where do you live?