Best External Drive 4TB

[Jeff Strouse]

I'd like to get a 4TB external drive for backing up, and didn't know which is best to get. Western Digital and Seagate seem to be the most popular. Toshiba seems less popular, and I've also seen Buffalo as a brand.

I also thought about getting an internal drive, but then buying an external casing for it, to use it as an external drive...then it will have an on/off switch, as I don't need it powered on all the time.

Also, I read a review where on a 4TB drive, you'll actually only get about 3.5 TB of "usable space". Why does the drive use so much space, and is there a way to increase it closer to the 4TB?

I'd consider a 3TB drive, as that's what I currently have in my computer as an internal. I'm not interested in 1 or 2 TB drives. The more, the better!!! I want to save large audio and video files.

Thanks!

[Richard Sinkler]

I have 2 Toshiba hard drives in my Dell desktop and have had no problems. I also have 2 Western Digital external drives, a 750gb for my laptop and a 2tb for my desktop. Haven't had any problems with either.

Over the years that I have been into computers, I have had nothing but trouble and failures with Seagate drives, both internal and external.

[Chris Dorch]

I agree with Richard's assessment of Seagate drives only when the drives were End-User class... Enterprise class drives are phenominal... That said, I have also had the same number of issues with WD drives as well.

I suggest getting an enclosure and then buying your own drive(s). This way, if there is a disk failure, you can swap it and continue on.

I would also suggest getting a 2 or 4 bay NAS (network attached storage) device. This way, you can share it across multiple machines and it's generally more resiliant and/or fault tolerent/redundant since you can make different array types like RAID 1 or 5.

But, do what you will...

YMMV...

[Robert Leaman]

I use a Fantom Gforce3 USB 3.0. Fantom makes the fastest external hard drive that is available. I selected P/N GF3B2000U32. This is 2TB drive with a 32MB buffer. If you USB3, the drive moves along nicely, however it is compatible with USB2 or USB1. You can use Bing to search for the best price. My drive has performed flawlessly and backs up 35GB in about 14 minutes with Acronis.

http://www.fantomdrives.com/products/gf ... YmDes_D-3w

Form Factor: External Unit
Power Supply: 110/220 V (Universal Power Supply) w/ on/off switch
Product Weight: 2.4 lbs
Drive Type: External Unit
Available Capacities: 500GB, 1TB, 1.5TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB
Buffer Format: NTFS
Host Interface: USB 3.0
Bus Transfer Rate (Maximum): 5GBit/Sec
Package Contents: G-Force 3 External Disk Drive, Drive Stand, Power Supply, USB 3.0 Cable, User Manual
OS Support: Mac OS X 10.5 and newer, Microsoft Windows 32bit and 64bit Vista, 7, Windows Server 2003, 2008
Warranty: Three-year limited

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[Jeff Strouse]

Thanks to everyone so far! I'll research more into these areas....