Best choice of external 2.5" HDD USB-drive for backup?

[taichi]

Is this a good backup drive for my ThinkPad T60p?

HGST Touro S 1TB 7200RPM High-Performance Portable Drive, Platinum (0S03694)

Apparently it's made by Hitachi, after the sale of their storage division to Western Digital.

Also, is Acronis still the best backup solution for our T60Ps? Rather than doing continuous backups, can I do discrete backups and save them as separate images on the drive in lieu of cloning, given that the latter is cumbersome?

Moderator edit: Moved this thread (from initially being posted in the T6x-forum) to this, the "General HARDWARE/SOFTWARE question" forum.

[ZaZ]

Hitachis are good drives. If it does fail it probably comes down to plain old dumb luck more than anything else, though the chances it'll fail are pretty low.

I use TI and like it a lot, but I only use it for making install images. I believe TI allows you to back up just files and folders, and can do incremental backups, but my version is 2010. I'm not familiar with newer ones.

[MisterB]

I use Aomei Backupper. Never any problems and the free edition does everything I need. I do differential backups and will do a full image anytime I do any major changes.

[taichi]

Thanks for the replies.

There was a recent study done of hard drive reliability, and Hitachi came out on top, with Western Digital slightly behind. The drive I posted gets really good reviews on Amazon, even though it is Hitachi after being acquired by Western Digital.

Good to know about that free backup and image making software. I used to clone periodically from my ancient A21P, but the T60P is much more restrictive, requiring swapping internal and external drives in order to clone, which is too much for me.

[Johan]

There was a recent study done of hard drive reliability, and Hitachi came out on top, with Western Digital slightly behind.

Is it the Backblaze Hard Drive Reliability (study) of Sept. 2014 you are making (implicit) reference to? In such case, please note that have "only" tested the reliability of 3.5" drives, not 2.5" laptop drives.

I don't know if the conclusions from 3.5" HDD reliability can directly be transferred to 2.5" drives?

Recently I have bought a couple of external 2.5" backup HDD's, and after researching a bit I chose to get the Silicon Power A30 (one 1 TB and one 2 TB), partly because of their robust internal construction, and partly because they use the much more mechanical robust USB 3.0 Standard-A type of connector rather than the much smaller and much more flimsy (and hence potentially much more fragile!) USB 3.0 Micro-B plug used on the majority of other 2.5" external HDD's (USB 3.0 connector ref: Wikipedia).

Johan

[taichi]

You're right, Johan, about the article to which I make reference. However, when I followed that up by reading reviews of the various portable drives, it appears that they followed the same trend of reliability among the brands.

But I appreciate your posting about the drive which you did buy, as your criteria for purchase makes eminent sense. Do you have any knowledge about that drives reliability? To me, reliability is the most important criterion.

[Johan]

Do you have any knowledge about that drives reliability? To me, reliability is the most important criterion.

If I have any knowledge (I guess you mean not only belief, but actual, statistically justified knowledge) of the reliability of different mechanical 2.5” SATA HDD's? Unfortunately, no; I wish I had… bit I am doing as you do; reading user-reviews, reading tests, digging around.

It is obvious that the HDD manufacturers themselves are not publishing the failure rate of their different products; they keep this very secret for business reasons. Therefore, unless you happen to work for the QA Dept. in a very large corporation that use many (1000+) of different manufacturers various 2.5” HDD’s (or if you work for a large service organization that repair many laptops!), and because of this you have access to a *large* amount of independent statistical reliability-data, I don’t believe you can find out which drive is better or worse, from a reliability point-of-view. And even if you could, there may be bad batches of drives from time to time, owing to e.g. faulty components supplied by sub-contractors. So… it's simply very hard (impossible?) to be 100 % certain that you have a high-reliability, guaranteed long-time, perfectly functional HDD. If you are therefore really serious about backup, you would probably want to look to streaming tapes, “cloud”-solutions, and of course keep several identical backups, stored in different places. Burn vital data (family photos e.g.) to DVD's, burn several DVD's (on high-quality media, with high-quality burners), check them, store them *SAFE* several places etc.

Anyway, about the reliability-information of e.g. 2.5” HDD’s that we believe we are able to dig up ourselves:

If you see the user-feedback ("review") on Newegg for the drive that you are mentioning in your first post; the HGST 0S03694, you will notice 3 out of 16 users are reporting dead or defective drives... and that (3/16) translate to a catastrophic failure rate of 18.75 % This cannot be the truth; it simply can’t be that bad; it does for sure not represent a large selection of these drives.

Moreover, to be able to better interpret user-reports, and to be able to make better choices yourself, it is useful to know the basics about reliability in electronic equipment; incl understanding the mechanisms behind "infant", "burn-in", and "wear-out" types of failures... see e.g. Topic: Electronic/Electrical Reliability. What is actually important for you; "infant", "burn-in", and "wear-out" errors? All, of course, but they are not equally important (wear-out must of course be expected!), but consider what is reported in user-reviews probably most often posted relatively short after some item is bought? Read user-reviews in this light, and decide what's important for you.

Now, as we know, most happy costumers/users don't come back to give positive feedback; costumers of course expect that the items they buy works as advertised (... or most people are probably simply too lazy to give feedback!), so this 18.75 % failure rate cannot be expected to cover a population of, say, 10.000 of these drives. In the user-feedback for the same drive on Amazon things look much different, and by a first glance much better, but Hey! you always have to be very critical with Amazon's reviews... because they group (= show!) review of different sized drives (e.g. 500 GB and 1 TB drives) under both of the products; see e.g. the user-feedback By Henry Dumanian (Hicksville, NY), entitled: “New cable” and posted January 3, 2015 which is for a HGST Touro S 500 GB drive, but is actually listed (= shown) in the reviews for the HGST Touro S 1 TB drives (0S03694), that you are making reference to. The actual HDD's inside these two HGST backup drives are obviously very different (500 GB vs. 1 TB) and may, or may not, be of different product families; you have simply no idea of what's actually inside. Most likely the USB-interface is the same for both drives, and the mechanical enclosure is also the same, but the item with probably the highest failure-rate is the HDD inside... so this is surely comparing apples against oranges! For fun, see the review for the 500 GB version (0S03698) and notice (in the customer-feedback) how many drives listed there are actually the 1 TB version In my opinion this is a VERY dishonest approach by Amazon, probably done in an attempt to make products look more popular/better selling than what they really are!

So, the good question: What HDD is actually inside, when you buy some external USB drive? Answer: No way to know in advance; can be this, can be that! Manufacturers of external HDD's probably use different HDD's (same size, same interface, same capacity, but different vendors), for cost and "security of supply" reasons. Example:

In the 1 TB Transcend Storejet 25H3P discussed in this review, a Samsung/Seagate ST1000LM024 HDD is used. However, in another review covering exactly the same drive, the Easycom review a Western Digital's Scorpio Blue WD10TPVT 1 TB drive is used! OK, so what if you love Samsung/Seagate and hate WD; get this 1 TB Transcend Storejet 25H3P, or not? Well, this boils down into being a pure luck of the draw; you buy what you buy, you get what you get!

A friend of mine has one of the 1 TB Transcend Storejet 25H3P's; the actual HDD inside is the Samsung/Seagate ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB. Another friend of mine has the 2 TB version of the Transcend StoreJet 25H3P; the actual HDD inside this is a WD20NPVX which has received relatively poor feedback several places, so...

In the 1 TB Silicon Power A30 (that I have just received a few days ago), the actual HDD is a Samsung/Seagate ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB. I haven't yet checked what HDD is inside the 2 TB Silicon A30 (that I have also just received a few days ago). The Samsung SpinPoint M8 ST1000LM024 has received somewhat mixed user-feedback various places (see e.g. on Newegg, Amazon etc.) while this review was more positive, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

As mentioned above, I have been looking around quite a bit before purchasing the two Silicon Power A30 HDD’s mentioned, and no matter what HDD you look at (whether bought separate or in some USB-enclosure); no matter which HDD, you will find users that say: “My HDD was DOA” or “My HDD already failed after xx days/months”. So, really, and unfortunately, I don’t believe it is easy (or perhaps possible at all?) to find the very best HDD from looking around this way; all manufacturers drives have some amount of failure rate, and users with failed drives will no doubt report back their negative experience much more often than happy customers will.

Most of us have probably had some negative experience with HDD’s over the time, so we probably all tend to keep this implicit in mind (saying to ourselves: I’m surely *never* going to buy any WD drives again!! or: No Seagate drives will never, ever again enter the doorstep to my house!! etc)… you see these type of bad-HDD-manufacturer statements often here in the forum, even by long-time members with many posts – and what it all boils down to (in my belief!) is simply… plain bad luck, provided of course, that the drive(s) have been used and handled as intended and not abused etc.

So, what can we do about bad luck? Keep more than one backup, and in the case of external drives try to omit the obvious weak points, which in my opinion is to get solid drives, and stay away from all that appear fragile or flimsy, such as the small type-B USB 3.0 connectors. If you wish to see the more mechanical robust type-A USB 3.0 connectors of the Silicon Power drives, then e.g. have a look in the following reviews:

Silicon Power Armor A30 1TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive Review and Silicon Power 1TB USB 3.0 “Shockproof” Portable Hard Drive Armor A30 Review and Silicon Power Armor A30 1TB USB 3.0 External HDD Review and Silicon Power Armor A30 2TB USB 3.0 Hard Drive - Featues and Inside Look

Note that my choice may, or may not, be good... I've only had both drives for a few days, and haven't used them very much yet. Final thing; you may want to get some sort of transport case for your external drive, if you wish/need to keep it even better protected during transport. I am very satisfied with the Case Logic PHDC1 for large drives such as the Transcend Storejet 25H3P's and/or the Silicon Power A30's. For smaller external HDD's (e.g. like the HGST you mention), the Case Logic QHDC-1 are perfectly suited.

NB: Beware that most external 2.5" HDD's are delivered formatted to FAT32 (which is directly usable on both Windows PC's and Mac's), but FAT32 will however only allow up to approx. 4.3 GB sized files. You may easily convert FAT32 to NTFS (the latter capable of holding much larger file-sizes than you will ever need!) with no loss of data; see e.g. How to Convert FAT Disks to NTFS.

Good luck picking an extrenal 2.5" HDD and please let us know what you ended up buying, and your satisfaction?

PS: I altered the title of this thread slightly to be a little more (better!) descriptive... hope that's OK!

Johan

[taichi]

Johan:

I know from your previous posts that you are among the most diligent and thoughtful members of this forum, and your treatise on hard drives is extraordinarily informative.

And the points you make about skewed reviews, and Amazon's horrible policy of dumping all similar devices into one review section, are very well taken.

You know, of course, that I looked at the Silicon Power 1 TB Armored Drive reviews on Amazon, and they appear (at first blush) to show many more DOA's than the HGST, which showed none. The only critique of the HGST was the lousy USB cable\connector. I have to go back to Amazon's reviews to see if both drive reviews are similarly "dumped."

Of course your point about any number of drives being in any enclosure is sobering, but don't you think that the HTST does contain an Hitachi drive?

Once again, thank you for the incredibly comprehensive response. I did wonder about the change of post heading, and wondered if I changed it in my sleep! Thanks for the explanation.

[Johan]

Thanks very much for the kind feedback; much appreciated! I often strive to provide usable, trustworthy and detailled information (rather than superficial comments/unjustified postulates, with no references), since I believe that the former is much more useful than the latter.

As to what HDD is inside the HGST external USB drives, it is of course most likely to believe that the HDD’s *are* Hitachi (which is e.g. the case for this user.) Still, as WD has taken over HGST I’d say that there is probably no guarantee that the HDD’s inside HGST-branded external drives will continue to be HGST, but – if of interest! - try Google around and find other users who have taken apart HGST drives, and found out what’s inside, or users who have done as I; used some SW to check the actual, internal drive.

Update:

I just checked (using the free ”System Information for Windows”, ver. 2011.10.29, available from e.g. CNET) what HDD is actually inside the 2 TB Silicon Power Armor A30 that I received the other day, and it turns out to be the Samsung (/Seagate) ST2000LM003 HN-M201RAD. I’m quite happy to learn that I’ve received the ST2000LM003 HN-M201RAD since it has received very good user-feedback, both on the US-Amazon site (linked to above) as well as on Amazon.co.uk and by many Newegg customers.

The Samsung Spinpoint M9T has furthermore received good feedback in e.g. the Storage Review as well as in the Silent-PC Review as well as several other places (Google!).

Very interesting by the way to note the price difference (at Amazon.com) for the bare 2 TB drive itself; selling for USD 115,- while the Silicon Power Armor A30 in the above-mentioned 2 TB version (external HDD) sell for only USD 107,- ?!? Spooky that the external HDD w/HDD is cheaper than the naked drive itself?!?

Final thing: If you *really* wish to know what HDD you get in your external enclosure, then consider buying the enclosure separate and the HDD separate... than you know what you're getting!

Johan

[taichi]

Johan:

Did you read the user reviews for the Silicon Power Armored drive on Amazon? That's what concerns me, though as you say these reviews can mean pretty much anything.

The Newegg reviews of the HGST Touro sounds more mixed than the Amazon reviews, which only fault the cable\connector.

As far as Western Digital is concerned, I have had great experience with the Scorpio Black drive, which is 7200 RPM.

So if you're going to purchase a separate drive and separate enclosure, what would you buy?

[jronald]

Im a huge personal fan of Seagate. In my life, I have only lost one 3.5 Seagate and not a single 2.5. Im guessing 75 or so have passed through my hands. I have used new, refurbs and used HDDs in tons of projects. For many, most of the give away machines I have done in my past I used pulls from game consoles almost exclusively. They are relatively small, but cheap and plentiful on Fleabay.

YMMV
Ron

[robert213]

My personal favorite 2.5" USB HDD enclosure ...
http://www.silverstonetek.com/raven/pro ... odel=RVS02
http://www.amazon.com/Silverstone-Screw ... 005EEO4G8/

[jdrou]

So, what can we do about bad luck? Keep more than one backup.

Most important line in the thread. Even if you have accurate failure stats those are only averages and estimates. The best-made drive model could fail the day after you receive it and the worst could run fine for years. If your data is important enough to put significant effort into finding the most reliable drive you should be making multiple backups, ideally at least one stored at a different location (e.g. cloud, safe-deposit box, relative's house, etc).

[taichi]

So, what can we do about bad luck? Keep more than one backup.

...If your data is important enough to put significant effort into finding the most reliable drive you should be making multiple backups, ideally at least one stored at a different location (e.g. cloud, safe-deposit box, relative's house, etc).

I absolutely agree.

[taichi]

This post was originally intended for my thread on the T6X foruml... Looking for a reliable backup drive... which was locked by Johan, and makes reference to the new thread. The questions on that new thread were very specific regarding the HGST Touro, and in my mind warranted a new thread, distinct from this one. I was "instructed" to post here, and so I am.

Johan:

I will not answer in kind your surprisingly personal and pointed post, a response all the more surprising given the high praise that I gave you for being a thoughtful forum member on the same thread that you cited.

Have you bothered to read this new thread at all? In the earlier thread that you mentioned I was wondering about hard drives on a comparative basis. Since that time I decided to buy the HGST Touro, particularly since I recently ascertained that they do use an Hitachi drives in the unit.

When I spoke yesterday to tech support at HGST, the technician raised the potential issue that my older laptop may not have enough power at the USB port to operate this drive.. This is what caused me to start this thread, as this possibility had never been raised in the old thread.

If you have actually read the new thread, you will see that one forum member has been running a WD My Passport on the T60P. However, I just found out today from HGST that the Touro is more power demanding than the My Passport. The HGST Touro requires at least 5V at 800 milliamps to work. That is the subject of the mew thread...the ability of the T60P to drive this particular hard drive from USB. The subject of this new thread is entirely different than the subject of the older thread that you cited, no matter how poorly I titled the new one.

Also, it never occurred to me that I might be required by anyone to post this on a thread that was months old.

I'm still trying to find out the actual power output of the T60P at the USB port.

[GACrabill]

...Since that time I decided to buy the HGST Touro, particularly since I recently ascertained that they do use an Hitachi drives in the unit.

When I spoke yesterday to tech support at HGST, the technician raised the potential issue that my older laptop may not have enough power at the USB port to operate this drive.. This is what caused me to start this thread, as this possibility had never been raised in the old thread.

I bought a USB 3.0 HGST Touro 1GB a few years ago to use with a T60 ... so today's models may be different. I had hoped to connect it to a USB 3.0 Cardbus card that was already in the T60 for additional USB ports ... but that didn't work for me since the tiny USB cable that came with the Cardbus card to supply additional power to the Cardbus card got so hot that I was afraid that it would melt or worse. So, I resorted to always connecting it to a USB 2.0 port. I don't remember having any problems with that connection, but the Touro died on me after 4-6 months and I had to RMA it. The replacement Touro has since been taken apart and the 2.5" drive now resides within a Dell Precision M6700. One of the advantages of the Touro at that time was that it could be taken apart and the HDD could be used as a normal 2.5" drive (unlike the WD Passport models).

It also seems to be true that the T60 USB 2.0 ports were 'low power' as compared to newer laptops which have 'high power' USB 2.0 ports.

You may want to consider getting a USB 3.0 'Y-cable' so that you will feel comfortable that you are providing enough power to the Touro.
From China : http://www.ebay.com/itm/A-to-Micro-B-US ... 4ad9f6118d
From USA : http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dual-USB-3-0-A- ... 4639c4ed70

[taichi]

Thanks for sharing your personal experience.

So the Y cable utilizes the power from both system board USB ports to run the drive? That may be a solution, as I read recently that one of the USB powered Lenovo external DVD drives requires both ports be used.

Although the eBay Y cable says USB 3.0, there is no reason why it should not work with my 2.0 situation, right?

Thanks again!

[GACrabill]

So the Y cable utilizes the power from both system board USB ports to run the drive?

Yes. Normally, the thicker portion of the 'Y'-cable handles power and data, while the thinner additional wire which makes the cable into a 'Y' does not handle data, it only supplies additional power.

Although the eBay Y cable says USB 3.0, there is no reason why it should not work with my 2.0 situation, right?

Correct. If the cable or device meets USB 3.0 standards, then those standards also require it to work on USB 2.0 .... the only caveat is that older USB 2.0 ports are sometimes called 'low power' ports and newer USB 2.0 ports are then called 'high power' ports. There is probably some distinction published somewhere but I have never seen it.

[ac12]

The tech may have been referring to the older USB1.1 ports which had a much lower power capacity. While USB1.1 and USB2 are both speced for 500ma, the USB1.1 ports on my computers will NOT power an external 2.5" hard drive, whereas the USB2 ports will. On the computers with USB1.1, I have to use a USB2 PC Card with an external power supply, so that the drive has enough power/current to run.

[Johan]

Just stumbled across the following related, updated study: Blackblaze Q1/2016 Hard Drive Review: Testing 61,590 Hard Drives which someone might find interesting.

And, yes, I know that this thread was initially focused on 2.5 " drives and that Blackblaze focus on 3.5" drives, but nonetheless I'm certain that a lot of forum-members here (like e.g. myself!) are using the cheaper, higher-capacity 3.5" drives for backup-purposes.

Johan