Best external USB 3.0 3.5" HDD?

[riahc3]

Hello

We need a USB 3.0 3.5" HDD to make off-site backups.

Im going with WD as Ive had bad experiences with Seagate.

I guess I would be looking at WDBFJK0040HBK or the My Book at 4TB at €156.00

Any other recommendations?

 

[JPNpower]

Hard Drive reliability has been hit or miss and is hard to make a hard assertion. However, if you follow the next few rules, you will always be fine:

1. Pick the lowest price from any trusted vendor/trusted brand.
2. Trust only HGST, Hitachi, Toshiba, Seagate, or Western Digital.
3. Realize that Hard Drives that fail tend to fail within the first few months. Watch out for that before blindly trusting it.
4. Always keep at least 2 backups. (active data + backup + another backup)
5. Avoid 3TB hard drives. (in general)
6. Regularly check off-site backups.

The website at the bottom runs thousands of hard drives to get an idea of reliable/unreliable brands, and that "guessing" is as far as it gets. You can't make any conclusions besides "HGST is best". However, HGST is expensive. So buy whatever is the cheapest, but always follow the 6 rules.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

 

[riahc3]

The website at the bottom runs thousands of hard drives to get an idea of reliable/unreliable brands, and that "guessing" is as far as it gets. You can't make any conclusions besides "HGST is best". However, HGST is expensive. So buy whatever is the cheapest, but always follow the 6 rules.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

That study is completely flawed.

 

[JPNpower]

Of course it is flawed! In fact, it is less of a study as it is empirical data dump. My point was though, that is the closest you are going to get with reliability tests. The big three (and a half) companies of Toshiba, WD, Seagate, (and HGST) all have more or less the same reliability. It's all about price, keeping your proof of purchase, and backups.