External Hard Drive Durability

[t0n1zz]

So, i'm looking for external hard drive, but most of the time i see my friend's external hard drive starting to fail, not because the hard drive inside it that is broken but because the cable connector is broken, sometimes need to tilt up the connector head so it will recognized by computer and it really anoying! and changing the cable is no use since the broken one is the connector in external hard drive...

so is there anyway or maybe anything to prevent that to happen since i will taking the external hard drive anywhere my laptop goes...

 

[Mamborambo]

The best solution would be to buy an harddrive with extra durabilty. Lots of them out there. And maybe a detachable cable so you can tuck it away after use?

There are harddrives that use mini usb, so you can change cables. Worst case scenario, you can always remove the cover and use it as an internal harddrive, like I recently had to

 

[Sam-R2D2]

Here is my suggestion.
1. Buy a 2.5" HDD of your choice, high performance or high capacity. Example, WD Scorpio Black(7200 rpm) will give you high performance with less storage capacity, will hog more power too while WD Scorpio Blue(5400 rpm) will give you normal performance with much more storage capacity and low power requirements. There are better drives in the market than those I mentioned.
2. Buy a USB 3.0 enclosure to use with your 2.5" HDD. This way if your connector gets damaged, you can simply replace the enclosure. Exapmle, Transcend StoreJet 25S3 (USB 3.0 Enclosure) gives pretty good performance with WD Scorpio Blue HDD, although build quality could be better, costs around $20. Has a one touch backup button too which works with some software from manufacturer's site. Again, you can find a better one in the market.

I think this combination may suit you, or not.

 

[giantbucket]

+1 to the above.

i use an Orico 2.5" USB3 enclosure and simply plug in whichever 2.5" HDD i want. for a while it was a spare SSD, now it's a 500G WD Black. the benefit is that you can always (1) swap drives, (2) plug the drive directly inside your PC if the enclosure fails, and (3) there's no encryption happening at all unlike for some portable drives.