Quote Originally Posted by ny biker View Post
there seems to be a sizeable minority of customers whose drive fails within a short period of time.
All external drives fail. It's a matter of when. I too have heard people complain about every brand failing before what they want to consider it's time, and I'm sure a percentage of those were genuinely bad drives, but only a percentage.

Backup drives are about added piece of mind and redundancy. Basically the chances of your backup drive AND your computer failing at the same time are MUCH MUCH slimmer than just your computer failing.

As for drives I have a huge Seagate that plugs into a separate power source which I use to back up the whole computer and also a Western Digital portable drive I use to back up some stuff and carry around as well. The WD is nearing the end of it's life and has been warning me for months now that "it's just a matter of time", but I've had it for 5 years and carted it around too... I've been happy with both.

My advice? Find one from a major brand that's the size you want and ON SALE. Buy it, use it, but know it won't last forever (ie: don't store stuff solely on the drive!)