1TB external hard disks - reliable or not? [closed]

"Relying on a single hard disk to keep your data safe is UNWISE. Either backup regularly so a failure is little more than an annoyance, or use RAID.

All drives WILL fail. If not kept cool, all drives will fail sooner than later.

Drives should not fail too soon if you keep them cool (35-45 degrees C). But the could. I've had new drives that were DOA. There's no reason you can't too. Just buy a drive with AT LEAST a 3 year warranty. (I just bought a 1TB drive for my own backups and I've got two 1.5 TB drives for my media archive). My only requirement in buy a drive is a 3 year+ warranty. I don't care who made it. Think about it - they'll have to replace the drive if it fails before then, so producing bad drives does nothing more than cost a company more money (especially when they have a three year warranty). And keep in mind something else - EVERYONE will make bad drives from time to time. EVERYONE. EVERYONE will have bad batches and botched firmware. That's why you use RAID and have backups. That's why you DO NOT trust the drive - EVER - to be the sole thing to keep your data safe."

"Nope, they are no more reliable or unreliable as any other hard drive.... only difference is if they go bad, you will lose a lot more!

Just remember, Raid is good for countering degradation / one hard drive going faulty and there is no excuse for a proper backup plan.

What you may have heard is Seagate recently had a whole generation of hard drives that had faulty firmware and decreased warranty from five years to three (on standard drives)."

"I have a Western Digital wd10, 1tb, less than 100hr.
The ""overheating"" part is the motor driver chip labled smooth. It's not overheated... it's burnt out."