My external HD is growling at me, so I know I need a replacement. I have an iMac 2020, 27".
Any hard drives you love? Or any to stay away from?
Thanks
Maripat
Depending on the use case, there are many options that would affect storage size, speed and price.
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My Samsung T7 has fewer issues than most other drives I’ve used in the past.
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+1 on the Samsung T5 and T7, but it very much depends on the capacity you need.
Same as @geoffaire suggested!
+1 on the Samsung T7. Take a look at Amazon, they have been on sale frequently this month.
They tend to be good value on Black Friday deals. Again, depends on the capacity you need.
I’ve only ever bought what is on sale, and name brand. I hope I’m not jinxing myself here, but I’ve never had a HDD (or SSD) go bad - at least since the 90s. And being a proper e-hoarder, I have most every external drive I’ve ever owned and a few of the internals still. The stock HDD in my 2011 iMac is still used daily, although only as a data drive now as it’s got an external SSD boot drive via Thunderbolt 1. I use WD Blues in 1-4TB size for various backups in my hard drive “toaster” dock.
I went through my M4 Mini setup here — and I went for a Satechi Enclosure + separate SSD.
Much less compact, but more flexible. And you can choose if you want to pay for Thunderbolt speeds or not.
I’ve had a Samsung T7 for a while - however, has anyone else had experience with it being hot?
I’m waiting for the Black Friday sales to start on Amazon and looking at upgrading to 2TB. However, I’m thinking I might go for something like this DAS unit, as I have some 2.5” SSD’s I could fit, as well as an NVME drive from an old laptop lying around. Bonus would be it’s kept cool with a fan.
However, it would likely be cheaper and easier to just buy a new 2TB T7 (or the Crucial ones are currently cheaper).
Mine gets hot. I figure so long as it doesn’t disconnect (and it basically never does) the heat isn’t an issue. I’d find a fan far more problematic (constant humming).
My T7 gets warm too. I just assume it will start throttle if it ever gets too warm.
In fairness, I’ve had it connected for 2-3 years, I guess if it was an issue, it would have failed by now! I’ve moved it to my gaming PC to store some games now, so if it fails now, I’m not that bothered as I’ll just redownload from Steam.
Thank you for your thoughts. I’m not well versed in this area and you all are kind to share your knowledge.
My storage is a lot of photos and videos, both personal and from my sewing profession (now retired). Also my dying hard drive is partitioned to store my Time Machine.
I do have a second SSD and use Backblaze.
Is there a way to determine how much room Time Machine will use, so I know what size I need to purchase?
Those are great, I have one, but also very expensive. If I was going to buy an SSD to use as as active storage (not just for backups), this is what I would use. Still, a T7 is pretty dang quick already.
That’s normal, I understand it has something to do with electrical resistance. Funny thing about SSDs, they make a sound when you are writing to them. I first noticed when I was transferring more than a terabyte of files to one.
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I don’t ever want to notice that or it will drive me insane every time one is writing.
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Annoyingly, the 2TB Samsung T7 hasn’t gone on sale in the UK on Amazon - only the 1TB and 4TB versions.
Has anyone run the Crucial X9 or X9 Pro? These have dropped in price but online reviews seem to put them in the same speed and reliability as the T7’s.
I’m not sure I can justify a 2TB NVME and Thunderbolt enclosure, which looks like it would give me the fastest speeds, but equally, I did notice a speed difference between the Satechi Mac Mini dock with 2.5" SATA SSD compared to the T7 in day to day use.
They do go on sale all the time on US Amazon. Does Camelcamelcamel support UK Amazon? You might try that. I bet they go on sale on Cyber Monday.
Yes, there’s a version of camelcamelcamel for Amazon UK, but I don’t think there will be any difference, as the Black Friday sale on Amazon UK has started now and ends on the 2 December, which I understand is Cyber Monday - therefore, I’d imagine that the sales that are currently posted are the sales. They certainly don’t seem to have the Lightning deals that they’ve had in the past, but that could be coming.