I've been going back forth over the last couple of years about getting an external hard drive. With GOG now, the shrinking space available to keep games I've downloaded isn't getting any larger.

But any site I go to, there are so many mixed reviews that I'm having a really hard time choosing one. "Oh, it's great, bought it, works perfect." "Had it six months, it broke." Reviews like that.

I thought it'd be worthwhile to ask for opinions here, especially considering that longevity of an external hard drive would be a very desirable thing when it's used for backing up GOG games.

My terabyte Western Digital is still going, even if it got covered in dust, sat on my floor, and barely did anything for months at a time. No complaints here!

edit: I've had it for at least a year.

The enclosure really doesn't matter, its the drive inside the enclosure that matters. Read reviews of actual hard drives, not just external drives; find one that is reliable and the right size, then buy it and an empty enclosure to put it in. That's what I did for mine; a cheap no-name enclosure with a decent Western Digital drive in it.

You want a RAID-1 (mirrored) setup, not a single disk, so you can switch out one of the discs quickly if it dies and keep your data safe. Sure, you can get some stats about how quickly various drives die, but you can never know how long _your_ drive will keep going, might follow the statistics pretty well, or it might be at either end of the bell curve (much longer or shorter than anticipated).

Personally, I'm going for Drobo as soon as I can afford it.

I had a WD (one of the two best HD manufacturers) external. It broke in no time. Well under warranty at least. But having no presence in the UK whatsoever, I had to send the drive abroad (still don't know where as I just sent it to the airport) and waited a fucking month for the replacement to turn up.

My advice would be to either pluck up the courage to open the case and install an internal. Or if that's not an option (for courage or technical reasons) then buy an internal drive anyway and while you're at it get an enclosure for it too.

Why? Because from what I've heard a lot of external drives are refurbished models and they think that slapping an enclosure on it masks the fact nicely. So I'd advise you put a new drive in an enclosure yourself (preferably from Seagate).

I've been using external HD's for backups since 2002. Extremly reliable and easier to work with than any other backup solution assuming you have a ton of data. (If you have a small amount of data then look into USB keys as well)

BUT never have just 1 drive. You should always keep in mind that for every external HD you buy you should buy at LEAST one other external HD as a backup of that one.

Also if you are really paranoid you should look into using PAR or using a checksum utility to verify integrity of your files but that's not really necessary.

Also the enclosure does matter. Plastic vs metal. Fan vs no Fan. Power switch vs no power switch. Standard computer power cable vs proprietary, USB vs Firewire vs SATA vs NIC, reliability os said connections. Durability of case...etc...etc..etc. The enclosure is just as important if not more important than the HD itself (if you buy a good case the case will last alot longer than the HD since you'll likely upgrade the HD often)

Since 2002 I must have had about 20 external HD's and in the past 8 years I've had mabye 3-4 HD's go bad. (These are heavily used drives and carried around constantly tho)

Do what I did.

1. Buy an internal HDD
2. Get a USB to SATA adaptor
3. Get a cheapo enclosure.
4. Profit.

Odds are it'll be more reliable than an external for about the same price.

I would get a RAID as well if you're willing to spend a little more money. The redundancy pretty much guarantees that you won't lose your data with reasonable use.

So...

RAID internal hard drive

USB to SATA thingy

enclosure (with a fan?)

I formatted my external with XFS just so Windows couldn't screw up my drive.
Been working great so far.

With a fan would be best, yes.

I recently had this issue. One thing you can do: pay for the enterprise class (WD, Hitachi, and Seatgate all have them) and you will have a very stable drive.

WD disables TLER in their newer drives (even the Caviar Blacks) so don't get that if you ever want to run it in a raid of some kind. Also their Green drives with the bigger blocks will cause you some issues in older machines (like Win XP). They pay shipping both ways for RMAs though while Seagate will not.

For external storage I actually recommend investing in a NAS and running either mirrored or RAID 5. Synology NAS is hard to beat, remember you still have to buy drives once you buy the NAS (some deals will include some 1TB drives thrown in). If you invest in a decent Synology (I recommend 500 bucks if you can swing it, otherwise do the 200 dollar one) you are decently safe and get a ton of good functionality for your entire home; even some great stuff while you are away from home (like streaming your home music to you on the road or at work).

The ReadyNAS NVX+ is also a contender. I know the Apple fanatics like those ones made by Hitachi, but I think they are overpriced and underperforming.

I have several WD external drives that have worked perfectly for years. Among other things, every one of them has a full archive of my GOG installers :-)

I've never had an external drive fail, come to think of it.

I have a Thermaltake eSATA enclosure with active cooling running a WD 1TB drive. No problems after two years, cool to the touch and I haven't noticed it to have slower response time, just works.

Edit: Well, they are discontinued now so . . . =)

wanna backup system

Get bluray for a hundred bucks and just ol' school burn your data on them.