Windows 10: portable hard drive, seagate or western digit of better quality build?

Old question looks like never have an answer. Portable hard drive, Seagate or Western digit, 2.5 , of better quality build? lasting longer, more durable? or clinically a matter of luck only?

:)

 

Windows Defender - tasks fried my Hard Disk!

take the hard drive out and put it in another computer. Use Seagate SeaTools to repair the drive if it is a Seagate, if Western Digital, use Western Digital DataLife Guard to repair the hard drive.

 

2 HDD, 2 OS, current installation pattern not optimal, preliminary actions unsuccessful, proposed action, opinions sought, any better approach?

CONFIGURATION

On my PC, I have two hard drives: Western Digital SATA 1 TB, and Seagate SATA 160 GB. Western Digital was installed in Sep 2013 when this PC was built, and we have yet to see how long it lasts. Seagate is much older, probably Dec 2007 when the earlier PC was
built and it has served well for 8 years now. However, the limitation is its small storage capacity.

Western Digital has 32-bit OS, x64-based processor but its effectiveness is limited by low utilization of memory, 3.4 GB of 8 GB installed.

Seagate has 64-bit OS, x64-based architecture but its effectiveness is limited by low free space availability, 11 GB as of now, which can get occupied very soon. Hence, there could be a need to install 64-bit OS on 1 TB HDD and 32-bit OS on 160 GB HDD.

ACTION TAKEN

Using Macrium Reflect (free edition), and Seagate Backup +BL 500 GB Portable hard disk--

(1) (a) created a clone of Seagate 64-bit system on Seagate Portable by overwriting it; (b) restarted the computer, and (c) attempted to boot from the cloned 64-bit system on Seagate Portable, but Windows reported an error "inaccessible boot drive"

(2) (a) created a clone of Seagate 32-bit system on Seagate Portable by overwriting it; (b) restarted the computer, and (c) attempted to boot from the cloned 32-bit system on Seagate Portable, but Windows reported an error "inaccessible boot drive"

PROPOSED ACTION

(1) clean install 8.1 x64 on larger drive Western Digital, activate it, and upgrade it to Windows 10; resulting in 64-bit Win 10 installation with full utilization of 8 GB RAM and 800 GB free space

(2) clean install 7 x86 on smaller drive Seagate, activate it, and upgrade it to Windows 10; resulting in 32-bit Win 10 installation with part utilization of 3.4 GB RAM and 11 GB free space

FURTHER

Use 1 TB Western Digital with 64-bit installation and full utilization of installed RAM for day-to-day operations

Keep 160 GB Seagate with 32-bit installation and part utilization of installed RAM on standby, in case something goes wrong with Western Digital drive

OPINIONS SOUGHT / QUESTION

Whether I should only change Western Digital current 32-bit installation to 64-bit new installation, and leave Seagate 32-bit installation as it is? Or, change OS on both drives as enumerated above? Or, a third option that you may want to suggest?

PS——————————————

The following information is being provided as additional clarification to what has already been stated above.

At present, when I boot my computer I get three/four options:

(a) Boot from Windows 10 (volume 5) [note: Vol 5 ≡ 32 bit, Western Digital 1TB]


(b) Boot from Windows 10 (volume 2) [note: Vol 2 ≡ 64 bit, Seagate 1TB]


(c) Boot from Windows 7 (recovered)

(d) Select the default from above three

 

i have a 2tb seagate udb 3.0 and my roommate has a 1tb western digital and side by side i see no performance difference.

 

Pretty much the same. Both are reliable, both have had troublesome drives in the past. I've used both brands for external hard drives and haven't had any fail on me.

 

Only thing I've heard from other members here is that WD uses soldered connections on the controller, which sometimes cause problems. Personally, I prefer Seagate....just old habit.

 

The soldering in WD external drives prevents you from cracking open the case and pulling out your drive to get the data off it, when the case's PCB dies (that's usually what fails first). Otherwise, six to one , half a dozen to the other.

WD





Everyone else

 

The "other member" I was thinking of has spoken! *Smile Tks, simrick.......

 

*Thumbs

 

An external drive is just a conventional drive in a box with a USB interface. With that in mind, the drive reliability reports from Backblaze may be useful...

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/

Personally I tend to buy Toshiba, based on the two years of running time my Toshiba laptop's drive has clocked up so far...

 

I used to tend towards Toshiba as well, until I bought 2x1TB ext HDDs 2 years ago; one failed at 13 months, the other at 18 months - both failures started with the the case PCB, so I put them in new cases, and within a few months, the drives themselves failed and had to be replaced. *Sad

 

The only reason I would stay away from WD is that soldered board. I have one, and I wanted to transfer a large amount of data to it so I cracked open the case thinking I could move the drive inside to a SATA port. Nope.

 

In 2007 I bought a Dell 1720 Inspiron and installed two WD Scorpio Black drives in it. After 10+ years of 12-15 hrs a day 7 days a week use I just replaced them. Not because they failed but just slowly upgrading the Inspiron to keep using it as an extra lappy. So from my use I would say WD drives, but I would consider the other replies since perhaps they have lowered their manufacturing standards with the soldered components.

 

It's funny, i noted earlier how I had never had either a Seagate or a Western Digital fail, well when I got home today my son told me the external hard drive on the Xbox One died. Sure enough, Seagate 2TB drive was dead. It was only about 6 weeks old, Seagate is replacing it.

 

Seagate does not have a perfect reputation:
Seagate slapped with a class action lawsuit over hard drive failure rates | PCWorld