Seagate 5TB portable hard drives - need opinion on these 2

FYI these are all SMR drives, which means they lose half their performance if you ever fill them to more than 10% of their advertised capacity, and will lose 99% of their performance if you use them for workloads (such as forever-forward incremental backups) that are random-write heavy.

If you need an external drive that you can fill to more than 10% of its advertised capacity, you need to buy a CMR internal drive (such as a WD Red Plus, WD Black, or WD Exos) and an enclosure.

A bit of a tip, should you want to use 'CP' to mail a drive, ensure the enclosure fits in the slot template that CP uses for package dimensions, the cost is $3.45 vs, $15+tax for larger. I've shipped WD passport double bubbled 20x no issues.

looks like the amazon is the better choice comes with the better enclosure vs the expansion which is all plastic.

lead wrote: ↑ looks like the amazon is the better choice comes with the better enclosure vs the expansion which is all plastic.

but some of the reviews doesn't seem too positive

MechanicalMan64 wrote: ↑ but some of the reviews doesn't seem too positive

first filter thru the reviews to only be applicable to this drive the reviews span all the potential drives so its hard to distinguish.

the 5tb expansion or portable plus by seagate both have the same drive inside and are distinguished by the type of enclosure. Plastic vs aluminum/plastic. All 2.5 large drives are smr and will perform around the same. Seagate are mostly the only guys left not making frankenstien drives so worst case scenario the drive can be pulled if the usb connector fails.

The trick is 2.5inch mechanical are not durable so don't move it while its spinning powered on. Do that and you'll be fine, don't do that and you risk damaging it. Thats the same for all mechanical drives but portable are lighter and can easily be damaged by bumping and dropping so stick with being extra careful..

lead wrote: ↑looks like the amazon is the better choice comes with the better enclosure vs the expansion which is all plastic.

What he said.

Don't know what the Dell is because the RFD referral links for Dell are always FUBARed.

I would go for the BestBuy one, just for the fact that I can avoid it being shipped. For shipping, I would suggest Staples. The courier personally handed me the HDD, when I had ordered one last year. Otherwise I am afraid the shocks it will face in normal shipping will be far too high for the disk.

rabbit wrote: ↑ What he said.

Don't know what the Dell is because the RFD referral links for Dell are always FUBARed.

4tb expansion @ $109 but was soldout anyway.

kramer1 wrote: ↑ I would go for the BestBuy one, just for the fact that I can avoid it being shipped. For shipping, I would suggest Staples. The courier personally handed me the HDD, when I had ordered one last year. Otherwise I am afraid the shocks it will face in normal shipping will be far too high for the disk.

Can also do a ship-to-store for Staples and pick it up at the store.

lead wrote: ↑4tb expansion @ $109 but was soldout anyway.

Better to pay a tenner for the extra 1TB .

Here's a video of an unboxing. I'll let you decide whether or not to fret over shipping.