[Eagle_Driver]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neuromantic /img/forum/go_quote.gif Although the difference in price between externals and internals ain't what they used to be, I wouldn't personally buy an external. Last I checked most if not all external drives have only 1 year warranties which is another reason not to go that route.

With WD, only their basic "Essentials" line of external hard drives is still warrantied for only 1 year. Most of their other hard drives--internal or external--are warrantied for 3 years.

And 1 year is far from the shortest warranty length that WD has ever offered on any hard drive. A few years ago, some of their low-end internal hard drives were warrantied for only 4 months (120 days) or 6 months (180 days).

And if an external hard drive is used primarily for backup storage purposes, USB 2.0 High-Speed (60 MB/s theoretical maximum; 32 MB/s practical maximum) would suffice. An eSATA interface on an external hard drive is recommended if you're also going to be using that same external hard drive to run programs (especially games) off of, not just data or video storage.

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eagle_Driver /img/forum/go_quote.gif With WD, only their basic "Essentials" line of external hard drives is still warrantied for only 1 year. Most of their other hard drives--internal or external--are warrantied for 3 years. And 1 year is far from the shortest warranty length that WD has ever offered on any hard drive. A few years ago, some of their low-end internal hard drives were warrantied for only 4 months (120 days) or 6 months (180 days).

Much, though not all, of what I said in that post was true. But I would like to make a few corrections:

Among the currently shipping WD external hard drives, only the Elements hard drives (both 2.5" and 3.5") are covered for only 1 year. The WD MyBook and MyPassport Essential external hard drives are warrantied for 2 years in North America.

If you want to build an external hard drive yourself using an internal hard drive and an external enclosure, I would note that Seagate has recently reduced the warranty on its bulk (bare/OEM) consumer-grade hard drives from 5 years to 3 years (but that merely brings the warranty back down to par for the class). Retail-boxed consumer-grade drives continue to be warrantied for 5 years for the time being.