Comments by "John h Palmer" (@johnhpalmer6098) on "Can You Recommend a Good External Hard Drive?" video.

Not a bad idea, though I'd get (and have) a dock for the drives. They are hot swappable as it's likely you are using SATA drives. IDE drives were not, but SATA is. That way, you can put a drive in the caddy, do your image backup, pull it out and store it. Mine is a 2 drive caddy that also has the ability to clone one drive to another internally. They are designed to only accept SATA drives, both 2.5 or 3.5" drives, mechanical or SSD. Works a treat, and makes it easier to pull files from drives and consolidate them onto one, larger drive. Currently, I have a 2TB HDD and I'm slowly pulling files to it so data is not scatted over several drives. Exceptions are SD cards and thumb drives as I often will pull the images onto the drives for storage/project use, then when full, I wipe (format) the cards and reuse them again as needed. This way, I don't have to buy new all the time.
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At present, I have 3 externals. One is a Simpletech 3.5" I bought in 2008 that is still going strong. Thought it used a WD drive, but it appears it actually has a Hitachi drive in it. I don't access it much as it's all storage, divided into video, photos and music (or audio) partitions. It's full for the most part, though photos and video partitions are not. Then I have 2 WD passports (2.5") mechanical external drives, one 500GB that WAS to be for backups, but the software from WD, I could not figure out if it actually saved, or backed up anything, or not, so abandoned things all together, however, did a clone of my HD using the then free Macrium Reflect and it did great in 2019, until I tried to restore my boot drive a couple of years later after a cleaning, not realizing initially I may have swapped SATA cables and the image got horked. That went that. Now, I have 2, 3.5" mechanical drives at 500GB each, both used, and from 2013/14, but to start off, it'll do. I will get cases for them eventually, but have an adapter that has a power supply, good for IDE/SATA drives for now, and I have a dock that can accept 2 drives that is connected to the desktop, and can do an internal clone of one to the other. I also have two Dell computers, one a laptop, the other a desktop (both business workstations, bought used. So one drive for each. Software will be EaseUS for backups and cloning. in 2008, I did tons of research on my first external, looking for defects, poor design etc, and one, a Hitachi had major issues on the 1TB and higher capacity due to poor ventilation cooling so the drives overheated, some had defective controllers, others bad USB cables (a bad batch at that time), and how frequently they were found defective, and if they had the capacity I was looking for (500GB), LaCie didn't go beyond 350GB being one example. In the end, the Simpletech (now owned by Hitachi) won out as it while not perfect, had the fewest issues overall than just about everyone else, and came in a 500GB capacity. As I said, it's been holding up, though in recent years, it stays powered up and connected, but I rarely access it unless I'm looking for something in particular going back several years that is on it.
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@Reziac Yes, I buy WD hard drives typically, in fact got a 4TB mechanical as a video archive drive in a new build I put together back in January. Technically, WD bought HGST, a subsidiary of Hitachi to make their hard drives (mechanical). That occured in 2012, and Hitachi bought out IBM's Hard drive business in 2003. If not mistaken, I had an IBM Deskstar that supposedly had ceramic platters, which were problematic and mine died due to stickshon (sp?) where the head would create ceramic dust and cause the platters to stick to the head. The purchase ONLY affected the mechanical drive market between the two. HGST= Hitachi global storage technologies. I thought I saw mention that SimpleTech used WD drives, but CrystalDiskinfo says it's a Hitachi drive (HDP model #) at 500GB. When I bought my Simple Drive in 2009, the Pinafarrina style case, that was what I thought was inside, a WD drive. Anyway, it's been a solid drive all this time.
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@Reziac The article I read about the WD HGST never mentioned anything of that sort, but did say WD was looking to expand and got HGST, or words to that affect. Either way, I have Hitachi in that SimpleTech drive. Don't think I ever had connor, but did have a Quantum Bigfoot, the 5.25" 1, or 2GB drive in the mid to late 90's and stuffed that into an old AST pancake desktop, a 486DX33 based box, back when you had to much more than merely insert, plug in and format like you do now at a time when I knew just enough to be dangerous. LOL.
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