External Drives with good customer support?

Kev M

Kev M

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Can anyone recommend someone other than Western Digital for external hardrives. I have a small device for work which has failed and WD's customer support is absolutely rubbish. Has anyone used a hard drive manufacturer with decent after sales service when there's been a fault?

Kev
 
Freecom. UK based customer support and an actual telephone number! No need for me to phone them yet, as mine is working fine. Best Buy in some computer mags.
 
had a maxtor drive fail inside a tower unit a few years ago

Great customer care, apart from the one buried inside my lappy, all my drives including an external are maxtors.
 
Suggest you look at Maxtor or LaCie
 
It doesn't matter if you buy an external HDD from one of the companies that don't make HDD's, they will be using a HDD made by either WD, Seagate / Maxtor (Seagate now own Maxtor, Samsung or Hitachi.

Here is my experience of these HDD manufacturers over the last 15 - 20 years or so.
I also work for a small IT company and we sell bucket loads of HDD's and also use them in our bespoke PC's.

Maxtor - years back they had a major problem with bad sectors with their HDD's and within the IT industry, they were heavily scorned.
We used them at work in the Majority of our PC's for about 4 years and they were very reliable.
About 18 months ago we stopped using them because we notice reliability issues and switched to Seagate.

Seagate - while they tend to be noisy I quite like them and reliabilty has been good for us at work.

Western Digital - Their QA can be a bit hit and miss. We tried using them at work but got fed up with constant new stock being fautly.

Hitachi - They took over IMB's HDD division when IBM pulled out of the market.
IBM Deskstar HDD's earned the nicknamed 'deathstar' because of major issues with their drives.
Hitachi still call them Deskstar and although they are far better than when under the reins of IBM, their QA can also be a bit hit and miss.

Samsung, for years we've used their optical drives and work and they've been extremely reliable.
A few years ago we tried their HDD's but had too many reliability issues.
About 18 months ago, I started putting together PC specifications for computer magazine reviews and we continue to do well with 'best buy' awards.
My boss wanted to keep the costs down in some areas so we could improve in other (graphics card for example).
He insisted we used Samsung HDD's because of the price and they were getting very good reviews.
Thankfully they've been very reliable for us and I also use a pair in my main PC.

Obviously this is just me and my colleagues experience and plenty of others may disagree.
Personally, if I was in the market for an external HDD, I would opt for one that uses either a Seagate or Samsung HDD.
 
Thanks very much for the advice everyone. I've got a seagate at home already and so far it's been fine. Certainly plenty to look at now other than WD. Cheers for the tips.

Kev
 
Seagate have always been good for me

Friend has just got the 1tb Freecom NAS Drive £130ish and that seems good with UK support
 
I have an Iomega and so far this has been relaible but looking for another to be very safe...know little about Freecom but thinking of these - preferablet a portable one.

What about just a USB connection rather than a external power source - any impact?:thumbs:
 
All my drives are Western Digital. Very good drives, never had a faulty one. Highly recomended.
 
I had a Maxtor drive fail after about 6 weeks, I contacted them for details on returning it, sent it off and they replaced it with a unit twice the capacity.
So a big reccomendation for Maxtor from me.
 
Over the years, I've learned one thing about hard drives - They can fail at any time, regardless of make, model or age!

All the major manufacturers handle their RMAs online now, you can check how long the drive is in warranty for by simply entering the serial number...
 
I'm not so bothered about the fact that the drive broke down, stuff happens. It's the ballache of dealing with them afterwards that is making me look elsewhere.
 
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