I am in the market for an external hard drive and am considering a 1 TB Western Digital My Book Studio Edition: http://www.wdc.com/en/buy/clearancedrives.asp?DriveID=374 Using a coupon, I get can the drive for $160.00 plus shipping, $80.00 cheaper than the Newegg price. However, the only drawback is that the drive only has a 6-month warranty. My thinking is this isn't a big deal because if a hard drive is going to die, it will more than likely do so right out of the box or a few weeks later. Is this wisdom correct (of course there are exceptions to everything) and do you think an external hard drive with a 6-month warranty is a safe buy?
Depends on how you look at it. You are right in a sense that the drive, if it is going to fail at all, is most likely to do so when really new. But, what happens in the somewhat likely event that this death takes just over 6 months? I would walk right past myself.
You'll also lose your data whether its still in warrantee or not, and I can't see these being exceptionally more unreliable than any other WD drives (desktop class that is), so I figure it's probably okay
Is reliability that much of an issue with WD drives? Would I be better off with another brand like Seagate?
Not in my experience... but all Seagate drives carry a five year warranty as standard of course - if you want the extra security
