External HDD Recommendations

Looking for a new external hdd, my wd passport just stopped working. I thought wd was reliable but after looking into it it looks like there external drives aren't rated too good.

This drive will be mainly used for moving files from old system to new system and backing up photos, videos and music.

What would you guys recommend?

What I do is find old sata laptop hard drives and just buy the case ebay for like $10 buck or maybe even cheaper and now you have an external hard drive..

All mechanical devices can fail without notice, no manufacturer is exempt. External drives can be susceptible to be more prone to this as they tend to be moved more than drives in desktop machines. I prefer to use 2.5" SATA drives as many have been designed to park the head quickly when movement is detected, and they don't need a bulky power cable.

I think I will try the sata laptop drive, thanks.

As said any mechanical drive can have issues, all the moreso when they are portable and prone to a lot more movement than mounted drives.

That being said I tend to stay with the big names even thou you are going to end up with some big name drive inside whatever name encloseure you get anyway. On the premise that with their name on the outside too I hope that they give me the best of their runs.

I personally also like and have had good luck with the USB only powered drives. They are not that huge but not having to worry about lugging around a power source with the drive itself is so nice.

I originally had a usb powered drive but it died on me a couple of weeks ago. It was great for portability but I guess they are not very reliable.