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As the rupee has fell hard and a Dollar is around Rs.10 more than what it was last year, the HDD prices have gone up a lot.

I remember the 500GB external HDD's which were under 3K are 4K or more now.

if you need to do backup, you can buy at these prices, no price would compensate for data loss, so it depends on what exactly is priority for you.

Dry Ice: I think waiting should save you a thousand or more.
Just found invoice for WD mypassport 500GB external purchased in Aug-2011 and it was Rs.2146 after online discounts from letsbuy.

Ya, 1TB drives seem to be going between 6-7 these days.

For critical data, I am already using an online storage. This would be mainly to backup songs/videos/movies etc. There is no urgency as such, hence am willing to wait.

If you don't mind Can you share about the online storage solution you are using?

Actually the beginning of the rise in HDD prices happened when Thailand was flooded. Companies like Seagate manufacture in Thailand and were unable to manufacture for a long while.

Typically due to shortage, prices went up closer to the printed MRP on the boxes (we all know that the computer market across India sells far lower than the printed MRP)

When Thailand recovered from the flooding, the rupee drowned against the dollar.
Now, hard disks are far more expensive than they used to be. Crying shame.

I use Dropbox, drive and box.net in redundance for all my important documents.

@DryIce, what solution do you use?


Prajwal

I am using https://spideroak.com/ and https://www.dropbox.com/. Usually only backup my documents, so the 2GB free space suffices for me.

I recently bought a WD Passport SE 1TB USB 3.0 for around 6.4K. Needed it for USB 3.0. For the last 1 year or so, all my storage purchases have been WD except for an Intel SSD. I have sworn off Seagate inspite of its better performance in 3 TB drives (recently bought 2 WD 3 TB). I have had bad experience with Seagate RMA. On a 2010 Seagate Freeagent 500GB, the drive went bad after a few months (could not read or format). On RMA, received a repaired one, which does not even transfer at 15MB/s. A USB 2.0 portable normally transfers at double that. Ditto for an internal Seagate 1 TB HDD with the replacement performing at 70% of usual.

By comparison, WD may be slower but in 100% of cases, I have received a new one as replacement.

The above WD comes with a Smartware which is useless compared with more polished backup solutions such as Acronis or Syncback. One can easily delete the entire volume (alongwith the WD Smartware) in windows/DOS, then format, and use it as a normal disk without the smartware.

Please use a utility like truecrypt to encrypt your entire hard drive. If it fails, you will have to send it for repairs and you risk data theft in the process. Specially important beause most of us use external HDD for personal documents backup.

My 2 cents : Never buy a Western Digital EHD..

I had bought a 320GB Hard Disk(HD) about 1.5 years back. One fine day it suddenly stopped working, It was still within the warranty period. So i enquired with the shop owner from where i bought the HD, how to go about the warranty. He told me to go to their website and that everything is neatly explained there. I followed the website's instructions strictly, raised an online warranty claim called RMA, send the HD to Western Digital's Bangalore office, properly and tightly wrapped, as per their instructions. This was on April 16th, 2012..

For 2 weeks there was no contact from their side, no phone calls, no emails..nothing, so i called them at their customer support number and when i told them the RMA no, they said the product has been received there and they are in the process of sending me a new HD.

Its 17th July today, they are still in the process of returning a new HD for me.. Ya, in between i called them around 15 times. Everytime they had the same reply and everytime a separate guy would be answering the call. I asked them to send me a mail confirming when they will be able to send me a new HD. No response to that also. I send a mail to their support centre for which also there was no reply, And i do not have the number of any1 higher up in the organisation. So WD has left me as helpless as anyone can be!

Could be different for external HDD but some clue can be had from my experience of June 2012. On June 27, 2012, I RMA to WD two internal hard disks- 2TB Caviar Black and 2TB Caviar Green. I received a new 2TB Caviar Black as replacement on 30 June 2012. However, there was no response to my mails for 2TB Green. Three mails were sent but no response.

Then on 16 July 2012, I checked the WD RMA page and it noted that they had shipped a WD 3TB Green on 13 Jul 2012. So I received a new 3TB Internal WD Green on 16 Jul 2012 in exchange for an old 2TB Internal Green. It took 3 weeks but I got 1 TB additional for free!!!

I just ordered a WD 1TB passport HDD for Rs. 5,625 on Indiatimes Shopping site. There is a coupon (SHOPCOMP) which can be redeemed to get a 10% discount valid till 21st July. The original cost is Rs.6251.

Have been an ardent WD EHD user for past 4 years. I have a 320GB, 1TB and most recent the 2TB portable HDD from WD. Never have disappointed and all of the three continues to serve me without any issues.

I also have burned my hands with Seagate and i don't think i will be going back to those anytime soon.

Most 1TB Portable HDD are available for < Rs. 5000 or $100 anywhere, wait a little and it can be had for as low as $70 from Seagate, Lacie, Toshiba or Hitachi. While price on WD's EHD doesn't vary this drastic.

Did you guys consider google drive before zeroing in on the above options? Because I am using that now and find it extremely convenient, but not really sure about the drawbacks. I have it installed in all my systems and I can access all the documents irrespective of the system I am using. Also any additional encryption that you use before uploading the documents?

I use Seagate 1TB portable HDD (No power required) for more than an year and I am very happy with it. I will buy a 2TB when seagate launches one.

Its pretty fast, does not heat up that much and detects itself quicky compared to a pen drive.

I have been using a 500 GB Seagate Portable HDD since about last Feb and a 2TB WD My Book Essential since mid October.

Absolutely no problems with them. Both are packed to capacity and running perfectly. I have my WD attached to my tv and it run off mkv movies with no problems. The Seagate is my mobile HDD and travels along with my laptop.

But boy the prices have gone up. I had paid a shade under 5K for my WD in October and now 7.5K. A straight 50% hike! Right now for 5K, i get a 500 GB Portable!!!