My dad is insistent that he needs a drive that is under 3"x5" in the smallest two dimensions so he can put it in a free safety deposit box. We were looking at this list: HP GPUs / Video Graphics Cards - Newegg.com
He wants something 1TB, the mentioned size, name brand, that is almost bulletproof. He’s gotten deep into his digital camera and would be crushed if he lost his pictures.
I’ve never had a HDD go down, so I tend to just buy something, but is there a manufacturer or model that is the Honda of HDDs?
Personally, I have a few WD ones. All under 1tb though - because I like the convience of being able to plug it into the usb drive for power (as opposed to a power chord).
I haven’t had any problems with WD, but I’d still have two, one as the ultimate back up and the other as the one I use regularly.
Those WD Passport drives, powered by USB, are great. No wall plug to worry about, and they use laptop hard drives, which seem to be more hardy than desktop hard drives.
I also like the Western Digital Passport hard drives, because you don’t need an external power adapter (as they run off the USB port) but the largest one now available is 640GB.
To satisfy the size requirement, you will need to get a 2.5" drive. This limits your options (especially for large capacity units), but both the WD Passport and Seagate FreeAgent Go drives are in that category.
Doh! It looks like both the Passport and Go drives are slightly larger than your space requirements. You could go with something like this LaCie 640GB drive which would fit, or just buy the drive and case separately. There are many 2.5" cases that are well within your size constraints. Here is a WD 750GB for $110 and a popular Nippon Labs case for $12.