Hi, was wondering if anyone could help me figure out what external hard drive to buy for what reasons. Does it even make any difference or do you just go for the cheapest offer?

I'm looking for reliability, speed, and low noise level.

I read that the Canvio is quieter and has a better padding; speed and connections seem to be the same. Seagate as a brand seems to be more recognized.

Any thoughts welcome.

I think most DR people would tell you that Toshiba is their preferred brand in portables.

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Toshiba all the way to save your data.

Seagate if you want work for data recovery!!

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I've read somewhere that all drives by all three major manufacturers are pretty much the same these days when it comes to reliability.

Could it be that you end up handling more Seagate drives since more business users use them and/or they simply sell more drives than Toshiba? In other words, they may have the same failure rate but as more of them are sold to people who care about lost data, you end up seeing more of them in data recovery?

I've read somewhere that all drives by all three major manufacturers are not equal these days when it comes to reliability.

One company trying to make drives cheaper replaced the use of screws by sticking the drive cover on the cover.
Naturally one day their glue manufacturer changed the recipe and gas produced by the glue made the drive fail.
This was maybe 20 years ago.

Ever since I do not buy drives from them. On the other hand they beat the competition in price.

Beware
Drives manufactured on SMR technology are substantially inferior , and many law suited are filed all over for poor performance.
In Toshiba Few Models are based om SMR while in same size others use normal recording.
I suggest not to go for canvio as it is embedded type. Instead buy a non SMR toshiba internal disk ( Toshiba has specified which models are SMR on there website)
Go for tough , reliable USB 3.XX casing. This way you will get SATA hard disk which you can pull and connect to desktop PC if needed,
This is the best way to get reliability,
If budget permits go for SSD instead. Samsung Evo plus is industry standards but you can go for equally competent crucial MX500 series..
SSD's are having hugh workload limits and there is no risk of mechanical failure.(There are some issues with SSD's as well like "Trim" command set which restricts deleted recovery etc.