HDD, what and when to buy?

[snail112]

I am in the prosess, almost a month now, to get my SSD up and running for OS because I am running out of free HDD space very fast.

I want to get another USB 3 external enclosure and a HDD.

1. Seagate or WD? Iant to spend my money on the better one.
2. What size is the best, 1TB or 2TB?
3. When is the best time to buy? I heard HDD prices are dropping in October.

P.S. What is a safe amount of free space on a drive? An IT guy told me to keep 10% to 15% free space open on a drive to ensure a healthy drive.

 

[Yuu]

1. This is subjective, what has worked well for you over the years may not have had the same effect on another user. Purely your choice here but if i had to choose, Seagate if its in line with pricing.
2. At this point pricing will play a role here, 1TB is also slowly being phased for 2TB and soon 3TB to replace the common sizes. In either case , how much are you willing to risk should oneday your data get corrupted O_O, unless you can copy from a friend then it doesn't matter .
3. Actually before October, infact you can get a HP USB 3.0/USB2.0 External HDD (with a WD 2TB green inside) for R999.00 from Game (phone to check) as this was a special that was run last week and reports are that it is still running even to this week. But pricing should adjust towards June / July time.

As far as keeping free space open, if its for storage, it shouldn't place too much of a factor as i generally have anywhere from 1MB free space to GB available but never noticed impact on playing files. If its an OS drive, perhaps keeping to those percentages will help.