Most of the other brands I've either had not so good experiences with or have heard bad things about. I happened to see some 2TB USB 3.0 "ultra fast" Buffalo drives at J&R just now and wondered if anyone had any opinion on them. They seem to get good reviews. I'm in the market for a new external for backups.

I have a Buffalo NAS. 4tb (2 x 2tb mirrored). The only problem I had was after 18 months one of the drives failed. Replacement was a breeze.

Hmm I guess that's the same kind of report I get about every other drive though - "it's great but it did fail on me." I've had Seagate and WD drives that have both failed on me after a couple of years. I know all drives fail eventually, but I'm hoping to get a good 3 or 4 years at least. The plus side is that I will only be using for backups, which must extend the lifespan over a drive that's used as a workhorse, but then again I only used my Seagate and WD drives for backups as well.

Well, I've read that drives that are not used for extended time (whatever that means) will loose the lubrication that helps spin. When that lubricant dries up drives fail.
 
I've always worked on the assumption that a drive's life span is 2 years when running 24/7. My DAW and laptop essentially run 24/7. Yes, sometimes I get 3 and maybe 4 years out of drive, but I assume 2 years and that's when I start pricing replacements.

There are very few HDD manufacturers in the world. Of all the brand names, most of them come out of the same 3 or 4 factories. This caused a problem a few years ago when one of the factories was flooded.

It's important to remember that Buffalo don't make hard drives. They make the boxes and interfaces. The point of having raid in a backup device is specifically to cover for HDD failure.

The Buffalo NAS boxes are easy to use. Go for it.

Anyone have any experience of Buffalo external drives?

 
No.  Neither "of" nor "with." 
 
(But I have several others if that counts!  )

bapu
Well, I've read that drives that are not used for extended time (whatever that means) will loose the lubrication that helps spin. When that lubricant dries up drives fail.
 
I've always worked on the assumption that a drive's life span is 2 years when running 24/7. My DAW and laptop essentially run 24/7. Yes, sometimes I get 3 and maybe 4 years out of drive, but I assume 2 years and that's when I start pricing replacements.

I think I should be alright because I backup an image of my system and data disks every night with Acronis. That should get some nice healthy spinnin' going. 

I saw this thread and tried searching for who makes the parts for these drives (I have never heard of Buffalo before). There are really only 3 brands remaining, and Karyn's point is accurate about the factories. I can't find who actually makes the head gimbal assemblies for the Buffalo drives, but an upstart company wouldn't have the capital to create the factory required at cost (they are built in clean rooms with very strict ESD (electrostatic discharge) requirements), so the heads in them are from one of the three (Seagate, WD, Toshiba). There is a lot of very expensive equipment used in HDD manufacture up to the head stack assembly; the final drive assembly only requires a clean room with nominal ESD precautions.