Portable and External USB Hard Drives
Western Digital
Strong contender for hard drive of the year, i'm kidding but they are the best of a bad bunch. These are easily the most common drives on the market along with seagate. They have certain quirks that cause recovery problems like encryption and unique rom chips. I like getting these ones in for recovery.
A start to finish on a WD My Passport recovery here
Samsung
Samsung external USB3 drives are just as popular as the WD variants at the moment (2016). They suffer from "Buzzing". Recovery of these is normally very successful.
Example of a typical recovery on this drive here
SEAGATE
Seagate cant do anything right these days. These ones are not too bad, they fail like any other drive but are not prone to any specific faults.
Hitachi
LACIE
These things are hilarious, bit of orange rubber round the outside and people thing they are invincible. They actually get more abuse because of this.
Seagate Network Disk
If I was going to design an external hard drive this would be it. Rubber feet, ventilation and horizontal. Will rant about this in Latest recovery Jobs at some point
Latest Data Recovery Jobs
Western Digital My Passport Data Recovery - start to finish (with pictures)