Looking for a Good External HD

Berton said:

I had a WDC Elements some years ago but found the WDC My Book has served me better, have 2 x 4TB 3.5" drives with their own power connected USB 3 to Win11 Desktop. For portability I use a WDC My Passport 1TB, fits in a pocket, has a 2.5" HDD in it, powered from the USB 3. I also have some cases for the 2.5" drives I've salvaged, most are single-cable USB 3 but have 1 for USB 2 that uses a Y-cable for data and extra power. For access from any computer I can Map a NAS drive on my Router with 2 x 2TB drives set as RAID 1 for 2TB total space.

One caveat I encountered, the 4TB drives packages were marked as for PC and Macintosh, since I no longer have a Mac I wiped them then formatted as NTFS. The only times I had an external drive fail, and an older NAS drive, it was the interface in the case that failed, drives were still good but data lost, couldn't be read. I reformatted in a drive dock and used to store backups.

When checking the Properties of the drives the format will show as what the computer uses, PC/Windows as NTFS, Mac OS X as HPFS and on the older ones connected to Linux as ext4.

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Send me a 4TB. . lmao jk

antspants said:

Let me know how you go with that. I have had no luck doing it with my Asus router. It detects the drive…
I just run Plex from my internal HDD. It just means my PC has to stay on whilst others/devices are connecting, obviously.

Asus Ai-Disk files disappear on refresh

Halo. Thanks again for your patience. I have always failed at anything to do with Networking. I have an Asus DSL-AX82U. I thought I'd give an external drive attached to the router a go because I am sick of copying files to a USB stick and walking it all over the house from PC to PC (Computer...

www.elevenforum.com

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Worked okay with my Asus router.....well sorta. I was using a 128 GB flash drive plugged into the USB 3.0 port. The issue however is that as you accessed(write files) the drive it slowly ate up the Router ram. I eventually quit using it that way due to excess memory usage.

I'm reading news on SanDisk (owned by WD) drive failures and WD being slower than Seagate. I was also planning to buy a WD drive. Now I have changed my mind and will go with Seagate.

Another way to go is to get something like this:
"TerraMaster D4-300 USB3.1 Hard Drive/SSD Enclosure"
I bought the 4 bay DAS, no RAID just JBOD with support for upto 80TB total, and added 4 Toshiba 1TB drives for £30 each. Since it uses a SATA backplate you can use a mix of HDDs and SSDs easily swapped out with tool free sledges & you can just add drives as you can afford them.
There are also NAS/ RAID versions available depending on your budget and use case.

Toshiba stuff still great using 2 X 14 TB in a NAS - runs 24/7 --no problem and not noisy, Had them in for nearly 2 years now.

The main thing with classic "spinners" is to look for faster RPM and larger fast cache sizes, also don't keep powering them off and on.

I'd take Toshiba over WD any day. BTW you can also connect these "internal" drives via a UNITEK powered SATA to USB connector so don't discount connecting an internal drive this way - no need for a case or enclosure so the external drive looks pretty - and will have its own power supply in any case - just adds to the cost.

Whats good about this method is you can connect different spare drives too if you have any so it's far more flexible than buying a standard external USB drive. This adapter comes with its own power supply and wil run a 14 TB Toshiba Hard disk plugged into an ordinary laptop port (unpowered port) without any issues whatsoever.

USB3/3.1 is the model I've got but newer will have USBC connector or even maybe a direct SATA to SATA connector if you have an external SATA port.

I used the laptop to backup data from my NAS so I needed a large capacity drive. I was upgrading the NAS so I needed to make 100% sure I could restore everything if the upgrade failed.



Cheers
jimbo

antspants said:

I just run Plex from my internal HDD. It just means my PC has to stay on whilst others/devices are connecting, obviously.

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I'm doing the same thing except I'm using a dedicated BeeLink Mini PC running Mezzmo.

JAM83 said:

Send me a 4TB. . lmao jk

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Shucks, should have told me last year, could have brought it to Branson with me.

Do ya'll think this would be good? It's Unbranded, but the price on it is awesome

External Hard Drive Disk USB 3.0 6TB

JAM83 said:

Ok so i'm looking for at least a 6TB External Harddrive. I'd prefer 8TB if it's within my price range. I want a WD Black, but I can't afford that. I have $98

I found this one (I could spare a few more bucks if this looks to be a good one)

https://www.amazon.com/Passport-Portable-External-Drive-Black/dp/B07VP5X239/ref=sr_1_29?crid=NQAALK9QWLMM&keywords=WD_BLACK%2B6TB&qid=1694815585&s=electronics&sprefix=wd_black%2B6tb%2Celectronics%2C117&sr=1-29&th=1

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you want 8TB for 90 bucks? Good Luck

Firas said:

you want 8TB for 90 bucks? Good Luck

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Found This One It's 6TB, but I'm not sure I trust it, cuz there's no brand on it.

JAM83 said:

Found This One It's 6TB, but I'm not sure I trust it, cuz there's no brand on it.

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Trust that little voice in the back of your head screaming “Nooooooooooooooooo”

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I've had great luck with my Western Digital externals. I have a few 2.5" at 4tb each, and I have a 3.5" at 8tb. They have never given me a bit of trouble. I've also done drive docks over the years, where I can just plop a 3.5" or 2.5" drive into the dock and it becomes an external.

antspants said:

My experience with Western Digital & Seagate external drives, is that if one needs to be replaced, even within early warranty stage, they give you a refurbished drive as a replacement (at least they did for me). After receiving one & discovering this, I stopped buying them.

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This is simply a case of targeting as near all vendors (regardless of item) give refurbs as a replacement. It's pretty much industry standard as companies have found a way to make more money by replacing failed items with refurbs while not taking new stock off the shelf.

Nothing new here

BTW, I have 3 My books (2, 4, & 12 TB) going all the way back to 2009. Zero issues with none of them.

I've bought refurbs and generally they can be returns within the time constraint of the sale conditions. When originally sold the serial number is recorded with the company and most times cannot be sold again as new. They have always had the same warranty as if new but have been backed up by the authorized refurbishing company. Some things such as computers will be off-lease units, turned back to the leasing company which will refurbish or have refurshed but again, will have a warranty.

JAM83 said:

Found This One It's 6TB, but I'm not sure I trust it, cuz there's no brand on it.

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It's supposed to be a 6TB 2.5" drive.

A quick Web search suggests that no 6TB 2.5" bare drives exist.

Something isn't right.

Feeling lucky?

Dru2 said:

This is simply a case of targeting as near all vendors (regardless of item) give refurbs as a replacement. It's pretty much industry standard as companies have found a way to make more money by replacing failed items with refurbs while not taking new stock off the shelf.

Nothing new here

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That isn’t my experience.
The only time I have received a refurbished item is two hard drives from WD & Seagate. Everything from modems to refrigerators, furniture, car parts. Australia has petty strict laws on purchases and warranties. In fact it just got more stringent here last year.
Maybe, just maybe, America has different standards and consumer protection’s.

bobkn said:

It's supposed to be a 6TB 2.5" drive.

A quick Web search suggests that no 6TB 2.5" bare drives exist.

Something isn't right.

Feeling lucky?

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I took a look at it also, as well as the sellers feedback. Selling a few counterfeit items by the looks.

antspants said:

I took a look at it also, as well as the sellers feedback. Selling a few counterfeit items by the looks.

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Thanks. The seller should be reported then. I didn't notice the 2.5"

antspants said:

That isn’t my experience.

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Yeah, here's the real deal, you're not the only person on the planet. That fact that you don't acknowledge something, or aren't aware of something, doesn't mean it's not there. It just means you don't notice it - intentional or not.

Oh, and like all things in life, nothing is absolute, but the trend is more likely than not as many are unfortunately finding out.

Peace