External desktop H/drives

[Ray]

Does anyone have any recommendations for a reliable 2Tb external desktop HD? I'm not very impressed with Western Digital after just having a 2TB WD Elements drive fail about 3 months after the 2 year warranty expired

[Technical Ben]

Did it still have data on it?
Might be just the PSU or the caddy? Hopefully the disk is fine.

[Lona]

Does anyone have any recommendations for a reliable 2Tb external desktop HD? I'm not very impressed with Western Digital after just having a 2TB WD Elements drive fail about 3 months after the 2 year warranty expired

I have a 1TB Samsung and never had any problems with it. I think Samsung now have a 2TB one.

http://www.overclock.co.uk/product/Samsung-2TB-M3-Portable-Black-USB30-External-Hard-Disk-Retail_46433.html

[Ray]

Did it still have data on it?
Might be just the PSU or the caddy? Hopefully the disk is fine.

No it's definitely faulty, Ben, as can be seen from the results of an extended drive test I've just done on it: -

[Ray]

I have a 1TB Samsung and never had any problems with it. I think Samsung now have a 2TB one.

http://www.overclock.co.uk/product/Samsung-2TB-M3-Portable-Black-USB30-External-Hard-Disk-Retail_46433.html

Thanks Lona I'l have a look I'm fairly sure Samsung do a 2TB one as well and I've not had problems with any Samsung disks I've used.

[john]

When I worked in IT Western Digital did not have a particularly good reputation compared to other brands such as Seagate but that was some time ago so hopefully things have improved since then and recent reviews I've read appear to indicate that WD are now as good, if not better than other manufacturers.

WD make different types of drives for particular uses (see http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/desktop/) but I could not find which, if any of these they use in their 'Elements' external drive. I suspect it's either the 'Blue' or 'Green' type as both these have two year warranties. A better option may be to purchase a NAS server and install the 'Red' version athough this would be more expensive.

I've recently bought a Synology DS212J and two WD 'Red' drives. These drives have a three year warranty but I'll let you know if they develop any problems during the warranty period.

It could be you were just unlucky with your drive, other manufacturers also had some reviews where the drive developed a fault.

[Ray]

Since I've confirmed the drive is faulty, John, I've opened the case and found that it's a green drive, I'm wondering if some of the problem is due to the fact they now seem to use unventilated sealed plastic cases for these desktop drives and as a consequence they run hot
Although it's more expensive, I think as a replacement I'm going to go for buying a separate enclosure and fitting a desktop drive into myself, the drive is used for automatic backup of my WHS 2011 Home Server so it's always on.

[Technical Ben]

OK, the "S.M.A.R.T." test passes though. Hmmm. There is also HDDScan which is free and will give you a sector by sector report (on Read only mode, else data is lost!). Is there data on the HDD? If there is not, then not to worry. Was just wondering if you needed to recover anything.

PS, also dead sectors can become a problem if they are increasing (indicative of dust/scratches). Which tend to get worse and worse. I'm currently using all the old "dead" disks as "scratch" like disks, for just putting on videos/easy access backups, but nothing vital. So if the disk dies, I've lost nothing but the time to find the original DVDs/backups from my library.

[Ray]

I've got all the data off of the drive and tested it again with HDTune and it's founds loads of bad sectors on it so I think it's certainly on it's way out and not usable as a server backup drive.

I've just replaced it with a 2Tb WD red drive in an Icybox hot swappable USB 3 enclosure.

[stevenrw]

This is interesting as I have all WD drive(Black for system and Green for data backup) in my rig and they are filling up. I was looking to go down the SSD route (Samsung 840 Pro)for system and replace the green with a larger drive, perhaps 2 or 3 gb. I was looking at the WD Red drives.
But I'm confused as to their application. The are apparently designed for NAS or RAID applications, so I'm assuming they are good for "always on" service but they also feature "Intellipower" which I'm assuming means that they run at varying speed depending upon load, much like the WD Green drive I have already.
They also have "enhanced" support.
So what would I gain in buying one of these for "normal" desktop use as an internal data storage drive. Increased reliability perhaps? (Whatever that means).
You will always get anecdotal stories about just about every manufacturer. I'm sure everybody knows somebody who has had bad experiences from just about every manufacturer, and I'm convinced that reliability has deteriorated across the board as capacities have got greater.

[Technical Ben]

I've got all the data off of the drive and tested it again with HDTune and it's founds loads of bad sectors on it so I think it's certainly on it's way out and not usable as a server backup drive.

I've just replaced it with a 2Tb WD red drive in an Icybox hot swappable USB 3 enclosure.

Ah, that's bad! :O

AFFIK a business grade/server grade HDD only gets the additional "uptime" guarantees. For home use there is no different (not even sure you'd get use out of an on site replacement if it's not in server grade/hot swappable/self healing data centers ). A bit like Error checking memory is not needed for most users (as the OS can cope with and correct data errors), but a server on 364 days a year with important accounting or calculation data may need it.