WD - Easystore 4TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - Black -$79.99 @ Best Buy

I'm going to assume these are now SMR drives?

Yeah I'm sure they are

Wouldn't say it's as great deal per se as when 5tb was going for around $90 Seagate or not. Also this requires external adapter if it's a 3.5 drive.

Can these be taken out and used as a normal hard drive or internal hard drive for a pc?

This or hold out for a My Book Duo

Got one. Pretty good deal if you just need a 4TB drive. I had personal bad experiences with seagate drives so WD is what I stick with.

It's almost that you will get SMR drive. I would suggest you to cancel the order. WD is secretly selling their smr drive without telling users. Drop their product I would suggest.

https://arstechnica.com/informati...as-drives/

Quote from Tsaichun : It's almost that you will get SMR drive. I would suggest you to cancel the order. WD is secretly selling their smr drive without telling users. Drop their product I would suggest. https://arstechnica.com/informati...as-drives/

Yeah it's definitely not good if u plan to use it for anything but backup. As I specifically want this for backup, it was ok for me.

Truth be told, I am slightly worried about the reliability of this tech even though it's been around for a while. I guess we'll see 🤞

This is great, think I'm going to get one and bring my 2 TB external to the office!

This hits a reasonable price point for some data hoarders who care less about performance, but the cost per TB is still higher than if you could spend more and get PMR 8TB, 10TB or higher capacity external hard drive.

Picked one up today. Got lucky and it was a WD red Nas hard drive

For the last couple of years, you're more likely to find a RED in an easystore rather than in a My Book.

My Book's may have a WHITE version. Old WHITE ones were different from new WHITE ones. The new White ones are basically REDs.

A decent price on a desktop (3.5") model is less than $15 per TB.
A decent prices on a portable/mobile (2.5") is $20 or less. You're paying the premium for portability.

You can shuck the desktops to put in your NAS. It's an INCREDIBLY lower price, just a fraction of what you'd pay for a bare RED HDD not in an external enclosure.

There's no point to shucking the portables for any reason since they're not a normally configured HDD. They have the USB port soldered to the HDD. You can't remove it and find the usual SATA connector on the HDD. There isn't one.

You can find deals now and then on NEW and REFURBED items on WD's website and WD's eBay site.

WD easystore is a WD Elements renamed at BB's request that is sold ONLY by BB. They wanted to be different, special. They used to come with the same software. So, they were identical. I don't know if they come with the same software now. If not, you maybe able to DL it from WD for free. Otherwise, there are other free options on the Internet.

WD My Book is supposedly a step above easystore/Elements. It comes with different software and has hardware encryption you can not disable.

I've had good luck with WD NEW and REFURBED. I've also bought OPEN BOX and USED on eBay. I've had one My Passport Ultra die just after the warranty expired. I bought that one directly from WD.

Don't buy Seagate. They've tested worst in independent tests every year for decades.

I bought one. I need it for backup for my wify's business which is selling products online as a reseller. She's been forced to delete pictures and this will offload them. I also need backups for the movies, shows etc that I have (not unlicensed) and digitized family albums. I just wished it had a network interface than a USB one.

I just bought this drive. CrystalDiskInfo shows that the internal drive is "WDC WD40EFRX-68N32N0", which is a red nas drive.
I believe it is without smr.