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Western Digital External Hard Drive 8TB $139.99 at Costco

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Joined Aug 2004
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> bubble2 13,371 Posts
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avalon
01-20-2022 at 08:43 AM.
01-20-2022 at 08:43 AM.
almost back to the price of 2.5 years ago according to shucks.top

what I really want is WD Blue 4TB for $50
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Danimal86
01-20-2022 at 08:44 AM.
01-20-2022 at 08:44 AM.
$17.5/tb
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VioletFruit436
01-21-2022 at 07:32 AM.
01-21-2022 at 07:32 AM.
Still $20 more than the Seagate drives when they're on sale, and the Seagate drives have a built in USB3 hub.

WD makes good drives, but their external enclosures absolutely suck. And, *when* (not if) a MyBook enclosure fails, sure, you can shuck the drive, but because of the encryption done in the SATA->USB controller board, your data will be gone (you have to re-initialize and format the bare drive before you can use it).
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socalcal
01-21-2022 at 10:02 AM.
01-21-2022 at 10:02 AM.
Quote from VioletFruit436 :
Still $20 more than the Seagate drives when they're on sale, and the Seagate drives have a built in USB3 hub.

WD makes good drives, but their external enclosures absolutely suck. And, *when* (not if) a MyBook enclosure fails, sure, you can shuck the drive, but because of the encryption done in the SATA->USB controller board, your data will be gone (you have to re-initialize and format the bare drive before you can use it).
How does one know if the enclosure fails vs. the drive itself?
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VioletFruit436
01-21-2022 at 11:15 AM.

Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank VioletFruit436

01-21-2022 at 11:15 AM.
Quote from socalcal :
How does one know if the enclosure fails vs. the drive itself?
Unfortunately the only real way to know that for sure is to shuck the enclosure and try hooking up the drive to a PC through some other means (internal or another USB adapter). You could probably in that case use tools like CrystalDiskInfo to at least check the SMART information on the drive before going through the re-initialization process. Depending on the design of any particular enclosure, you may or may not be able to "nicely" open a shell so that it could be re-used without obvious signs of being damaged.

Don't get me wrong, encryption on a drive can be a good thing, if you need it. But, my beef with My Book drives is that it's not optional to the user whether to use it or not, it's always on, and that necessarily means that if the controller board in the enclosure goes south, your data is toast. I've pulled hard drives out of Maxtor (ugh), WD, Hitachi, and Seagate enclosures over the years, but WD enclosures definitely have the highest failure rate (I've actually not personally had a Seagate enclosure fail on me yet, I just wanted to pull some drives out to convert them to internal storage, whereas all the WD and Hitachi enclosures were opened up because of an enclosure failure and the drives inside were still fine after reformatting them).

In today's market, Seagate is the only first-party brand I know for sure is NOT doing funny business with the enclosures; it's just a straight SATA->USB adapter board inside, so if an enclosure dies, you can pull the drive out and still get your data off of it.
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raidflex
01-22-2022 at 05:53 AM.
01-22-2022 at 05:53 AM.
This is not a good deal, the 14TB was $170 back in Nov/Dec. This drive should be around $100 for a decent deal.
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socalcal
01-22-2022 at 08:07 AM.
01-22-2022 at 08:07 AM.
Quote from VioletFruit436 :
Unfortunately the only real way to know that for sure is to shuck the enclosure and try hooking up the drive to a PC through some other means (internal or another USB adapter). You could probably in that case use tools like CrystalDiskInfo to at least check the SMART information on the drive before going through the re-initialization process. Depending on the design of any particular enclosure, you may or may not be able to "nicely" open a shell so that it could be re-used without obvious signs of being damaged.

Don't get me wrong, encryption on a drive can be a good thing, if you need it. But, my beef with My Book drives is that it's not optional to the user whether to use it or not, it's always on, and that necessarily means that if the controller board in the enclosure goes south, your data is toast. I've pulled hard drives out of Maxtor (ugh), WD, Hitachi, and Seagate enclosures over the years, but WD enclosures definitely have the highest failure rate (I've actually not personally had a Seagate enclosure fail on me yet, I just wanted to pull some drives out to convert them to internal storage, whereas all the WD and Hitachi enclosures were opened up because of an enclosure failure and the drives inside were still fine after reformatting them).

In today's market, Seagate is the only first-party brand I know for sure is NOT doing funny business with the enclosures; it's just a straight SATA->USB adapter board inside, so if an enclosure dies, you can pull the drive out and still get your data off of it.
Thanks for the explanation. So to be safe, better to just shuck the drive from the get-go.
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Joined Jul 2019
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VioletFruit436
01-22-2022 at 08:16 AM.
01-22-2022 at 08:16 AM.
Quote from socalcal :
Thanks for the explanation. So to be safe, better to just shuck the drive from the get-go.

If you're doing proper backups and redundancy, an enclosure failure shouldn't end up in any real data loss, but with My Book drives, that is the safest option to avoid hassles.

I have read, but cannot confirm from my own testing, that the WD ELEMENTS line of drives might be a straight SATA to USB adapter, which would be nice, just not something I can guarantee from my own experience.
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raidflex
01-22-2022 at 02:05 PM.
01-22-2022 at 02:05 PM.
Quote from VioletFruit436 :
If you're doing proper backups and redundancy, an enclosure failure shouldn't end up in any real data loss, but with My Book drives, that is the safest option to avoid hassles.

I have read, but cannot confirm from my own testing, that the WD ELEMENTS line of drives might be a straight SATA to USB adapter, which would be nice, just not something I can guarantee from my own experience.

It's a standard white label WD SATA HDD, I have shucked the 14TB's. You could buy a cheap USB to SATA adapter if the drive fails to confirm that it's the HDD and not the enclosure.
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la9era
01-22-2022 at 02:17 PM.
01-22-2022 at 02:17 PM.
Can I shucker the hard drive out of the enclosure for my synology nas?

my 4tb is failing now and need a replacement.

TIA
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raidflex
01-23-2022 at 07:02 AM.
01-23-2022 at 07:02 AM.
Quote from la9era :
Can I shucker the hard drive out of the enclosure for my synology nas?

my 4tb is failing now and need a replacement.

TIA
Should work fine, I did this with the 14TB's and put them in my Truenas server, working great. Don't forget to run badblocks to make sure all the drives are good.
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invk
01-25-2022 at 09:20 AM.
01-25-2022 at 09:20 AM.
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Last edited by invk January 25, 2022 at 09:21 AM.
Joined Feb 2016
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Tisser12
01-25-2022 at 10:47 AM.
01-25-2022 at 10:47 AM.
Quote from avalon :
almost back to the price of 2.5 years ago according to shucks.top

what I really want is WD Blue 4TB for $50
I've been thinking of getting another Toshiba P400 drive. I've had a 3tb in my rig since I built it and it's fast enough for games that aren't massive but perfectly fine for movies and media. I think I paid 80 a few years back. It's 7200rpm though. Seeing some of the issues people have with their Mybooks makes me a bit nervous to keep my backup on mine. I already had a (pre owned) MyCloud fail (drive died) with very light use.
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dn3g3l
01-25-2022 at 11:12 AM.
01-25-2022 at 11:12 AM.
Quote from raidflex :
This is not a good deal, the 14TB was $170 back in Nov/Dec. This drive should be around $100 for a decent deal.
and gas price was only $4 couple months ago. your point?
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