WD External Drives.

[rando]

41 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

Ditto for the suggestion of 2x 4TB SSD .

 

For long term unpowered storage.  Where an indisputable advantage over spinning drives exists.  No slow decline of unacessed data or parked heads means full data recovery after 10 years gathering dust in a bank vault. 

 

Barring comment on the idea to go with 10TB drives (the poor guy has a backlog of purchases to work through you wouldn't believe) instead of 6TB. These will be active drives and the solution I brought forth including SSD doesn't apply. 

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, rando said:

For long term unpowered storage.  Where an indisputable advantage over spinning drives exists.  No slow decline of unacessed data or parked heads means full data recovery after 10 years gathering dust in a bank vault. 

You should do some reading on data retention in NAND flash. It's not as stable as you think.

[sphinxsix]

One more question - doesn't encryption used in My Books (I've just read it can't be disabled) create any problems?

[bluesman]

8 minutes ago, sphinxsix said:

One more question - doesn't encryption used in My Books (I've just read it can't be disabled) create any problems?

As I recall, MyBooks are encrypted with no user control. So you can't turn it off and you can't read or otherwise access the data on the HDs with any other device.  I wouldn't use such a unit in my music system.  But I've been running a pair of 4TB MyCloud drives in NAS for about 5 years without a problem, and they do not mandate encryption. When I need to upgrade to a larger NAS system, I'll almost certainly just go upscale with WD unless there's a great bargain in an industrial strength unit at the time.

[sphinxsix]

Thanks for all your suggestions, guys. Since Raid doesn't make much sense in my case,, the data encryption creates some problems and I don't need NAS at the moment I've decided to choose a simple way and to order an Elements drive again. Hope it will work just as good as the ones I already have

[rando]

Hope it works out for you. 

 

@mansr I think both of us agree spinning hard drives 2/3 full have greater chances of retaining data than 5.5/6 full drives.

 

We may be split down the middle on documentation and practical real world usage of SSD for infrequent backups.    Everything I've read about brief to months long retention ability has been positive though. Good controllers do help alleviate the weak points of NAND flash. 

[mansr]

2 minutes ago, rando said:

@mansr I think both of us agree spinning hard drives 2/3 full have greater chances of retaining data than 5.5/6 full drives.

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying that drives are more reliable used only to partial capacity?

 

2 minutes ago, rando said:

We may be split down the middle on documentation and practical real world usage of SSD for infrequent backups.    Everything I've read about brief to months long retention ability has been positive though. Good controllers do help alleviate the weak points of NAND flash.

Months yes, years no. High-density NAND flash relies on the controller periodically reading each page and rewriting it if too many (correctable) errors have accumulated. Briefly powering it up and copying a few files might not be enough either.

[rando]

I am indeed positing HDD are impacted negatively after reaching very near to full capacity. Especially where rarely to never again accessed data is concerned.  SSD that had all memory written over a few times beforehand are statistically more robust.  

 

Suspect we could continue here all day and of the two of us I'd be the more likely to come away learning something concrete.  In the end this is probably as efficient as debating SQ, too broadly, between the two hard drive types. Or quality between film and digitally shot movies. 

 

 

[mansr]

7 minutes ago, rando said:

I am indeed positing HDD are impacted negatively after reaching very near to full capacity. Especially where rarely to never again accessed data is concerned.

I can see no reason why this would be the case, nor have I ever heard such a claim before. However, sequential read/write speed is higher at the start of the disk than the end. For that reason, disks are sometimes utilised only to half or ⅔ capacity.  Reliability has nothing to do with it.

 

11 minutes ago, rando said:

SSD that had all memory written over a few times beforehand are statistically more robust.

This I can accept with some caveats. All NAND flash devices have some bad blocks, so an initial scan like this could reveal a few that were missed in the factory. I doubt it makes much if any difference in practice, though. Bad blocks can develop at any time, and the controller has to deal with them without losing data. For this reason, and (more so) to facilitate wear levelling, an SSD has a considerable amount of extra capacity beyond what is user visible. Even so, if only part of the available capacity is used, the wear levelling could potentially work more efficiently given the extra space. A partially used SSD might thus be more reliable than a full one. Maybe.

[rando]

In parting, and admittedly going in the complete opposite direction. 

 

Have you ever seen this ongoing Russian (take whatever security actions you feel are necessary if following the link) SSD write to failure test?  It doesn't attempt to fully tackle running manufacturing changes or test large numbers of independently procured sample sizes from various sources.  Both concerning for consumers paying for thought quality goods or dealing with a profusion of model numbers being shuffled around.  It does highlight some aspects of the manufacturer programmed interaction between controller and NAND flash pairings in SSD of note for sale internationally.  

 

So not the most scientific method.  Certainly a test you couldn't publish without legal complications in most countries currently.  Also it's kind of fun witnessing the slow onslaught of destruction to see how everything performs.  

[sphinxsix]

I'm quite surprised but my HDD music collection is more than 5TB (didn't check this in quite a long time ) so 6TB is not enough. Decided to get Elements 8TB - the drive in this case seems to be HGST Ultrastar DC HC320 (slowed down to 5400) which I believe isn't a bad thing.

[sphinxsix]

I've just checked out my 3 oldest (5-7 y.o.) WD Elements drives which haven't been used for the past 1.5 year. All of them seem to be working fine but I'd like to check it in detail. Which HDD health check freeware would you recommend, guys?

[Shadders]

17 minutes ago, sphinxsix said:

I've just checked out my 3 oldest (5-7 y.o.) WD Elements drives which haven't been used for the past 1.5 year. All of them seem to be working fine but I'd like to check it in detail. Which HDD health check freeware would you recommend, guys?

Hi,

I think WD have their own software for detailed analysis. I used it on failing drives - states the errors have been corrected, but the drive failed a few weeks later. Located here :

 

https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=3&lang=en

 

Regards,

Shadders.

[rando]

Some mfrs assign a custom metric or two that nonproprietary programs may not read. The other benefit of the WD software is it can probably update the drives firmware. 

 

The most popular 3rd party software is CrystalDisk Info. A good solution when you have discs from multiple mfrs in use. 

[sphinxsix]

1 hour ago, Shadders said:

states the errors have been corrected, but the drive failed a few weeks later.

A bit terrifying information.

I just hope that's not the way their software works

 

@rando So you were right after all, 6TBs just aren't enough

 

[rando]

Reserves of cash and free disc space always on the decline is a complaint I've heard from you once or twice. 

 

Getting to the point again I need to consider the predicament you find yourself in.  Can't imagine some here with half a lifetime head start have it anywhere near as simple as three copies across six discs. 

[sphinxsix]

Well, I got the drive and I must say I like it a lot. It's pretty fast and surprisingly quiet (better than 3TB Elements drives in this regard!). Unfortunately ..yesterday I came back home pretty distracted and by mistake connected my Asus laptop power supply plug to the drive (!) so it doesn't work anymore. I just hope it will be possible to fix it and to get my data back. Stupid me! 

[gmgraves]

On 3/11/2019 at 4:15 AM, Shadders said:

Hi,

Not wishing to dampens things - but i have had multiple WD drives fail - of the order of 25% for my purchases. From testing - the optimal drives are HGST (purchased by WD i think)  :

 

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/2018-hard-drive-failure-rates/

 

Also, the WD MyBook (My Cloud too), if you share, do have vulnerabilities :

 

https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/77259/hacking/vulnerabilities-nas.html

https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/vulnerabilities-and-exploits/vulnerabilities-and-a-backdoor-plague-western-digital-my-cloud-nas-devices

 

Regards,

Shadders.

I have a 3TB and a 4TB WD external 2.5 “ USB drives. Both of which are only a couple of months old. Both have failed and neither would mount. I ran Apple’s Hard Drive Utility, but it couldn’t repair or reformat either of them. I found a third party utility on Google and was able to wipe both drives clean. After which I was able to re-format both drives, loosing everything on them, of course (3 and 4 gigs of music). 

I won’t buy a WD disk, and didn’t buy these. A friend did, I just agreed to try and save them for him.

[Ralf11]

https://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/02/17/56224-hard-drives-later-backblaze-finds-western-digital-disks-most-likely-to-fail/

[sphinxsix]

I can't blame the drive for the failure if it was connected by mistake to the wrong power supply.

I just wonder: 1. Will it be possible to fix it? 2. Will I get my data back? 3. How much will it cost.?

 

[mansr]

2 hours ago, sphinxsix said:

I can't blame the drive for the failure if it was connected by mistake to the wrong power supply.

I would. Adding protection against a small over-voltage (guessing the proper supply is 12 V and the laptop supply 19 V) would have cost pennies.

 

2 hours ago, sphinxsix said:

I just wonder: 1. Will it be possible to fix it? 2. Will I get my data back? 3. How much will it cost.?

Short answers:

1. Maybe.

2. Maybe.

3. Depends on what is fried and on your (or your friends') soldering skills.

 

If you're lucky, only the primary voltage regulator has been fried and the drive itself is intact. In this case, you can simply move the drive to another enclosure.

[sphinxsix]

2 hours ago, mansr said:

Short answers:

1. Maybe.

2. Maybe.

3. Depends on what is fried and on your (or your friends') soldering skills.

Thx for the reply, such was my guess. Fortunately I have here some friendly servicemen. We will see on Monday..

[botrytis]

I have had a 2TB and a 4TB USB 3.0 WD drives with no issues at all. This includes having them dropped on concrete by others, etc. It just depends is the answer.

 

Just make sure it is all on at least one back up drive.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

14 hours ago, sphinxsix said:

I can't blame the drive for the failure if it was connected by mistake to the wrong power supply.

I just wonder: 1. Will it be possible to fix it? 2. Will I get my data back? 3. How much will it cost.?

 

I did the same.I ruined a perfectly good Phantom drive by using the wrong power supply by accident....i felt like a real shlemiel.

[sphinxsix]

12 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

I did the same.I ruined a perfectly good Phantom drive by using the wrong power supply by accident....i felt like a real shlemiel.

That's exactly how it feels

Mansr is right, they should have some protection circuit.