[Gllug] OT: Warning - new WD portable drives!

[general_email at technicalbloke.com]

Hi all,

Just a quick warning that you might want to avoid Western Digital's
latest USB3/2.5" portable hard drives. I've just had a failing drive
come in from a customer who bought her's a couple of months back. It
turns out the drive inside does not have SATA connectors at all, instead
(and worryingly) it has USB3 incorporated directly into the controller
board! This prevents the drives SMART data being read (which might have
been very helpful to my client a few weeks back!) and means that if you
do have trouble with the drive you can't extract it and connect it
directly into another PC to run diagnosis and recovery tools against.
Many tools will still detect and access the drive but AFAIK USB
interfaces rarely, if ever, support the full ATA command set and SMART
so this can really limit your diagnosis and recovery options.

I'm sure this move makes sense to WD for reasons of speed, space and
cost but personally I wouldn't touch one of these drives with a
bardgepole so I figured I'd best warn you guys in case you'd feel the
same way.

Cheers,

Roger
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