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

[j.roberts]

On 10/06/2011 06:22, general_email at technicalbloke.com wrote:
> On 09/06/11 02:29, Alistair Mann wrote:
>> general_email at technicalbloke.com wrote:
>>>   Hi all,
>>>
>>>   Just a quick warning that you might want to avoid Western Digital's
>>>   latest USB3/2.5" portable hard drives.
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>>   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.
>>
>> Caddies in general seem to fail much more often than one would expect,

<snip>

> I have heard portable drives are one of the manufacturers main outlets
> for "recertified" drives...

Aargh! Any sources?

> For this reason I have always been a
> bit dubious of the pre-made ones, preferring to make my own.

We also see a MUCH higher failure rate for pre-built USB caddies (even 
RAID ones) than for bare drives.

We do not see this for ones we make up ourselves, though doing this is 
not strictly speaking economically sound :) We do not however keep 
detailed statistics for these few drives.

Of course one must also say that USB caddies are much more likely to be 
dropped, knocked or power cycled whilst turned on than are drives in a 
main computer case, and many caddies seem to have no, or very little, 
ventilation.

Mind you, that would also apply to the caddies we make up, and they 
don't have the higher failure rate.

I would NEVER trust important data to a non-RAID1 USB caddy, and I'm 
wary  even then, as I have had over the years various cases of 
near-simultaneous RAID drive failures... RAID5/6 caddies are not 
available :)

-- 
Stabilys Ltd
www.stabilys.com
Telephone: 0845 83 853 70
244 Kilburn Lane
London W10 4BA

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