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

[general_email at technicalbloke.com]

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,
> and my data recovery experience suggests that the caddy electronics
> (rather than the drive electronics) are far, far more likely to be the
> culprit in a failure. If moving to USB3 direct to the board improves
> that reliability maybe the cloud has a dark grey -- if not silver --
> lining.
>
> Cheers,


I have heard portable drives are one of the manufacturers main outlets
for "recertified" drives and not all of them come with the same 3 year
guarantee as most bare drives do. For this reason I have always been a
bit dubious of the pre-made ones, preferring to make my own. I'm not
sure moving the caddy electronics onto the main board would make them
much more reliable though and it definitely does get in the way of
direct ATA access and therefore negatively impact the use of several
recover and diagnostic tools :/

Roger

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