Are Western Digital drives trustworthy these days.

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@CliftonR hm interesting, that will require an enclosure though I guess

[ayla@mastodon.ounce.zone]

@mcc yeah. I've had a couple usb WD hdds over the years, they've always been stable and their USB implementation is better than most of the generic caddies. Wouldn't recommend doing RAID or anything similarly fancy on it but for a single drive setup, absolutely fine.

[mhoye@cosocial.ca]

@mcc @gnomon knows.

[un_bourguignon@piaille.fr]

@mcc
You'll pay this a premium+ price, or more.

[gnomon@mastodon.social]

@mhoye @mcc you'll get better value for money by buying an internal 3.5" WD mechanical drive and a cheap dock, but that USB drive is fine. Nothing wrong with it.

[gnomon@mastodon.social]

@ratsnakegames @mcc it's an extra $20 but it might be worth buying it directly from WD

https://www.westerndigital.com/en-ca/products/portable-drives/wd-elements-portable-usb-3-0-hdd?sku=WDBU6Y0050BBK-WESN

[cliftonr@wandering.shop]

@mcc

Now I see you're thinking about those portable drive-in-a-box things, I would not trust any brand of those. I've seen too many, of many different brands, abruptly die on people.

My wife has a WD Passport from & for her job, and that's been doing OK but I still wouldn't trust it.

On my desktop computer I use one of the USB-3 to SATA adapter thingies that you can plug any SATA drive into and have it show up.

If you want to carry it around, then ya, you have to figure out an enclosure.

[kimiko_0@wetdry.world]

@mcc Not sure if relevant to an external hdd you'd buy in 2026, but I have had an internal 5TB WD drive running 24/7 for uh, I think it's been 16 years now. So yeah, decent quality there.

[cliftonr@wandering.shop]

@mcc

This, specifically:

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@Kimiko_0 is the quality level of a 2010 WD drive necessarily equal to the quality level of a 2026 WD drive?

[kimiko_0@wetdry.world]

@mcc Considering capitalism, probably not necessarily. That's why I said 'not sure if relevant'. If it came to picking WD or another brand though, I'd pick WD based on my own experience, is what I meant to convey.

[orca@nya.one]

@mcc@mastodon.social Don't buy portable HDDs. They're mostly SMR and prone to damage.

Get a Purple (surveillance), Red Pro (NAS), Black (performance) or Gold (datacenter, but very pricey, only if you've got the money) if you're going for WD drives. Get a decent enclosure (there are a lot of cheap but unstable enclosure on the market), too.

[lumiworx@mastodon.social]

@Orca @mcc

I would remind everyone that WD screwed every customer with the SMR debacle not long ago. They flat out, lied about their components, and rendered NAS devices useless for those expecting ultra-reliable hardware.

My experience with WD externals, ala 'Passport' and 'MyBook', is that they struggle to stay connected and fluctuate wildly in transfer speeds.

I switched over to Seagate IronWolfe, or at least Barracuda for desktops, and EXO or Helium filled.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-cost-per-gigabyte/

[lumiworx@mastodon.social]

@Orca @mcc

I think in the long run, it's better for me to get the drive I want as an internal and buy an enclosure to fit it for external use. USB 3.1 if possible, and USB-C if it's practical.

[orca@nya.one]

@lumiworx@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social
Yeah that's why I said "Red Pro", not "Red", because "WD Red" is where WD slipped SMR in. Damn them.

Also isn't Seagate Barracuda also have a few SMR models?

[lumiworx@mastodon.social]

@Orca @mcc

For Barracuda... yes, most have SMR until you get to the 'Pro' series, which are mostly CMR.

I suggested "at least a Baracuda" as they were engineered to be business-class drives and had better performance for standard hard drives. If you're stuck at purchase time with fewer choices, then they will offer a minimum of quality for heavier demand users.

After getting stung on 3 consecutive WD Red failures after the silent switch over from CMR to SMR... ugh!

https://www.seagate.com/products/cmr-smr-list/

[mcc@mastodon.social]

ME: I want a 5 TB hard drive

Amazon: We can do that

Canada Computers: I can give you 12 TB for twice the price

Christine: Wait, Canada Computers has 12 TB drives for *how* much? Get two

Me, walking back from yonge-dundas square the next morning, absolutely twisted, carrying 24 TB of platter drives:

[kithrup@wandering.shop]

@mcc I got the last of my disks shipped to me from the US, and I have about 200TB of storage in the house.

[tristan@catnest.net]

@CliftonR @mcc many of those external from the factory HDs are "shingled" sectors, which write a lot slower and have very high failure rates.

[demize@unstable.systems]

@mcc they’ve got 14tb drives for about $500 apparently, which

I need another couple 14tb drives but I don’t $1000 need them… but what if they get more expensive…

(alas, now is not the time for me to buy new hard drives anyway)