I need an external hdd, just basically for storage. Data, video, etc... Not needing any software, password, backup capabilities, mainly interested in performance, reliability and longevity of the drive. Don't know if speed (7200, 5400) makes a difference on longevity or performance. Here are 3 portable WD HDD's. Any thoughts on which is better? Thanks in advance!
WD’s are optimized for specific usage by color. https://www.dignited.com/57978/western-digital-drives-color-codes/ 1. WD Black These are expensive high-performance drives. WD Black’s intended application is inside of your system, inside of your workstation, gaming PC or anywhere you need high-performance storage. WD uses the word creative professionals to describe the intended users. This essentially means anyone who is beating the hell out of a drive, not physically, but in a productivity kind of way. Like offloading a bunch of videos and then editing in a fast and speedy behavior. WD Black Hard Drive Read More: WD Black Performance Desktop Hard Drive 2. WD Blue This is one is kind of interesting. I remember WD Blue sort of being like the de facto standard internal hard drive for a very long time. The newer WD Blue comes with a built-in SSD, it’s kind of a hybrid. This is going to give you enhanced speed on regularly accessed stuff. They are general purpose all-rounders. But they are intended for average users who are a little bit less intense. WD Blue Hard Drives Read More: WD Blue vs. Black vs. Green Hard Drive Comparison – What’s the Difference? 3. WD Red These are optimized for network-attached storage (NAS) as the intended use case. You attach this drive to your NAS system and it allows you to access data locally on the network, as well as share it with other people. You can also access that data not just locally, but also via the web. Also, they support raid configurations. WD Red Standard and Pro Hard Drives The Red family excels more in the read operations than write operations. Exactly what is expected for NAS storage, because data is stored on a network and multiple users will connect at the same time to read it. WD Red has two versions; WD Red Pro and WD Red Standard. Related Article: NAS vs External Drive: What’s Best For You? 4. WD Purple WD Purple drives are intended for use in 24/7 surveillance systems that are constantly writing video, running 24 hours a day. This is a fairly hefty request for a drive to be operating like that. On the front, it says “24/7 reliability”, Intended for everything up to HD video. WD Purple has high write speeds which is the opposite of WD Red. Also, these have the all frame technology which ensures minimal errors in video storage. WD Purple Hard Drive Read More: WD Purple Surveillance Hard Drive 5. WD Green These are eco-friendly and cheapest Western Digital drives. WD Green is more power-efficient than WD Blue but falls short on performance. This power-saving difference is insignificant. Western Digital stopped making WD Green, nowadays they make SATA and M.2 SSDs under the Green family. WD Green SATA and M.2 SSDs Related Article: How to install an M.2 SSD drive in a laptop 6. WD Gold These Gold family drives are optimized for enterprise solutions in data centers. They are of the highest quality, most expensive and most sophisticated Western Digital drives. They are rated at 550TB annual data with 2 million hours mean time between failure. These are server-grade hard drives. They have additional features like StableTrac, Multi-axis shock sensor, and Dynamic fly height technology. WD Gold Drives
I recently got the passport you referenced and so far so good. I’m only using it for a simple backup and storage, not really day to day use.
Haven’t been into computers for a while, just remember how big a deal it was to upgrade from 64gb to my new 512gb back in the day. ****ing TBs yo.. Edit: just realized my MacBook is a 256gb SSD...wtf you doing Apple smh
Standard for a root drive these days. You can get external drives or just save in the cloud (where it's backed up).
Thanks for replying guys! Xerobull, I've seen that WD drive color comparison chart. But it doesn't tell me about the ones I listed (or longevity in general). They don't list what color drive is in each one. Even the WD black I think is just a 5400rpm model. DonkeyMagic, good luck with your Passport. I've bought one before with good luck so I'll probably just get another one this time.
Your amazon links aren't working in your OP. I saw them last night, but not right now. Edit: NM, adblock blocked me from seeing them.
If you're interested in performance, then you should be considering external solid state drives (SSD), which are 5 to 20 times faster than standard HDD drives. You can also get a cheap traditional drive and wait for prices to drop on SSDs over Black Friday. The value for the price of SSDs continues to improve.
I have various Western Digital 8, 10, and 12TB drives (Elements and EasyStore models) for data backup and haven't had any issues yet. No encryption on those models so if the enclosure fails, you can take the drive out and use it in another case (these drives are popular for putting into NAS). The 14TB version is $200 when on sale, but there haven't been any discounts since COVID stuff started. I have a 5TB WD Black portable drive on my Xbox and a 8TB WD Black drive for the PS4. I also use a SanDisk 2TB SSD on my Xbox which makes a big difference in load times. I tried a SSD on my PS4 and it didn't make much difference (apparently it can improve performance if you install one internally in a PS4 Pro). There's also reports out there that Western Digital and Seagate have been shipping out various drives that use slower SMR technology without disclosing that information. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...re-being-submarined-into-unexpected-channels/ And regardless of what disk you get, if the data has any value to you, then you should have it on more than one disk.
Since this is just for data storage I really value reliability and longevity the most. Do you know if the "My Passports" or "WD Blacks" are encrypted?
As far as Western Digital drives go, I believe all My Passport and My Book drives have hardware encryption, while Easystore, Elements, and Black drives don't. The Black drive has a 3 year warranty while the others have a 1 or 2 year warranty. I don't think you can swap the case on the Black drives (interface board is soldered to the drive, at least on the 2.5" portable drive). SSD could be the most reliable since there's no mechanical parts that can fail, but the price is going to be much higher for less storage. They can wear out if you write large amounts of data to them continuously (like if you're rendering HD video to the drive constantly).
My Passport's have 3 year warranties. Not sure what you mean by "rendering" video. I just plan on using it for data storage. I'm sure a good bit of it will be video as the sheer size of video files are much larger than documents, pictures, programs, etc... but I usually just write files once and they stay there permanently. No moving, editing, etc..., just storage. Besides with SSD at around $160-per-TB vs $22-per-TB for regular it's an easy choice. Although doing a little checking it seems that WD and Seagate are mostly using SMR drives now.
While I don't disagree with you, if you're using an SSD for video editing/rendering - you technically could reach the limit faster than a non rendering user for writes to the drive (like you mention and are right) but the time savings alone would make it worth it for rendering. Also, the amount of data to reach failure is absurd - https://www.ontrack.com/blog/2018/02/07/how-long-do-ssds-really-last/ This is even an older article and you'll see the TBW (terabytes written) tested at some extreme amount where a drive technically could last to is an eternity in tech at constant writing. Obviously this isn't what OP is needing but the failure from total writes is typically ridiculous and understated and at this point - unless using a drive strictly to archive data people should always go SSD as their working drive. I'd rather pay the premium and save the time for transfers/work/use. For OP though, mech is fine, I think at that point it comes down to the amount of storage needed. Like if it was just 1tb I might still buy the ssd, but if you need like 2-4TB+ for archival storage then sure the mech makes sense. I just prefer the speed/time savings, but obviously for backup a mech drive still makes the most sense
Right, he was meaning failure from writing while doing edits to rendering video or changing a video to a different format. For your use speed doesn't sound like it matters. I prefer SSD in most cases because of time savings, but if truly only a backup drive and you aren't impatient doing multiple transfers between drives etc - mechanical makes the most sense especially depending on size needed. I still use mechanical drives for DVR/video/picture storage but use SSD's in all other cases.
