2TB drives?

On 4/13/2015 11:48 AM, Mike Barnes wrote:
Jo-Anne wrote:
On 4/13/2015 1:47 AM, Mike Barnes wrote:
Jo-Anne wrote:
I want to buy a couple external hard drives for backing up my new
Windows 7 computer. My old external drives are 160GB and 320GB Western
Digital My Passport Essentials, and they've worked well.

I was planning to get 1TB drives of this brand, but there are now 2TB
drives that aren't much pricier. Are the 2TB drives generally as
reliable as the 1TB? And is WD still considered a good brand?

FWIW I have five Western Digital My Passport Ultra drives, for backing
up my Windows 7 computer.

Three 2TB drives have been used (in rotation) every day for the last two
years, and the two 1TB for rather longer but less frequently.

They've all been 100% reliable. The only improvement I could reasonably
wish for is the inclusion of a soft case in the box.

I don't know what you can get in England, Mike, but Amazon U.S. sells
soft cases for some of the WD external drives for $5.

Those soft cases probably cost cents to make and almost all of that $5
would go towards packaging, marketing, distribution, middlemen's profit,
etc. It seems unbelievably cheapskate for WD not to include one with the
disk, for the little it would cost them.

Fortunately the soft cases from my previous generation of (Samsung)
backup drives fit the WD drives. In the same way that old pairs of
trousers still fit me (i.e. with some difficulty).


One of my WD 320GB drives came with a soft case. I think it was a
special offer...

--
Jo-Anne

On 4/13/2015 12:57 PM, "...winston‫" wrote:
Jo-Anne wrote:
I want to buy a couple external hard drives for backing up my new
Windows 7 computer. My old external drives are 160GB and 320GB Western
Digital My Passport Essentials, and they've worked well.

I was planning to get 1TB drives of this brand, but there are now 2TB
drives that aren't much pricier. Are the 2TB drives generally as
reliable as the 1TB? And is WD still considered a good brand?


1TB and 2TB are have been quite reliable for me. if 160/320 has been
sufficient capacity in the past then a 1 or 2 should be fine, and just
as reliable as in the past.

More storage is always nice, but if unused then one is just paying more
per GB without taking advantage of the larger capacity convenience.


Thank you, Winston. I back up often, and it's nice not to have to erase
earlier backups (from not all that far back) to make room for others. On
my 160 drives, I get two backups at most, which is a pain.

--
Jo-Anne

=?UTF-8?B?Ii4uLndpbnN0b27igKsi?= wrote in
:

Tony wrote:


I bought a new hard drive for an older computer about 18 months ago.
I noticed that the only brands I still saw often were WD and Seagate.
The salesman told me that a lot of HD manufacturers from 15 years ago
are gone now, and then he said that "WD drives are now made by
Seagate", but I am not sure if that is accurate or not.

Tony


While some of the base hardware may come from the same supplier
(usually Pacific Basin/Eastern Asia) WD or Seagate do not manufacture
drives for each other. WD and Seagate separately have acquired the
majority of all other drive manufacturers. In some cases acquired
companies were privately purchased then split up with sale of pieces
going to WD and Seagate (some of the splits have been associated with
Spinner driver or SSD drives going to different companies).

Iirc, besides WD and Seagate, Toshiba still holds a piece of the drive
supplier/marketer pie.


Quite right - I had forgotten about Toshiba. And my backup drive is a
Toshiba!

Tony

On 4/13/2015 10:28, Paul wrote:
Hard drives could also use conduction cooling if they
wanted, as hard drives continue to be a nice chunk
of metal, and so a clever mechanical design could
leverage that to transfer heat to the exterior.
Allowing the design to remain fanless, while
avoiding the need for lots of spindown cycles.
Instead, they use nice thermal-insulating plastics.

If your drive can't stand the heat, get it out of the kitchen. Oops, I
meant out of the enclosure.

Most of the time I use a docking station and a bare drive, so there is
plenty of cooling.

One disadvantage: the docks are set up to hold both 2-1/2" and 3-1/2"
drives, so they're pretty big for use with the smaller drives.

They also have big external power supplies, not needed for 2-1/2" drives
but necessary to power 3-1/2" drives

It happens that I'm using the bigger drives anyway, so those things
don't bother me, but others might care.

But this item at NewEgg might work:

http://tinyurl.com/mn2bfjz

You don't have to put the lid on. (I have a similar 2.5"/3.5"
enclosure/dock, and it works fine.)

That's the only 2.5" dock that I found at NewEgg.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

Jo-Anne wrote:
On 4/13/2015 11:20 AM, Ed Cryer wrote:
Mike Barnes wrote:
Ed Cryer wrote:
Jo-Anne wrote:
I want to buy a couple external hard drives for backing up my new
Windows 7 computer. My old external drives are 160GB and 320GB Western
Digital My Passport Essentials, and they've worked well.

I was planning to get 1TB drives of this brand, but there are now 2TB
drives that aren't much pricier. Are the 2TB drives generally as
reliable as the 1TB? And is WD still considered a good brand?


I'd like to put in a recommendation for "portable" 2TB drives; USB
power
is sufficient, which makes them like a large memory stick. I can easily
put two in a pocket. They come in different colours too.

I started with a WD one, but put it in the cupboard after I became
thoroughly pestered and annoyed with the virtual CD drive it installs
(no "don't install" option).

This is the second reference I've seen to WD software. Is any software
needed? I just plugged my new drives in and they started working
straight away. Has that changed?

I did find some software on the drives but I just created a "WD
software" folder, moved it there, and have never felt the need to look
at it since.


The WD Passport portable drives come with a virtual CD that you can't
prevent installing;
http://tinyurl.com/pnxyw5o
It'll show up in Disk Management, all programs that use media drives,
etc.

You can only disable it;
http://tinyurl.com/qb7pmb8
Just look at the instructions for disabling it in Windows XP up to Win8;
firstly how long it takes; and secondly ask yourself how many of the
posters in this NG could actually follow that through successfully. It's
so full of pitfalls, places where many people will screw things up.

And then ask yourself this; Why does WD insist on having that VCD
installed? Why couldn't they just put their software on the partition,
let us know when first installed, and leave it as removable? Hhhmmm!
Controversial territory.

Ed



I just read some posts in the community forum for WD at
http://community.wd.com/t5/External-...our/td-p/20041

You can't even disable the virtual CD; all you can do is hide it. A WD
representative claims that it's only on the WD drive; it doesn't get
installed on the computer. When you remove the drive, it no longer shows
up on the computer.

It still is crazy that you can't delete it from the external drive. You
CAN delete the company's Smartware. I don't like having either one. Do
any other external drive manufacturers do this sort of thing?


Here's a guy who claims to have found a way to remove the virtual CD
Manager partition. I take it that he's reclaimed all the disk space and
the virtual CD no longer shows;
http://www.nabeelkhan.com/smartware-wd/

Hmmm, again! He must be a computer geek to rival our Paul (no offence,
Paul).

Ed

On 13/04/2015 00:31, Jo-Anne wrote:
I want to buy a couple external hard drives for backing up my new
Windows 7 computer. My old external drives are 160GB and 320GB Western
Digital My Passport Essentials, and they've worked well.

I was planning to get 1TB drives of this brand, but there are now 2TB
drives that aren't much pricier. Are the 2TB drives generally as
reliable as the 1TB? And is WD still considered a good brand?

You will be better off using the cloud based backups. With larger
drives when they die, your back ups die as well and you are back to
square one.

What exactly are you trying to backup? Everything should be in the
cloud these days. To give you an example, Office 2013 can synchronize
your backups in the background and all your documents can be securely
stored in skydrive/onedrive call whatever you want and it is really
fantastic. Office 2013 online is free to use and the files can be saved
on your machine or can be in the cloud. Even office 2013 desktop version
is automatic in terms of saving your files online as if the disk is on
your desktop.

How are you going to backup your 2TB drive? Have you thought of it?
Are you saying the backup doesn't need backups?

On Sun, 12 Apr 2015 18:31:01 -0500, Jo-Anne
wrote:

I want to buy a couple external hard drives for backing up my new
Windows 7 computer. My old external drives are 160GB and 320GB Western
Digital My Passport Essentials, and they've worked well.

I was planning to get 1TB drives of this brand, but there are now 2TB
drives that aren't much pricier. Are the 2TB drives generally as
reliable as the 1TB? And is WD still considered a good brand?

Why buy a box with crap (software) you don't want? Build your own.

Rosewill RX-358 V2 BLK - Black, 3.5" SATA to USB & eSATA External
Enclosure with Internal 80 mm Fan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817173042
Around $15 US

Western Digital WD Green WD20EZRX 2TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA
6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236404
Around $80 US

I use 4 of these (1 on each Desktop computer as an external esata
Drive, 2 on my Synology NAS connected via USB). The NAS Drives are
used to back up the NAS Drives. These have worked well for the last
18 months.

Just my Nickles worth, YMMV.
Have a nice day.

Remove NOPANTS To reply by direct E-Mail;
Support: The Right to Privacy and Anti-SPAM projects.

In article ,
says...

Ed Cryer wrote:
Mike Barnes wrote:
Ed Cryer wrote:
Jo-Anne wrote:
I want to buy a couple external hard drives for backing up my new
Windows 7 computer. My old external drives are 160GB and 320GB Western
Digital My Passport Essentials, and they've worked well.

I was planning to get 1TB drives of this brand, but there are now 2TB
drives that aren't much pricier. Are the 2TB drives generally as
reliable as the 1TB? And is WD still considered a good brand?


I'd like to put in a recommendation for "portable" 2TB drives; USB power
is sufficient, which makes them like a large memory stick. I can easily
put two in a pocket. They come in different colours too.

I started with a WD one, but put it in the cupboard after I became
thoroughly pestered and annoyed with the virtual CD drive it installs
(no "don't install" option).

This is the second reference I've seen to WD software. Is any software
needed? I just plugged my new drives in and they started working
straight away. Has that changed?

I did find some software on the drives but I just created a "WD
software" folder, moved it there, and have never felt the need to look
at it since.

The WD Passport portable drives come with a virtual CD that you can't
prevent installing;
http://tinyurl.com/pnxyw5o

(that link didn't work for me)

It'll show up in Disk Management, all programs that use media drives, etc.

You can only disable it;
http://tinyurl.com/qb7pmb8
Just look at the instructions for disabling it in Windows XP up to Win8;
firstly how long it takes; and secondly ask yourself how many of the
posters in this NG could actually follow that through successfully. It's
so full of pitfalls, places where many people will screw things up.

And then ask yourself this; Why does WD insist on having that VCD
installed? Why couldn't they just put their software on the partition,
let us know when first installed, and leave it as removable? Hhhmmm!
Controversial territory.


I don't believe it's on every model. Believe Passports models have it
(mine did) and Elements models don't (what they replaced it with, both
1Tb).

pjp wrote:
In article ,
says...

Ed Cryer wrote:
Mike Barnes wrote:
Ed Cryer wrote:
Jo-Anne wrote:
I want to buy a couple external hard drives for backing up my new
Windows 7 computer. My old external drives are 160GB and 320GB Western
Digital My Passport Essentials, and they've worked well.

I was planning to get 1TB drives of this brand, but there are now 2TB
drives that aren't much pricier. Are the 2TB drives generally as
reliable as the 1TB? And is WD still considered a good brand?


I'd like to put in a recommendation for "portable" 2TB drives; USB power
is sufficient, which makes them like a large memory stick. I can easily
put two in a pocket. They come in different colours too.

I started with a WD one, but put it in the cupboard after I became
thoroughly pestered and annoyed with the virtual CD drive it installs
(no "don't install" option).

This is the second reference I've seen to WD software. Is any software
needed? I just plugged my new drives in and they started working
straight away. Has that changed?

I did find some software on the drives but I just created a "WD
software" folder, moved it there, and have never felt the need to look
at it since.

The WD Passport portable drives come with a virtual CD that you can't
prevent installing;
http://tinyurl.com/pnxyw5o

(that link didn't work for me)

It'll show up in Disk Management, all programs that use media drives, etc.

You can only disable it;
http://tinyurl.com/qb7pmb8
Just look at the instructions for disabling it in Windows XP up to Win8;
firstly how long it takes; and secondly ask yourself how many of the
posters in this NG could actually follow that through successfully. It's
so full of pitfalls, places where many people will screw things up.

And then ask yourself this; Why does WD insist on having that VCD
installed? Why couldn't they just put their software on the partition,
let us know when first installed, and leave it as removable? Hhhmmm!
Controversial territory.


I don't believe it's on every model. Believe Passports models have it
(mine did) and Elements models don't (what they replaced it with, both
1Tb).

I have five My Passport Ultras (1TB and 2TB) and none of them had it.

--
Mike Barnes
Cheshire, England

On 4/13/2015 2:34 PM, Good Guy wrote:
On 13/04/2015 00:31, Jo-Anne wrote:
I want to buy a couple external hard drives for backing up my new
Windows 7 computer. My old external drives are 160GB and 320GB Western
Digital My Passport Essentials, and they've worked well.

I was planning to get 1TB drives of this brand, but there are now 2TB
drives that aren't much pricier. Are the 2TB drives generally as
reliable as the 1TB? And is WD still considered a good brand?

You will be better off using the cloud based backups. With larger
drives when they die, your back ups die as well and you are back to
square one.

What exactly are you trying to backup? Everything should be in the
cloud these days. To give you an example, Office 2013 can synchronize
your backups in the background and all your documents can be securely
stored in skydrive/onedrive call whatever you want and it is really
fantastic. Office 2013 online is free to use and the files can be saved
on your machine or can be in the cloud. Even office 2013 desktop version
is automatic in terms of saving your files online as if the disk is on
your desktop.

How are you going to backup your 2TB drive? Have you thought of it?
Are you saying the backup doesn't need backups?


Exactly. I use four (and soon to be more) external drives and alternate
which ones I back up to. If I lose the data on one, I can probably get
it back from another, although it might not be completely up-to-date.

--
Jo-Anne

On 4/13/2015 2:43 PM, Thats Me wrote:
On Sun, 12 Apr 2015 18:31:01 -0500, Jo-Anne
wrote:

I want to buy a couple external hard drives for backing up my new
Windows 7 computer. My old external drives are 160GB and 320GB Western
Digital My Passport Essentials, and they've worked well.

I was planning to get 1TB drives of this brand, but there are now 2TB
drives that aren't much pricier. Are the 2TB drives generally as
reliable as the 1TB? And is WD still considered a good brand?

Why buy a box with crap (software) you don't want? Build your own.

Rosewill RX-358 V2 BLK - Black, 3.5" SATA to USB & eSATA External
Enclosure with Internal 80 mm Fan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817173042
Around $15 US

Western Digital WD Green WD20EZRX 2TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA
6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236404
Around $80 US

I use 4 of these (1 on each Desktop computer as an external esata
Drive, 2 on my Synology NAS connected via USB). The NAS Drives are
used to back up the NAS Drives. These have worked well for the last
18 months.

Just my Nickles worth, YMMV.
Have a nice day.

Remove NOPANTS To reply by direct E-Mail;
Support: The Right to Privacy and Anti-SPAM projects.


Thank you! I don't think I'm up to building my own, however.

--
Jo-Anne

On Mon, 13 Apr 2015 19:09:50 -0500, Jo-Anne
wrote:

On 4/13/2015 2:43 PM, Thats Me wrote:
On Sun, 12 Apr 2015 18:31:01 -0500, Jo-Anne
wrote:

I want to buy a couple external hard drives for backing up my new
Windows 7 computer. My old external drives are 160GB and 320GB Western
Digital My Passport Essentials, and they've worked well.

I was planning to get 1TB drives of this brand, but there are now 2TB
drives that aren't much pricier. Are the 2TB drives generally as
reliable as the 1TB? And is WD still considered a good brand?

Why buy a box with crap (software) you don't want? Build your own.

Rosewill RX-358 V2 BLK - Black, 3.5" SATA to USB & eSATA External
Enclosure with Internal 80 mm Fan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817173042
Around $15 US

Western Digital WD Green WD20EZRX 2TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA
6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236404
Around $80 US

I use 4 of these (1 on each Desktop computer as an external esata
Drive, 2 on my Synology NAS connected via USB). The NAS Drives are
used to back up the NAS Drives. These have worked well for the last
18 months.

Just my Nickles worth, YMMV.
Have a nice day.

Remove NOPANTS To reply by direct E-Mail;
Support: The Right to Privacy and Anti-SPAM projects.


Thank you! I don't think I'm up to building my own, however.


Bear in mind that it's extremely easy. The word "building" is an
overstatement. You simply insert the drive in the enclosure, plug it
in, and screw the enclosure back together. You need no tool but a
screwdriver, and it takes less than five minutes even for those people
who are all thumbs.


But as far as I'm concerned, you should decide whether to do it or not
based solely on price. See which is cheaper, an external drive or the
combination of drive and enclosure.

Ken Blake wrote on 4/13/2015 9:33 PM:
On Mon, 13 Apr 2015 19:09:50 -0500, Jo-Anne
wrote:

On 4/13/2015 2:43 PM, Thats Me wrote:
On Sun, 12 Apr 2015 18:31:01 -0500, Jo-Anne
wrote:

I want to buy a couple external hard drives for backing up my new
Windows 7 computer. My old external drives are 160GB and 320GB Western
Digital My Passport Essentials, and they've worked well.

I was planning to get 1TB drives of this brand, but there are now 2TB
drives that aren't much pricier. Are the 2TB drives generally as
reliable as the 1TB? And is WD still considered a good brand?

Why buy a box with crap (software) you don't want? Build your own.

Rosewill RX-358 V2 BLK - Black, 3.5" SATA to USB & eSATA External
Enclosure with Internal 80 mm Fan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817173042
Around $15 US

Western Digital WD Green WD20EZRX 2TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA
6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236404
Around $80 US

I use 4 of these (1 on each Desktop computer as an external esata
Drive, 2 on my Synology NAS connected via USB). The NAS Drives are
used to back up the NAS Drives. These have worked well for the last
18 months.

Just my Nickles worth, YMMV.
Have a nice day.

Remove NOPANTS To reply by direct E-Mail;
Support: The Right to Privacy and Anti-SPAM projects.


Thank you! I don't think I'm up to building my own, however.


Bear in mind that it's extremely easy. The word "building" is an
overstatement. You simply insert the drive in the enclosure, plug it
in, and screw the enclosure back together. You need no tool but a
screwdriver, and it takes less than five minutes even for those people
who are all thumbs.


But as far as I'm concerned, you should decide whether to do it or not
based solely on price. See which is cheaper, an external drive or the
combination of drive and enclosure.

Price may not be the sole issue. As has been pointed out earlier, if either the drive or enclosure die, you only need
to buy one. You can also pick and buy a 7200 rpm or 5400 rpm (price normally), and pick manufacturer too. You have
the choice when you build your own.

On 4/13/2015 8:33 PM, Ken Blake wrote:
On Mon, 13 Apr 2015 19:09:50 -0500, Jo-Anne
wrote:

On 4/13/2015 2:43 PM, Thats Me wrote:
On Sun, 12 Apr 2015 18:31:01 -0500, Jo-Anne
wrote:

I want to buy a couple external hard drives for backing up my new
Windows 7 computer. My old external drives are 160GB and 320GB Western
Digital My Passport Essentials, and they've worked well.

I was planning to get 1TB drives of this brand, but there are now 2TB
drives that aren't much pricier. Are the 2TB drives generally as
reliable as the 1TB? And is WD still considered a good brand?

Why buy a box with crap (software) you don't want? Build your own.

Rosewill RX-358 V2 BLK - Black, 3.5" SATA to USB & eSATA External
Enclosure with Internal 80 mm Fan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817173042
Around $15 US

Western Digital WD Green WD20EZRX 2TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA
6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236404
Around $80 US

I use 4 of these (1 on each Desktop computer as an external esata
Drive, 2 on my Synology NAS connected via USB). The NAS Drives are
used to back up the NAS Drives. These have worked well for the last
18 months.

Just my Nickles worth, YMMV.
Have a nice day.

Remove NOPANTS To reply by direct E-Mail;
Support: The Right to Privacy and Anti-SPAM projects.


Thank you! I don't think I'm up to building my own, however.


Bear in mind that it's extremely easy. The word "building" is an
overstatement. You simply insert the drive in the enclosure, plug it
in, and screw the enclosure back together. You need no tool but a
screwdriver, and it takes less than five minutes even for those people
who are all thumbs.


But as far as I'm concerned, you should decide whether to do it or not
based solely on price. See which is cheaper, an external drive or the
combination of drive and enclosure.


Thank you again, Ken. I'm going to be away from the computer for a
couple weeks, so I'll hold off buying the 2TB drive(s). Maybe when I
return, I'll be brave enough to try what you said.

--
Jo-Anne

In article ,
lid says...

On Mon, 13 Apr 2015 19:09:50 -0500, Jo-Anne
wrote:

On 4/13/2015 2:43 PM, Thats Me wrote:
On Sun, 12 Apr 2015 18:31:01 -0500, Jo-Anne
wrote:

I want to buy a couple external hard drives for backing up my new
Windows 7 computer. My old external drives are 160GB and 320GB Western
Digital My Passport Essentials, and they've worked well.

I was planning to get 1TB drives of this brand, but there are now 2TB
drives that aren't much pricier. Are the 2TB drives generally as
reliable as the 1TB? And is WD still considered a good brand?

Why buy a box with crap (software) you don't want? Build your own.

Rosewill RX-358 V2 BLK - Black, 3.5" SATA to USB & eSATA External
Enclosure with Internal 80 mm Fan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817173042
Around $15 US

Western Digital WD Green WD20EZRX 2TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA
6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236404
Around $80 US

I use 4 of these (1 on each Desktop computer as an external esata
Drive, 2 on my Synology NAS connected via USB). The NAS Drives are
used to back up the NAS Drives. These have worked well for the last
18 months.

Just my Nickles worth, YMMV.
Have a nice day.

Remove NOPANTS To reply by direct E-Mail;
Support: The Right to Privacy and Anti-SPAM projects.


Thank you! I don't think I'm up to building my own, however.


Bear in mind that it's extremely easy. The word "building" is an
overstatement. You simply insert the drive in the enclosure, plug it
in, and screw the enclosure back together. You need no tool but a
screwdriver, and it takes less than five minutes even for those people
who are all thumbs.



I have one of those that supports both IDE and SATA drives. One screw
and it slides out, take one little thin tin plate off, four screws hold
drive in, reverse order to swap another drive in it. Do it all the time
as I have many older 100Gb drives laying around here that I put some
backup of something on it and then put it on a shelf somewhere labelled
accordingly. I also have a WD external then when it went belly up after
warrenty it also turned out to be nothing more than a SATA enclosure and
it's just as easy to swap drives in it also. There's also my little
2/5" SATA enclosure came with my SSD is very handy for various laptop
drives I have.

I do not like Seagte externals in regard to they make it damn near
impossible to take case apart without breaking some little plastic
catches. Done on purpose I suspect for warranty reasons but still ...