Storage Solutions WD Elements vs Passport

M

Marcus Fenix

Skilled
iPwnz said:
Even I'm also waiting for that. :p
@magesh85 @cyberwarfare nope, there were some "deals" but only 100-200rs price difference. IIRC WD 2.5" 2TB Elements/Seagate equivalent for 6.5k'ish while the WD Passport 6.9k'ish last time i checked.
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I ordered the WD Elements Ultra 2 TB on Tuesday @6.5k .Additional 15% cashback will bring the cost to 5.5k.
The best thing is that it was delivered just 5 mins earlier.:):)
 
Marcus Fenix said:
I ordered the WD Elements Ultra 2 TB on Tuesday @6.5k .Additional 15% cashback will bring the cost to 5.5k.
The best thing is that it was delivered just 5 mins earlier.:):)
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Good for you. I want the Passport model though. Not to discourage you but one of my old Elements died and the other one has connection problem. May your's live long and prosper.
 
iPwnz said:
Good for you. I want the Passport model though. Not to discourage you but one of my old Elements died and the other one has connection problem. May your's live long and prosper.
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Sorry about that I got a My Passport Ultra Not Elements.:p

I too avoid WD drives and go for Seagate ones but this was a damn good deal for 2TB
 
iPwnz said:
Good for you. I want the Passport model though. Not to discourage you but one of my old Elements died and the other one has connection problem. May your's live long and prosper.
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hmm...I had the opposite experience with my 2TB WD elements & Passport drives. Elements although slightly slower (60-70MB/s) still working fine and WD passport (90-100MB/s) died off quickly within a year.
 
dissel said:
Any Body used WD My Book - any good ? Reliable ? !!

Which one My Book or My CLoud ? Please comment...
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WD my book has WD green drive in it.All the WD green drives used by me failed within 2 years.Four of them Luckily all of them were under warranty.I have a My book too,It developed bad sectors but still in use
WD warranty and service is a breeze.When one of the drives failed I requested flextronics to issue a brand new drive instead of a recertified one.They gave me a brand new WD black as replacement
 
Marcus Fenix said:
Sorry about that I got a My Passport Ultra Not Elements.
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I thought so. Kinda envious of you right now but hey I'm broke so no point even if I wanted it. >_>[DOUBLEPOST=1444924840][/DOUBLEPOST]@dissel avoid anything with green drives as much as possible. Those things have serious reliability issues. Been like that for years now.
And I also agree, WD has a great after-sales service. Far better than Seagate's from what I heard.
 
dissel said:
Any Body used WD My Book - any good ? Reliable ? !!

Which one My Book or My CLoud ? Please comment...
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The MyBook connects via USB while the MyCloud is network attached storage. For a while there used to be MyBook Live which was also a network attached drive, but that line has been discontinued by WD. The MyClouds are usually WD Reds while the MyBooks are WD Greens as someone else mentioned a few posts back. MyBook (not the MyBook Live) has hardware encryption (disadvantage for the most part) while the MyClouds do not (mostly an advantage).

I'd say go with the MyCloud/MyBook Live rather than the MyBook.

Both MyBook and MyCloud are based on rather underpowered SOC's and have rather minimal memory, so don't expect blazing performance. Reliability is just the luck of the draw as with any HDD, but both variants of MyCloud and MyBook Live I have are still alive and well after about a year or so of moderate use.
 
Thanks for this valuable info -

About - My Book - if anyone not using WD Encryption software - All Stored data Still Hardware Locked / Encrypted ?

About - My CLoud - for a buyer how to make sure that inbuilt drive is WD Red ? And WD Red is better (reliable) than Green - Right ?
 
dissel said:
Thanks for this valuable info -

About - My Book - if anyone not using WD Encryption software - All Stored data Still Hardware Locked / Encrypted ?
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Even if you don't set a password for the hardware encryption, and your MyBook controller w/encryption is trashed you will need to get a matching controller to access the drive. Be aware that there are MyBook variants without hardware encryption and some with hardware encryption. I might be mistaken but there are some MyCloud variants that have hardware encryption too. Thanks to WD for confusing the hell out of everyone. That said the 2TB, 3TB, 4TB single disk regular MyClouds(don't know about the Essential, EX, Duo variants) do not have hardware encryption.

dissel said:
About - My CLoud - for a buyer how to make sure that inbuilt drive is WD Red ? And WD Red is better (reliable) than Green - Right ?
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AFAIK, can't tell from looking at the box. However if the drive model is WDx0EFRX (where x is a number such as 2, 3, 4 etc.) you have a Red. WDx0EZRX and you have a Green.

Reds are meant to be NAS / RAID drives. Greens are OK as dump drives, though some have indicated reliability issues. Just make sure to run WDIDLE3.exe to ensure LCC doesn't increase too rapidly (to do that on a Green in a MyBook, you would have to remove the drive from the case attach to a PC [of course assuming no hardware encryption]).
 
jsmithe said:
Even if you don't set a password for the hardware encryption, and your MyBook controller w/encryption is trashed you will need to get a matching controller to access the drive. Be aware that there are MyBook variants without hardware encryption and some with hardware encryption. I might be mistaken but there are some MyCloud variants that have hardware encryption too. Thanks to WD for confusing the hell out of everyone. That said the 2TB, 3TB, 4TB single disk regular MyClouds(don't know about the Essential, EX, Duo variants) do not have hardware encryption.



AFAIK, can't tell from looking at the box. However if the drive model is WDx0EFRX (where x is a number such as 2, 3, 4 etc.) you have a Red. WDx0EZRX and you have a Green.

Reds are meant to be NAS / RAID drives. Greens are OK as dump drives, though some have indicated reliability issues. Just make sure to run WDIDLE3.exe to ensure LCC doesn't increase too rapidly (to do that on a Green in a MyBook, you would have to remove the drive from the case attach to a PC [of course assuming no hardware encryption]).
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Thanks for your reply jsmithe about my confusion - it helps....Thanks for the facts.

Forget to mentioned - I'm interested 4 TB or Higher Capacity....

Now my doubts are, if user go for WD My Book (which is actually WD Green) connected with USB cable - If user connect occasionally - Like dumping 20-80 GB data (Video Footage) for 3 Days a week and then disconnect - Is it require use WDIDLE3.exe to increase the life by altering spin down cycle (I gather that is what that said software do) - I mean it is not powered ON all the time like internal drive - So in that Scenario - Isn't the life is little bit Higher for WD Green ?

And after buying a WD USB variant and open up and apply the WDIDLE3 = Lose the 3 Year Warranty is not preferable - I guess.

About Cloud,

Found this Q & A where user claim it is WD Green but seller Claim WD Red - Whom to believe ?

So after buying a WD CLoud which may come with WD Green and then make it online most of the time (which is intended by company) without applying WDIDDLE3 - Isn't that lead to Health / reliably issue ?

http://www.amazon.in/forum/-/Tx30X9O6WOCMO8Q/ref=ask_ql_ql_al_hza?asin=B00EVVGAD0

qDsab7D.png
 
dissel said:
Thanks for your reply jsmithe about my confusion - it helps....Thanks for the facts.

Forget to mentioned - I'm interested 4 TB or Higher Capacity....
Click to expand...
If you want high capacity reliable network attached storage, build your own (FreeNAS, UnRAID etc.) or get a ready to go branded NAS like a Synology (expensive) or a Netgear ReadyNAS (cheaper and often on LD on Amazon.in) and populate with WD Reds / HGST NAS drives / Seagate NAS drives

dissel said:
Now my doubts are, if user go for WD My Book (which is actually WD Green) connected with USB cable - If user connect occasionally - Like dumping 20-80 GB data (Video Footage) for 3 Days a week and then disconnect - Is it require use WDIDLE3.exe to increase the life by altering spin down cycle (I gather that is what that said software do) - I mean it is not powered ON all the time like internal drive - So in that Scenario - Isn't the life is little bit Higher for WD Green ?

And after buying a WD USB variant and open up and apply the WDIDLE3 = Lose the 3 Year Warranty is not preferable - I guess.
Click to expand...

Yes, if you open up the case to run WDIDLE3 you risk losing the warranty and is best avoided if you are only occasionally powering up the device.

I have a 2TB Mybook Live network attached disk(not USB) which is a WD Green. It is only used occasionaly and is still alive for more than a year now without any problems. Perhaps I should ssh into it and see what smartctl reports as the LCC.

dissel said:
About Cloud,

Found this Q & A where user claim it is WD Green but seller Claim WD Red - Whom to believe ?
Click to expand...

If you read carefully the person who claims it is a Green says "I read", and then later on indicates a Youtube video as the source. It is possible that a few MyClouds were/are Greens. The MyClouds I have are WD Red's of which one was purchased about a month or two ago. What you actually get you will only know after you buy and check the HDD model number.

dissel said:
So after buying a WD CLoud which may come with WD Green and then make it online most of the time (which is intended by company) without applying WDIDDLE3 - Isn't that lead to Health / reliably issue ?
Click to expand...
High LCC's are not so much the cause of health or reliability issues. Rather the LCC is just a counter which when exceeded the drive firmware will report as the drive beginning to fail/failed. See http://www.storagereview.com/how_to...igital_2tb_caviar_green_wd20ears_with_wdidle3

Parking the heads faster(default on the WD Greens) will mean lower power consumption but if the OS keeps waking the drive (if on Windows run Diskmon or Filemon from Sysinternals https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb545046.aspx to see what I mean) frequently then the LCC will increase rather rapidly since there will be repeated park-wake-park cycle for the duration the drive is powered on.
 
jsmithe said:
If you want high capacity reliable network attached storage, build your own (FreeNAS, UnRAID etc.) or get a ready to go branded NAS like a Synology (expensive) or a Netgear ReadyNAS (cheaper and often on LD on Amazon.in) and populate with WD Reds / HGST NAS drives / Seagate NAS drives
Click to expand...

Thanks jsmithe for your valuable suggestion - After considering the fact as well uncertainty about what inside the box of My CLoud - I decided not to go with any 'My Product' hence thought to opt out for cheapest option which is (as my budget permit)

Net Gear RN 102 - Ready NAS and One 4TB WD Red (as of now) later add another.

But after some reading at Amazon dot com as well Googling - I found this Red Drive also got the same issue as Green Drive - They need WDIDLE3 treatment ...

http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B00LO3KR96/ref=cm_cr_dp_syn_footer?k=Western Digital Red WD60EFRX 6TB Internal Hard Drive&showViewpoints=1

OMG..Now I'm really confuse - Some forums / groups also against it - they produce some theory about their own...why user don't need it..

Also looks like some expensive NAS Box treat this HDD very safely but they are way out of my budget.

Also no where I can found this WDIDLE3 software from WD Website - which is also very suspicious. ...hmmmm.

Any one here using Netgaer RN 102 with WD Red Drive - Preferably a 4TB variants ?
 
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dissel said:
Thanks jsmithe for your valuable suggestion - After considering the fact as well uncertainty about what inside the box of My CLoud - I decided not to go with any 'My Product' hence thought to opt out for cheapest option which is (as my budget permit)

Net Gear RN 102 - Ready NAS and One 4TB WD Red (as of now) later add another.

But after some reading at Amazon dot com as well Googling - I found this Red Drive also got the same issue as Green Drive - They need WDIDLE3 treatment ...

http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B00LO3KR96/ref=cm_cr_dp_syn_footer?k=Western Digital Red WD60EFRX 6TB Internal Hard Drive&showViewpoints=1

OMG..Now I'm really confuse - Some forums / groups also against it - they produce some theory about their own...why user don't need it..

Also looks like some expensive NAS Box treat this HDD very safely but they are way out of my budget.

Also no where I can found this WDIDLE3 software from WD Website - which is also very suspicious. ...hmmmm.

Any one here using Netgaer RN 102 with WD Red Drive - Preferably a 4TB variants ?
Click to expand...

I use an RN104 with 4TB Reds. None of the Red drives I have used needed WDIDLE3 to be run (i.e.) the aggressive head parking was not enabled out of the box. On the other hand a WD Green needed to have WDIDLE3 to be run and that was really easy to do. My experience with the 4TB WD Reds is that they work just fine both in the RN104 and when used in a FreeNAS setup.
 
jsmithe said:
I use an RN104 with 4TB Reds. None of the Red drives I have used needed WDIDLE3 to be run (i.e.) the aggressive head parking was not enabled out of the box. On the other hand a WD Green needed to have WDIDLE3 to be run and that was really easy to do. My experience with the 4TB WD Reds is that they work just fine both in the RN104 and when used in a FreeNAS setup.
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Thanks...

Are they Normal Red or Red Pro Drive ?

Can you post the S.M.A.R.T info of your drive which is - (at least one drive)

1. Total Drive Run Time - Power On

2. Total Load Unload Cycle Count
 
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