Don't buy the WD My Passport USB drive

[razel]

They are not made from lower quality drives. They are just the same as internal drives with less warranty because their external nature exposes them to more impact. I also wouldn't just caulk this are representative. I have gone through 6-7 external 2.5" portables and they're all still kicking and alive.

It's really hard to argue against 1TB of portable, extremely usable storage @ $55. That's not much money for the peace of mind if you make two backups. I'd pay $55 to avoid the 'regret' of losing data... sometimes precious data.

 

[Zxian]

I had no idea that portables were made from low quality drives. Moral of the story I guess is just to never buy preassembled portables.

They're not. The drives are manufactured from the same process as other drives. They're going have higher failure rates because they're constantly shaken and thrown into bags.

Find me another 2.5" 1TB external drive for $60 and show me that the failure rates are lower. Nobody's done the research on it, and reviews of bare drives are inconclusive (since they're not always used for external purposes).

Your *one* experience with this drive, which you made worse yourself (even if you don't want to admit it), is not evidence that all pre-assembled drives are bad. It's anecdotal.

 

[Old Hippie]

I've bought several of the WD Passports before. They're reasonably priced and Western Digital has an excellent RMA process. I wouldn't expect a hard drive that's frequently moved to live a long life - OEM or self-assembled.

Maybe yes and maybe no but at the very least you can remove it from the case to TS drive/case interface problems without the fear of voiding the warranty.

I'm glad you've had a positive experience but I would never recommend anyone to purchase a prebuilt external.

They are just the same as internal drives with less warranty because their external nature exposes them to more impact.

With the enclosure opened up we found that Western Digital is using 2.5″ hard drive with model number WD20NMVW that is not available for resale.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So basically what I'm getting from the replies to this thread is that if I buy a portable drive with the purpose of using it in a portable fashion I should never put anything important on it.

True dat. Unless you carry multiple portable HDDs, all with multiple copies of your data.

 

[Zxian]

Maybe yes and maybe no but at the very least you can remove it from the case to TS drive/case interface problems without the fear of voiding the warranty.

My question is why would you necessarily want to? If your goal is to have a portable hard drive, how often are you really going to be opening it up to swap drives? If something fails, you're either throwing out the cheap enclosure or dealing with an RMA either way. The pre-built solutions are the cheapest in the long run.

I'm not sure why there's even a debate on this matter. If your goal is to buy this drive to rip it open and use the notebook drive in a notebook, you can't. If you want to have an affordable, portable hard drive, you get exactly what you want. Why is the fact that the internal drive is USB-only an issue? It simplifies the package as a whole and lowers overall cost of production.

Buying a 2TB 2.5" drive and an enclosure gives you a larger package (try finding 2.5" enclosure that fits 15mm drives - I can only find one from a brand I've never dealt with before) and ends up costing you considerably more.

WD 2TB Green 2.5" Bare Drive - $179.99
WD 2TB Passport - $139.99

Both have 2-year warranties.


I'd be much more willing to believe people who swear away from OEM drives if they had any proof that wasn't anecdotal. I think the expectation that a portable hard drive should survive until the end of its warranty period somewhat unrealistic, given the expected operating environment.

 

[Old Hippie]

If something fails, you're either throwing out the cheap enclosure or dealing with an RMA either way

These 15mm drives are non standard anyway and I would never advocate their purchase.

Purchase a standard 2.5 drive/external case and if your enclosure's interface is the problem you can connect the drive directly to the computer with no loss of data or an RMA.

You're free to do whatever you want but ya get what ya pay for.

 

[Zxian]

The question isn't whether or not you have access do your data. External drives should never be used as primary storage - OEM or self-assembled. With proper backups, there should never be any loss of data.

The fact that you could get your data off it in the event that the enclosure dies is completely moot. The drive is no longer an external drive and is no longer serving its initial purpose. One way or another, to return it to being an external, you're paying for a new enclosure or doing an RMA.

Of course people are free to do what they want, you're suggesting that buying enclosure and drive separate is a valid substitute for backups. This isn't something I'd advocate anywhere to anyone.

 

[Morbus]

For clarity: "backup" means duplication of data, not having it stored away or somewhere not your computer. It's "backup" if the files in your computer are also stored in an external hard drive, but it's just "storage" if the files in your hard drive aren't anywhere else.

"Storage" is risky, "backup" is less so, and you should have one.

Unless you don't care about the data. I don't backup everything. Yet...